Chapter 1468 Northern Route (1)

For Qu Yutong, this kind of idle position does not cost the yamen a coin. It is just a name. Even if something happens in the future, he can easily get out of it. It is simply a matter of his words. If Shi Diwen has not taken the initiative recently

Mentioning the new business in Liaodong to myself, I might as well find some opportunities to make a fortune in Liaodong through the He brothers. If not, I would just use this channel to understand the latest trends of Haihan.

You can gain something.

Qu Yutong was very confident in He Xiao's ability to handle this kind of thing, so he gave the task of drafting official documents directly to He Xiao. He was not worried that He Xiao would do anything beyond the rules behind his back.

He Xiao's personal relationship with the senior officials of Haihan was far from comparable to his. Even if there was anything wrong, the people of Haihan would definitely tell him in advance and would not allow He Xiao to mess around.

He Xiao came out of Qu Yutong's study, called He Li who had been waiting outside, and then left the magistrate's office. He originally asked He Li to come over because he thought that if Qu Yutong wanted to talk to He Li face to face, he would at least have to

He was prepared, but he never thought that Qu Yutong would take this matter very seriously and agreed immediately without even mentioning to meet He Li. In this way, He Xiao saved a lot of trouble and did not have to worry about it.

He slowly persuaded Qu Yutong to accept his plan. In a few days, Haihan will count and inspect the carrier's ships, and He Li is working with four companies to gather a batch of ships to run the northern route. There are still many of them in these days.

Something to be busy with.

After getting the protective umbrella from Qu Yutong, He Li quickly notified the other three partners and asked them to seize the time to gather the sailboats and sailors under their respective names. Three days later, they set off to Zhoushan Dinghai Port for Haihan Shipping.

Officials from the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Commerce inspected.

These maritime merchants, including He Li, usually do offshore business, and their sailing ships mainly operate in the Yangtze River Estuary and Hangzhou Bay. However, because this business came in a hurry, each company has a few ships still there.

Since I haven't come back from the outside, I can only get together a dozen boats to go to Zhoushan for the time being. However, He Li had asked before when he was in Zhoushan. This inspection is actually only symbolic. It mainly depends on the people under the carrier.

How good the quality of the ships is, it is not necessary to drag all the ships to Zhoushan.

There was naturally room for maneuver. After discussion, He Li and others specially selected a few sailboats with the best condition, paired them with a group of sailors with the most experience in sailing, and sent them to Zhoushan for inspection. He Li

Li was extra thoughtful and brought along the yamen appointment procedures that He Xiao had just completed to show off his fresh official umbrella.

Although the position in the appointment letter is just a casual position responsible for purchasing supplies, with this thing, He Li has obtained a temporary public official status. It can also have a lot of convenience when dealing with local people when going to other places. At the same time, he can

Provide a legal cover for the fleet under his command.

Just as He Li expected, this little trick worked. Their fleet passed Haihan's inspection smoothly, and the other party expressed his unabashed disapproval of He Li's application for public office status specifically for this purpose.

He Li also had a deeper understanding of a point his brother once told him, that is, compared with ordinary businessmen, the Haihan people were more willing to deal with Ming officials or businessmen backed by officials, because they believed that this

You can make fuller use of the power held by Ming officials to protect your own business. And once your interests are tied to Ming officials, Haihan's own security will also be greatly increased.

He Li even had a little doubt whether his brother had planned this step long ago, so when he returned to Ningbo the day before yesterday, his brother could show such a confident and calm attitude. And the steps after that made He Li even more...

I feel that my brother's planning skills are far superior to mine. Even without coming to Zhoushan in person, I have already clearly calculated the attitudes and reactions of all parties.

After a day and a half of evaluation, the fleet of He Li and others received identification plates and carrier-specific flags issued by Haihan, so that they can dock at ports controlled by Haihan in the future.

The identity of the sailors will be verified at the time. Then the crew and sailors will undergo three days of training at Dinghai Port. It is said that the main content is to teach them how to handle and respond to various maritime emergencies, as well as some knowledge of cargo storage.

Although Haihan's training tutorial did not require the ship owner to be present, He Li, out of careful consideration, stayed with three other companions and received the training together with the crew. During this process

, He Li also truly realized that Haihan pursued meticulous and accurate work style in all matters, and he understood better why Haihan could dominate the southern seaboard in just a few years.

According to the training arrangement, all crew members, including the captain, must learn navigation knowledge, ship freight, ocean shipping business, marine meteorology, shipping regulations, medical first aid, carpentry and many other disciplines during this short training period.

It is obviously impossible to systematically learn this knowledge in such a short period of time, and we can only selectively select some more practical contents to teach.

Regarding these things, He Li's crew and sailors are not completely ignorant, but navigation knowledge is often passed down orally from generation to generation by sailors and can only be mastered after practicing. They will not classify all knowledge like Haihan.

It was well organized, and even the ropes had standardized knotting methods, which was an eye-opener for He Li and others.

After the first day of class, He Li went to the Haihan instructor who was responsible for training sailors and asked him how long he would need to receive training if he wanted to acquire this complete set of navigation knowledge.

The instructor did not hide it from him and told him the answer directly: "If we follow the standards of our shipping department, it will take at least one year to become a qualified sailor. The first two months will be full-time study, and the next ten months will be spent on different ships.

Job internship. For higher-level positions such as captain, first mate, and second mate, it will be at least a two-year course. The requirements for working in the shipping department are much stricter than those for carriers like you, but in terms of the quality of the crew, I

Haihan is indeed the only one in the world! Even those people who sailed thousands of miles from the west to come to the South China Sea are far less capable than my Haihan crew."

He Li was secretly stunned when he heard that the crew training period was relatively long. It was not a big deal. Newcomers on ships such as Daming often had to be on board for one or two years before they could start their training. However, with Haihan's meticulous training method of different disciplines, the cost was very high.

The scale is far beyond comparison with the traditional model. Moreover, many of the things these sailors have learned are unique skills that the old sea dogs keep secret and will only pass on to their successors, but Haihan seems eager to learn these skills.

The more people there are, the better.

Although this may be deliberate bragging by the other party, the fact that Haihan was able to advance from the South China Sea along the Ming coastline to Liaodong fully illustrates the extent of its maritime shipping capabilities. Even if it teaches them things like outsiders, it still has

Many of them are new things that He Li has never heard of before, and judging from the other party's confident attitude, it seems that he is not worried at all that letting Daming learn these valuable navigation knowledge will pose some kind of threat to himself. This is either stupid or

He has such an attitude because he has the confidence to be much stronger than his competitors, and based on what he knows about Haihan's situation, it is obviously impossible to be the former.

During the training, He Li also learned that his fleet would soon get its first mission, transporting a batch of grain and spring and summer military uniforms to Liaodong. In order to ensure that their ship was running the Liaodong route for the first time.

In order to prevent the team from getting lost along the way, they will set off with the military's transport fleet. To be considerate of them, a dedicated person will be arranged to lead the way on the first trip. However, such treatment may not be available on the return trip.

Of course, this will not trouble He Li's fleet. No matter how incompetent the crew is or lacks experience in ocean navigation, at least they can still distinguish between north and south. As long as they go south along the coastline, they will return to Ningbo sooner or later.

During the training, He Li also noticed a phenomenon, that is, large merchants such as Zhenguo Shipping Company and Zhan's Shipping Company did not send anyone to participate in crew training. At first, he thought these companies were just showing off their big names, but later he found out that it was actually

Almost all of these captain-level backbones under the large merchants grew up under the Haihan training system. Their familiarity with the shipping business is no less than that of the instructors who trained He Li and others, so naturally they do not need to

Waste time learning something you already know.

Three days later, the sailor training course ended, and the relationship between the various carriers seemed to have become much more harmonious after these days of joint learning. However, He Li could see clearly that this was not because of being friendly to make money or anything like that.

The reason is that it is due to the lack of competition. Among the several carriers selected by Haihan for the northern route, except for Zhenguo Shipping, which was promoted from the waiting list by lottery, the other several carriers are similar in strength and qualifications to He Li and his group.

, without the assistance of sufficiently outstanding professional talents, its operational capabilities would simply not be able to handle the large number of freight tasks thrown out by the government.

Since there are too many tasks to complete, the competitive atmosphere among these carriers has been reduced a lot, and everyone can maintain the superficial peace with peace of mind, and there is no need to rush to grab the meat from the bowl of their peers.

However, He Li did not relax his vigilance because of this. He remembered his brother's instructions before he set off. Since he did not have any advantage in intelligence information, it meant that the information he knew about Liaodong was very difficult for other competitors.

It is possible that everyone knows it, and even knows it in more detail than he does. He Li is probably not the only one who is interested in Liaodong, so if you want to seek opportunities to make a fortune in Liaodong, you will still face a certain amount of competition.

Pressure. Maybe these carriers running the northern route have put their hopes of profit in the Liaodong direction.

Compared with other carriers, He Li can be said to have no obvious advantages at all, and his so-called status as a government official is actually nothing in front of these carriers with different backgrounds. He Li believes that he is currently the only one who can rely on

Yes, probably because there is such a powerful strategist like He Xiao behind him, but He Xiao's identity cannot leave Ningbo casually. After he goes to Liaodong, everything will still have to be played by ear.

For this first errand, He Li didn't trust his three partners to lead the team. He decided to make a trip in person to see if the actual situation in Liaodong was worth throwing money into. He Li simply went to Ningbo

He didn't even want to go back, so he sent his men home to get their luggage, and then waited on Zhoushan Island for Haihan to arrange the mission to go north.

By the end of April, the transport fleet affiliated to the Haihan military completed its assembly at Dinghai Port in Zhoushan and began loading goods to the ship. The tasks of private carriers such as He Li are different, such as weapons and ammunition, etc.

The Haihan military is responsible for transporting the equipment itself, which is also due to safety considerations.

Even though he had obtained the qualifications of a partner, He Li still did not enter the military port to watch the loading process of these weapons and ammunition up close. He could only watch from a distance, envying the Haihan Navy's huge Yugong class.

Heavy transport sailboat. The cargo capacity of one of his ships is about three and a half. If the ships under his command can have such transportation efficiency, the benefits of using them to run ocean routes will be considerable.

He Li was more discerning and inquired with officials from the Ministry of Shipping, and finally heard good news. The Yugong-class heavy-duty sailing ship was not only installed in the military, but also had a civilian version. Compared with the military version, it was only

There are no heavy weapons and equipment on the ship for self-defense, and the hull's anti-strike standard is slightly lower, but the cargo capacity is almost the same. However, when He Li excitedly asked how to buy this civilian version of the sailboat, he was slapped in the face.

A basin of cold water - this kind of sailboat can currently only be built in Hainan Island, and the shipbuilding order has been scheduled for two years, and its cost is also very high, far exceeding the Daming sailboat of the same tonnage.

In order to save labor and materials, Haihan's shipyard no longer accepts small orders for one or two ships of this type of ship. It has to order at least four ships, and 80% of the payment must be paid in one go, and the cost is He Li

The number is unaffordable. Currently, in Zhejiang and the northern seas, only a few well-known maritime merchants own such heavy-duty sailing vessels. If a maritime merchant like He Li wants to use such a heavy-duty sailing vessel, he must

If you want to buy a second-hand boat from someone else, you have to pool money together to place a deposit and wait for a schedule.

He Li knew that neither of these options was practical, so he could only give up his delusions and continue to use the ship on hand honestly. On April 28, He Li also received a notice from the Ministry of Shipping, and from that day on he began to report to his subordinates.

Shipment of goods on board.
Chapter completed!