Tiansheng 21st, November.

After leaving Wenyuan Academy, Zhou Ming took more than 30 classmates (some of them returned home) and returned to his hometown in Haiping County in a mighty manner.

After so many guests came, my parents were a little surprised and didn't know how to arrange it.

Fortunately, a few years ago, Zhou Ming personally designed a bastion for the family's vault was mostly completed. The base was poured with steel and cement, with a circumference of one mile and nearly forty meters high. It is less than five miles away from the fort. It is close to Beijiang. It has perfect defense. Under the protection of the combs and cannons (the world has sufficient gunpowder materials, and the combs and cannons have been developed. Because of the lack of copper, the cannons currently have only a few test items). In addition, the supporting port facilities, even if they are besieged by millions of land troops, they will not fall easily.

There are hundreds of rooms with complete supporting facilities in the tall borough, and the river breeze can be blown at night and the sea view can be seen in the distance. Therefore, after consulting more than 30 students, Zhou Ming placed most of these students in the borough guest rooms. Each of them also arranged a servant and a maid to serve them in person and provide good treatment.

Of course, Zhou Ming did not feed and live for free. These students were all senior intellectuals. Some of them could be included in the "Literature Group" to help in literary creation, some could be included in the "comic group" to help him draw comics, and some could be included in the "entertainment group" to help him develop his entertainment career.

Even if some of the useless people can't help with anything, they are very useful to stand aside and be responsible for the ups and downs and shout.

In short, use everything to the fullest, and don’t let a classmate eat and spend time here.

The students were all placed properly and returned to Tianjiazhuang Fort. Zhou Ming asked his father Tian Feng and found out that he had not been in the development of various industries in the family for most of his time.

His father, Tian Feng, who has a much darker skin and is obviously older, has worked hard to complete the development plans formulated by Zhou Ming in the past four years. He looks much more capable and mature. His every move is full of the temperament of a successful man. He took out more than a dozen books and introduced Zhou Ming to the current development status of the family's various industries in recent years.

First of all, there is a plan for a large farm, and there is nothing to say about this. Now Tianjiazhuang not only has food self-sufficient, but there are more than 4,000 cows, more than 2,000 horses, tens of thousands of pigs and sheep, as well as countless chickens and ducks. The meat, eggs and milk produced every year have made the farmers in Tianjiazhuang live a well-off life with meat and eggs every day. In recent years, the average height of the children in Tianjiazhuang is more than three or five centimeters taller than their peers in other counties, and the older the, the bigger the gap.

The second is the plan of the Da Salt Field. The current Haiping Salt Field has been developing for nearly ten years. The area of ​​the salt field has expanded from the initial twenty acres, one thousand acres and five thousand acres to 30,000 acres, with an annual output of millions of stones of sea salt. This output is close to one-third of the sea salt in Changlu Salt Field in Yangzhou. However, due to insufficient manpower and the annual salt tax paid by government officials at all levels has increased to 50%. My father Tian Feng no longer has such strong motivation to continue to expand the area of ​​the salt field, otherwise the government will raise the salt tax again. This hard work is equivalent to making a wedding dress for the court.

Finally, the Marine Fishing Company Plan. At the beginning, when the investment was greater than the return every year, his father Tian Feng was not particularly concerned. Instead, he felt very painful every year due to storms, reefs, ocean currents and other reasons. Sometimes he felt that the plan was stagnant and had no meaning of development. However, with his son's insistence, he still gritted his teeth and persevered, organized training of fishermen, established shipyards, purchased excellent wood, built larger, stronger and more scientific fishing boats, and continued to invest for nearly ten years. Now, it has finally produced fruitful results and brought many unexpected surprises.

For example, the fishing volume of sea fish. In the first few years, the small boats and nets could only catch some small fish and shrimps offshore. There was a fishing volume of 500 tons a year, which was considered good. The dried fish that was thrown away some rotten and deteriorated, and the dried fish made can be consumed by itself. However, since the 19th year of Tiansheng, the Tianjia Shipyard adopted a standardized construction model to build a batch of "sea fishing type one" fishing boats with waterproof compartments and displacement of 550 materials. After investing in batch construction, in the 20th year of Tiansheng, the catch volume of the marine fishing company increased by nearly ten times in one year, reaching 5,000 tons.

In addition, some techniques for keeping sea fish fresh (such as wooden barrel stocking, artificial oxygen supply, etc.) invented by fishermen can ensure that most sea fish are still fresh before they go ashore. This brings a large amount of raw materials to the workers who cook dried fish on the shore, thus making a specialty called "Dried Sea Fish" in Haiping County quickly popular in various surrounding counties.

Even the newly appointed Magistrate Du of Haiping County (who was exposed to the glory of the Haiping Tian family, the former Magistrate Chen and Magistrates Sun were all promoted and promoted because of their outstanding political achievements), they found that the "Dried Fish in Haiping" tasted good and was very distinctive. In order to please the center, this kind of dried fish was listed as a tribute and presented to His Majesty Ming and Empress Tianhou, and was soon praised, requiring a hundred stones of dried fish to be presented every year for the royal family and civil and military officials.

If the dried fish industry is a fair and profitable industry, then the Tianjia Marine Fishing Company, the whale fishing industry that has been developing wildly in the past two years, is a completely profitable industry. With only whale fishing, in two years, the Tianjia Marine Fishing Company has made all the huge funds invested in the previous ten years, and has a huge profit of nearly 200,000 yuan.

Why is whale fishing a huge profit-making industry?

Because whales are full of treasures!

Whale leather, after tanning, is firm and durable, waterproof and corrosion-resistant, and has strong defense. It can be made into leather armor, belts, waterproof clothes and whale skin umbrellas, hiking shoes, backpacks and other items... Like ancient industrial plastics, it is extremely widely used.

Whale fat, the extracted whale oil, has a special fragrance after burning, refreshes the mind and is worth a thousand gold. Whale oil is also an excellent industrial lubricant. In the future, it is essential to make steam engines and whale oil.

Whale meat can be eaten and tastes similar to beef. It has a delicate taste, rich protein, and is not easy to cause obesity and is not expensive.

The toughness of whale tendons is far greater than that of cow tendons and sheep tendons, and is comparable to crocodile tendons. Bows, arrows, crossbows, and various siege devices will increase their power a lot after using whale tendons. Whale tendons can be said to be a kind of military strategic material.

After being ground into powder, whale bones are a high-level "compound fertilizer" containing a variety of mineral elements. When applied to the fields, they can have a miraculous effect of agricultural output +10%.

Some of the whale internal organs can be used as medicine, while others are delicious ingredients. In short, they have many functions.

Whale shit...don't throw it away.

How was the first whale in the Tianjia Marine Fishing Company caught? It was also a coincidence that the whale was seriously injured after fighting a group of fierce sharks and fled to the nearshore in a hurry. It happened to be in the ebb of the sea. The whale, which was eighteen meters long and weighed thousands of stones (50 tons), unfortunately ran aground in the shallows and was picked up by a "sea catch-type" fishing boat that returned from fishing...

After tasting a lot of sweetness on this stranded whale (this whale is equivalent to the company's annual income in previous years), the marine fishing company was out of control and specially modified several whaling ships for whaling, formed a whaling fleet, and cooperated with whaling. In two years, hundreds of small and medium-sized whales were caught back (the big ones dare not provoke them). By selling whale oil extracted from these whales alone, he made hundreds of thousands of chunks of taxes.

The whales in the sea are like cattle and horses on land, countless. For example, there are tens of thousands of whales living in a current convergence zone more than 300 miles east of Haiping County. Even if the whaling fleet catches it a thousand or eight hundred a year, it is just to update the population of these whales slightly faster.

...

A few days later.

A new ship launch ceremony is being held on the beach thirty miles northeast of Tianjiazhuang.

Zhou Ming and his father Tian Feng both came here.

The person in charge of the shipyard was Tian Guang. He was a middle-aged man in his forties. He had rough and dark skin, like an old farmer. He was a clan uncle from the side vein of the Tian family. He was originally a shipbuilder with a certain cultural literacy and was very good at building sea ships. After Zhou Ming recruited him, he handed over all the affairs of the shipyard to him.

In the center of the shipyard, on the largest ship platform, there is a ship with a relatively large side width (about 7.5). The ship has a pointed head and a narrow tail, a slender hull, with three-railed masts (can be hung on sails). There are two rows of oar windows on the left and right sides of the stairs, which can be arranged to handle oars. There are two rows of fins at the bottom of the ship, which are used to reduce the amplitude of the hull roll during the sailing of the sea.

In front of this new ship that is about to be launched, Tian Guangmei, the head of the shipyard, said: "This 'Sea Type 1' cargo ship has 1,155 materials, three-layer deck, 68 waterproof compartments, and a large cargo warehouse, which can carry 2,000 stones (=100 tons) of materials. It is a fixed crew of 150 people to operate the sailing oars. If the water is smooth, it will sail thousands of miles a day. It is no problem! With this type of cargo ship and the marine fishing company, in the future, the fishing boats will not have to go back and forth when going to sea during the fishing season. The transportation work is specifically responsible for the sea type 1 cargo ship. The efficiency of fishing will definitely increase several times!"

In any industry, to improve efficiency, division of labor and cooperation must be paid attention to, and the same is true for marine fishing: "Sea Catching Type One" fishing boats are responsible for fishing, and the more they catch, the better; "Sea Catching Type One" with faster ship speeds and more cabins is specifically responsible for transportation... In this way, in the three or four months when the sea has the least storms in a year, the catch of marine fishing companies will definitely increase rapidly under this division of labor model.

Zhou Ming nodded and asked him: "Uncle Guang, let's mass-produce twenty ships in the sea first. The next research focus should be on the 'Sea Catching Type 2' fishing boat. This new fishing boat uses materials of more than 2,000 materials. If you go to sea once, you can catch at least two large whales. You can try to develop the 'Sea Catching Type 2' fishing boat within two years."

Two years?

Tian Guang was surprised. This was too urgent. Doubling the materials used for shipbuilding means that the workload is not as simple as doubled, but three to four times! In order to maintain the stability of ship navigation, the structural design of the internal cabin also requires a large amount of data calculations. Therefore, the larger the ship, the harder it is to build, which is the axiom of the shipbuilding industry.

"Then it will take about three years, and it's best not to exceed four years! The company will also find ways to recruit more people and craftsmen, including talents in ship design... Uncle Guang, you can build the "Sea Transportation Type" from scratch in just two years, which means that in the face of greater challenges, you can do better than you imagined!"

Seeing that he was a little embarrassed, Zhou Ming cheered him up.

Tian Guang nodded, and a sense of firm confidence appeared on his face.

"here we go!"

"I let the water go, I let the water go!"
Chapter completed!