Chapter 1928： Whale oil soap and trade deficit

How important is whaling? The meat of a whale accounts for half or more of its body weight. If you kill a 50-ton sperm whale, you can get 25 tons of whale meat. Even the smaller baleen whale weighs about 25 tons and can produce more than a dozen tons of whale meat.

what does this mean? It means that the meat from a whale can feed many people! If you produce 25 tons of meat according to the weight of the sperm whale, it is 55,000 pounds of meat! Even if the extravagant way of eating two pounds of meat per person per day is enough for 27,500 people to eat one day. In fact, for the poor people of this era, everyone can eat 1 pound of food per day, which is considered very good, not to mention meat?

According to the standard of 1 pound of meat per person per day, 55,000 pounds of meat can supply the daily consumption of 55,000 people. As long as 365 sperm whales are caught, they can provide food for 55,000 people a year. Not to mention that the whale also provides a lot of whale meat, and the whale bone can also be used as a fertilizer and fertilizer field.

Moreover, in this era, there are very few whalers worldwide. Even if there is a whale hunter, the small whale is hunted by boat. The big whale, the indigenous whalers of this era did not dare to mess with it. Because the boat was overturned by a large whale and pulled gently.

Not only that, there were very few whaling races in this era. It can even be said that there were few fishing boats on the sea in this era. Even if there are, most of them are small fishing boats that are active in the offshore waters, and there are no super-efficient trawl nets for future generations.

This also led to the extremely rich fishery resources in the sea in this era, which also means that whales have extremely rich food sources. Therefore, there are far more whales in this era than in later generations. Do n’t dare to say anything else, but there are plenty of whales waiting to eat in those areas where there are plenty of small fish and shrimp ...

In places like Newfoundland fishing grounds, fishermen can see the water jets sprayed by whales every day. Even the North Sea can often see whales spraying water. But even fishermen who know how to catch whales often dare not start easily. Because their boat can't withstand the drag of large and medium-sized whales.

Therefore, Marin made people develop whaling guns. Not because the harpoon of the whaling gun fires fast and can catch whales swimming fast, but because the whaling gun is powerful and can penetrate deep into the body of the whale, and even hit the whale's vital part, quickly let the whale lose its action Ability, there is no act of towing the fishing boat.

After all, no matter how big and strong the whale is, the whaling forks fired by the whaling cannon get stuck in their internal organs, and they have to lose their fighting power. Just as a person is stabbed into the gut with a knife, he quickly loses his ability to fight back.

In traditional whaling, the javelin-type whaling forks held by fishermen are stuck into the whale skin at most. Although it can get stuck in the whale meat, it is not fatal at once. In that case, the whale will run wild because of the severe pain from the skin. If the whaling boat was dragged forward, it would be better if it would take a while to let the whale run out of energy and give the whale too much blood to die.

But this process is very dangerous. It's okay to be dragged forward by the whale. If the whale suddenly dives to the bottom of the water, the fun will be great ...

The whaling fork thrown by humans penetrates into the whale's skin, just as it hurts the human's skin. After suffering from such painful skin trauma, whales often run wild because of the pain, causing high-speed drag on the whaling boat ...

The use of powerful whaling guns is different. Because of its fast speed and great power, the whaling fork can easily penetrate into the whale and even into the gut of the whale. The whaling fork driven by the explosive power of gunpowder can also cause great harm to the target whale, and make the whale lose its combat power in a very short time. In this way, the possibility that the whaling fishing boat is dragged vigorously by the whale will cause the boat to overturn.

Therefore, Marin felt that the importance of such things as whaling guns was too high. Once the research and development is successful, there will be whale meat in Beihai.

It is important to know that after World War II, due to a serious lack of food and meat, Japan was forced to send fishing boats to kill whales in order to obtain enough meat to make up for the shortage of domestic food.

At that time, the children who grew up after the Second World War, that is, the old people of Japan in the 21st century, many of them grew up eating whale meat, and even the school cafeteria also provided cheap and easily available whale meat. This also led to the fact that in the 21st century, many Japanese elderly people were very fond of whale meat, and even regarded whale meat as a belief. In the new century, young Japanese do not like to eat whale meat. Because they have not experienced the era of great food shortages in Japan just after the end of World War II, they naturally feel little about eating whale meat.

At the end of World War II, Japan had a population of more than 70 million, but most people actually rely on whale meat to supplement meat nutrition. Therefore, it can be seen how large the whaling was in Japan at that time. In the 1960s, there were a total of 7 whaling fleets in Japan, with an average of 20,000 whales per year, and more than 1.2 million tons of whale meat could be obtained. At its peak in 1962, Japan ’s whaling catches in Antarctica reached 300,000 tons, accounting for 78% of the world ’s whaling.

In other words, the whale meat obtained in Japan at the time was as high as hundreds of thousands of tons, so that the children who grew up after the war in Japan ate enough whale meat. Therefore, those children became old people decades later, and they still remembered the whale meat, which led to Japan ’s launch of the world ’s anti-whaling agreement, and continued to kill a large number of whales in the name of “scientific research” to meet those who have eaten The demand for whale meat in the elderly in Japan.

What is the concept of more than one hundred thousand tons of whale meat? One ton of whale meat is 2200 pounds, enough for 2200 people to eat one day (each person eats one pound a day). One hundred thousand tons is equivalent to allowing 600,000 people to eat one pound of whale meat for a year. If you want to get 100,000 tons of whale meat, you only need to kill tens of thousands of whales.

After World War II, perhaps Japan still needs to send ocean-going whaling ships to fish in the waters near Antarctica. Because the whales in the northern hemisphere were caught and killed too much in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

But in this era, the whaling industry in the northern hemisphere has not started to develop yet. The whaling artillery, the sharpest whaling weapon, has not yet appeared.

Therefore, in the Newfoundland fishing grounds, tens of thousands of whales are caught each year. As long as there are enough whaling guns and fishing boats, it can be done easily. By the time, whale meat alone can feed hundreds of thousands of people, not to mention the harvest of a large number of common fish in Newfoundland fishing grounds.

In the following days, the Beihai Kingdom will first arrest hundreds of thousands of Taino as serfs to help cultivate land in Haiti. However, at the beginning, the cultivated land was not developed yet, and the Taino serf could only be fed by the Beihai country to produce its own food.

And a person consumes hundreds of pounds of food every year, 100,000 is tens of millions of pounds, hundreds of thousands of people is hundreds of millions of pounds. At present, the food is so expensive, and all the food is used to feed the Taino serfs, and Marin cannot eat it.

Therefore, it is also a good choice to fill the food gap of those Tyno serfs in the first few years by fishing and whaling. Moreover, while obtaining a large amount of whale meat, you can also get a lot of whale oil, which can be used to make candles and soaps and other products.

Thinking of this, Marin suddenly lit up. Because, he has thought of a good way to make a fortune-selling soap to Daming!

Prior to this, Europeans made soaps, mainly relying on animal fats and oils, such as butter and goat oil, which cost more. Marin used to let his men use a javelin thrown by humans to catch whales. Although they can catch whales, the number of whales that may be killed is limited, and the whale oil is also small.

However, once the successful development of whaling artillery, coupled with the application of large whaling ships, the supply of whale oil in the North Sea will be extremely alarming.

But with so much whale oil, the question of how to apply it, in addition to being used to make candles, seems to be used to make soap, which is also a very good use.

You know, in the past life, when looking at the historical crossing, making soap is one of the most powerful tricks to travel through ancient China. Almost every traverser will use it.

The raw materials for making soap are also very simple, nothing more than animal fats and caustic soda. The caustic soda is mainly obtained by the reaction of caustic soda and lime, and the cost is lower. The only trouble is the acquisition of animal fats.

In the Ming Dynasty, animal fat was a treasure in people's eyes, and it was an important way to obtain oil and water. Therefore, in ancient China, whether it is lard or goat oil, it is very rare. The sheep oil is also an important raw material for lamp oil in ancient China. As for pork, it is a very important source of oil and water for the ancient Chinese people and is extremely popular.

Therefore, in ancient China, the most difficult raw material to obtain soap was animal fat. If you want to mass produce soap, you have to have a lot of animal fat sources. Therefore, those who make soap have to meet with nomads on the grassland ~ www.novelhall.com ~ to get enough animal fat. Otherwise, you can't make soap normally and make a lot of money.

But Marin is different. He now occupies Newfoundland fishing grounds and has the ability to control large areas of the North Sea fishing grounds. Once the whaling artillery is successfully developed, the source of whale oil is almost constant.

With whale oil, large quantities of cheap alkali can be imported from Daming to produce soaps and even soaps on a large scale. By then, large-scale sales of soap to the Ming Dynasty can be called a very important source of wealth.

With such a huge market in the Ming Dynasty, Marin can conclude that the sale of soap will surely make him have a lot of money and count his money ...

Moreover, with the production of whale oil, Marin can conclude that the production of soap will be very large, and the sales of whale oil soap will smooth out the trade deficit between him and Daming. surplus.

After all, Daming doesn't have the soap thing. Marin can not only produce soap with sufficient whale oil, but also set the price high, so that it generates a lot of profit. In this way, Marin does not have to worry about the influx of silver produced by his family into Daming. Because the soap made of whale oil will help him smooth out the trade deficit, which avoids the embarrassment of buying him from Daming ...