Chapter 2120： Shipbuilding is too fast for the sailors to keep up

Of course, it will take many years for "Master Hans" to become famous. This is not the age of the Internet. If something happens to a certain brand, the people who eat melon can know it for the first time. At present, because of the serious lag in message delivery, even if something goes wrong, it will take several years for the news to spread.

Even in some places with inconvenient transportation, you may never know the news of the accident. Even in areas with convenient transportation, only nearby areas will quickly know. Then, in foreign countries, the transmission time is measured in years. Even in the home country, the transmission speed is measured in months, and it has to be in areas with convenient transportation.

Therefore, a few months or years ago, Marin could do his best to produce matchlock guns with "Master Hans" inscriptions to entrap his opponents. Among them, Marin focused on France, as well as the princes of Germany hostile to Marin. Among the princes hostile to Marin, the Duke of Lorraine is one of the representatives. Well, it is reasonable to sell matchlock guns made of low-quality steel produced from the Lorraine iron mine to the Principality of Lorraine.

But in the future, Marin may not be willing to buy Lorraine's garbage iron ore. Because the high-quality iron ore in Kirkenes in the north of Norway is already under development. When the development there is completed, it can be transported back to the North Sea country in large quantities by ship, thus getting rid of the dependence on Lorraine iron ore.

However, there is no shortage of buyers for Lorraine Iron Mine. After all, this is an age when pig iron ingots are rare, and iron ore is naturally a popular material.

In Western Europe, there is a lack of iron ore. The well-known iron ore is Lorraine, as well as some iron ore in the United Kingdom. There is very little iron ore on the Western European continent. Of course, there are also the iron ore of Luxembourg and the iron ore of Liege in the south of the Netherlands. However, no one noticed these two iron ore before.

The Luxembourg iron ore mine, under the guidance of Marin, has been developed ahead of time, but the scale is not large. In addition, transportation is inconvenient. After all, the deep inland mountains of Luxembourg's iron ore mines are too troublesome for transportation, and it is far less convenient than Kirkenes by the sea.

The Liege Iron Mine has not yet been developed. Moreover, Liège is located in the southern part of the Netherlands, but it is not currently under the rule of the Habsburg family, but is governed by the independent vassal state-the bishopric of Liege. Marin didn't want to provoke the princes of the church, so he didn't remind the Bishop of Liege.

South Netherlands, where Liège was located, later belonged to Belgium. Liege is also the most important industrial zone after Belgium's independence, and its munitions industry is extremely developed. In the 19th century, Tsarist Russia also ordered standard rifles in Liege. Later, Liège appeared as a world-renowned military industry enterprise-FN, whose richly produced FN assault rifles became famous.

In addition, there are coal mines in the Liege area, coal and iron, which established the foundation for the rise of Liege's industry. Even in Liege, the southern part of the Limburg region, which is also the long strip area south of Limburg Province in the later Netherlands, also has coal mines, and it is also the only coal mining area in the Netherlands.

Of course, these are small mines. By the 21st century, whether it is Belgium or the Netherlands, coal and iron mines have been dug up, and they all begin to rely on imports. But then again, the demand for steel in this era is so small, if these small coal mines and iron ore are used well, there is much to be done.

However, because of Marin's strict confidentiality of technology, other European countries have not yet obtained good steel smelting technology. Even the artillery is generally copper cannon. Only England started to cast artillery partly, but it was not mainstream either. Mainly, the current iron smelting technology in England is not very good. Cast iron cannons are easier to explode than copper cannons. But England can't help it. The main reason is that England lacks copper mines and copper prices are very expensive. In desperation, they had to try to replace cast cannons with iron.

In the early 16th century, because of the use of cast iron cannons in England, the quality was very poor and the toughness was very poor. Probably in the middle and late 16th century, after iron smelting technology progressed, the quality of wrought iron cast guns would be much better.

What I'm talking about here is the original history. Marin, the traverser, was directly launched by the British in the 18th century. The reverberatory furnace was kept secret from France for many years. The quality of the reverberatory furnace was directly made. I don't know how much better the quality. It was the shortage of saltpeter before, which restricted the use of artillery. But now that the extraction technology of soil nitrate has made great progress, the artillery of the North Sea country will be further unblocked, releasing a powerful force...

…

On this day, Marin was instructing Kohler to send someone to sell the "Master Hans" matchlock in southern Germany, but after the order was over, Kohler did not leave, but stopped talking.

"What's the matter, Kohler, let's be honest!"

"That's the case, Your Majesty, you have previously ordered the use of drying methods to build ships, and urgently build a large number of ships... well, there is a small problem..." Kohler thought for a while and said.

"Small problem? What is the problem? Is it a wood problem? Didn't I arrange to send a batch of wood back from North America? Moreover, the shipyard in New York can also use this method to produce a batch of 250B ships."

“It’s not a wood problem. On the contrary, wood is the least of a problem. Even if the wood from North America is inconvenient to ship back, it’s not the wood from the Danes of Norway and southern Sweden. If it doesn’t work, we can still go to France and the Netherlands to buy wood.”

"What's the problem?" Marin puzzled.

"It's the sailor problem. Our domestic sailors are not enough. There are hundreds of ships, one requires 40 sailors, and 100 ships are 4000 people. We can build ships quickly, but sailors can't find 4000 people all at once! "

Marlin was stunned. He had only thought about building ships quickly, but he didn't expect that so many ships would require a lot of sailors. As for the transfer from another ship? Do not make jokes. Once the war broke out, all ships were operating at full capacity, and there were no idle ships. Therefore, 4,000 sailors need to be recruited. But the newly recruited sailors can't get started so quickly. If there are hundreds of people, it would be easy to solve it, and other boats can be squeezed, and some people can be spared. 4000 people...it's difficult...especially, the newly built ship of UU Reading will run at full capacity when it comes up, and no time for novice sailors to get used to. If a novice makes a mistake and causes the ship to hit a rock and sink, it will kill hundreds of people when it sinks...

"Or, let's go to England to recruit sailors? At a high price, we should be able to recruit 4,000 sailors!"

England is a big seafaring country, with tens of thousands of sailors in total. And these sailors are not working at full capacity and have a lot of free time. Because of their limited income, these sailors often appeared as pirates and robbed French merchant ships.

Of course, the English merchant shipping has been very uncomfortable in recent months. Because the French created the Calais ship, it is a great threat to the English Channel. Many English merchant ships are afraid to take the English Channel route. Many sailors had nothing to do for the time being, and often caused trouble by drinking in the pier tavern.

If it were to recruit at this time, it would have been able to recruit enough manpower. Big deal, pay a high price for hire. Right now, there is no price revolution yet, and prices in England are not high, and sailors earn only two or three pence a day. Marin's daily salary of 4 pence, plus some drinks, will definitely attract many sailors.

"It's just... our steering wheel technology..." Kohler reminded. Ships in the North Sea countries have been completely replaced with easy-to-operate steering wheels, while ships in other countries still use crowbars to drive the rudder. Moreover, these English sailors have also adapted to crowbar operation, not necessarily adapted to the steering wheel.

"Then notify the shipyard to replace all the steering wheels with old-fashioned crowbar tail rudders!" Anyway, they are expendable ships with a short life span. It doesn't matter whether they are advanced or not. Perhaps, after this round of transportation is completed, these ships can be dismantled and used as firewood.

"Okay, I will send someone to England to recruit skilled sailors!"

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