Chapter 173 Triumph (please vote!)

…

Li Cun led his army to the south this time, mainly to destroy the Li Dynasty and Champa City, kill the chickens as a warning to the monkeys, pacify the south, and establish a safe maritime trade route.

Nowadays, as long as you have passed the Angkor Dynasty, Dingnan Port, Annan Port, Qiongzhou Port, Guangzhou Port, Quanzhou Port, Liuqiu Port, Wenzhou Port, Mingzhou Port, Hangzhou Port, Xiuzhou Port and Jiangyin Port, they are all the best in the world.

A first-class port with complete facilities and everything you need.

The key is, there are no pirates in Li Cun's territory yet.

It can be said that Li Cun's territory has the best trade environment in the world.

Moreover, because Li Cun divided the long coastline into short sections, the next port could be reached every other day's sailing.

This not only greatly enhanced the safety and convenience of maritime trade within Li Cun's territory, but also provided a safe and convenient guarantee for Huben Army's own shipping.

In addition to strengthening the construction of the port, Li Cun is also vigorously developing his own sea-going ships.

In fact, Li Cun had already started his own plan to build a treasure ship.

This plan had already been implemented as early as when Li Cun had just obtained Liu Qiu.

——Half of the first batch of people Li Cun sent to Liuqiu were actually prepared to build a treasure ship.

But before building a ship, you need to build a shipyard first.

In addition, the wood needed for shipbuilding needs to be seasoned.

——The key to successful shipbuilding is to use fully dry wood that has been stored for several years and the moisture content has dropped below 20%. The ideal situation is to use dry wood to build the ship slowly and let the frame and shell of the ship dry naturally.

, Timber is usually cut and stored in winter to keep it dry. This kind of wood is usually not dry for two or three years, and if the local environment is relatively humid and the temperature is not high, it will take more time.

Okay, so it may take three to six years to build a ship.

However, there are no absolutes. Even if you are in a hurry, you can actually build a ship in six months.

——In this case, only wood that is not dry enough or has a lower dry quality can be used to build ships.

However, a ship built with unseasoned wood may rot in a few years, the strength of the wood joints will gradually decrease, the ship's frame and wood will loosen, and eventually the ship will be flooded and sink.

In addition, Li Cun provided the craftsmen with a drying technology.

This method requires temperature control and very high skills and experience in all aspects, otherwise it will be very easy to crack. Once the wood cracks, it will be impossible to make a watertight cabin.

So it's best to dry it in the shade.

If he had time, Li Cun would definitely want the best.

But how could Li Cun have time to wait three to six years before letting the ship go to sea?

Therefore, Li Cun asked Tian Zhuang, the general person in charge of building treasure ships, to dry a large amount of shipbuilding materials in the shade, and at the same time sacrifice some of the materials to use wood that was not dry enough or of inferior dry quality to build a batch of treasure ships first, and then replace them with treasure ships of good quality later.

As for these treasure ships that will be eliminated in the future, you can try to find someone to take advantage of and sell them.

After two years of construction, the first batch of one hundred treasure ships have been launched and are ready for use.

Among the hundred treasure ships, the largest one is forty-four feet long and eighteen feet wide. Moreover, unlike other treasure ships, this treasure ship has a pointed bottom - other treasure ships are all flat-bottomed sand ships.

type.

A sharp-bottomed ship has more underwater parts. Take this sharp-bottomed treasure ship as an example. Its draft can reach seven meters, so the underwater area can be used to stabilize the hull. Therefore, the pointed-bottomed ship is more suitable for traveling on the sea, but due to this

Bringing installation and distribution is much more troublesome than a flat-bottomed boat.

Large flat-bottomed boats can still sail across the ocean, but flat-bottomed boats have a shallow draft. Take the flat-bottomed treasure boats that were launched together with this pointed-bottomed treasure ship as an example. Their drafts are only four to five meters.

For safety reasons, these flat-bottomed treasure ships are best sailed on ocean voyages when the weather is calm.

It is worth mentioning that there is a theory that the treasure ships used by Zheng He on his voyages to the West were flat-bottomed.

Li Yuanzhen, an old shipping worker who worked in the Dada Shipping Company of Zhang Jian, an industrialist in the late Qing Dynasty, once said that there was a large flat-bottomed wooden ship about the same width as a treasure ship that was specially used to go to sea. They called this kind of ship "Song with the Wind"

”.

Compared with pointed-bottomed boats, large flat-bottomed boats have many advantages - they are relatively simple to make, can carry more cargo, have shallow drafts, can travel in deep and shallow water, have low resistance at sea, are fast, and can travel up to eight meters.

Face wind.

These characteristics are very consistent with the natural conditions for building treasure ships in Nanjing.

The main reason why Li Cun built a flat-bottomed treasure ship was to save trouble, be fast, and have a large transport capacity.

Another thing is that there are many ports in Li Cun. Basically, if there are no delays, you can travel from one port to the next in one day. You can try to choose good weather for sailing. In bad weather, just enter the port to take shelter.

.

——This is how Li Cun came when he first went south.

When these one hundred treasure ships arrived at Dingnan Port, the envoys from the Khmer, Dali, Queen's Kingdom, Bagan, Dharabodi, Java, Srivijaya, Siam and other countries had not yet left.

——It was Li Cun who deliberately left them behind to let them see Li Cun's treasure ship to scare them so that their country would not impulsively cause trouble for Li Cun.

For this purpose, when the treasure ship arrived, Li Cun led a group of envoys to Dingnan Port. He said that he had prepared some return gifts for them and asked them to follow him to the port to pick them up, and then they could leave.

When the envoys from various countries saw a hundred treasure ships approaching from afar, they were all shocked to the extreme. It was as if people in later generations who had never seen an aircraft carrier suddenly saw an aircraft carrier, and they saw it all at once.

One hundred aircraft carriers.

The son of Suryavarman II could not help but chatter non-stop.

Liu Xuan quickly translated for Li Cun: "The Commander-in-Chief, the Khmer Prince said, it's incredible that there are such huge ships in the world..."

And this shock reached its limit when the treasure ship arrived at the port.

——Only when people stand under the treasure ship that looks like a hill can they truly experience the shock that comes from the bottom of their hearts.

Soon, Tian Zhuang got off the pointed-bottomed treasure ship.

After getting off the ship, Tian Zhuang immediately led a group of generals from the East China Sea Navy who were driving the treasure ship to Li Cun. They all worshiped: "I pay my respects to the Governor!"

The Tian family where Tian Zhuang lives is not actually a real aristocratic family, it can only be regarded as a wealthy family.

To put it bluntly, the Tian family is a wealthy businessman who has been building ships for generations, not a noble family.

By Tian Zhuang's generation, the Tian family's shipbuilding technology can be said to be the best in the world.

Among them, Tian Zhuang's shipbuilding skills are the highest. In the words of stewards and craftsmen from other shipyards, Tian Zhuang is a genius in shipbuilding. When he was about thirty years old, his shipbuilding skills were second to none.

.

However, Tian Zhuang has never been proud of his shipbuilding skills, and he doesn't even like money.

——Perhaps due to the influence of being a scholar, farmer, industrialist, and merchant, Tian Zhuang likes to be an official very much. To describe it in two words, Tian Zhuang is an "official fan".

But Tian Zhuang was forced by his father to learn shipbuilding technology in the shipyard since he was a child. He had been dealing with shipbuilding all his life and had no chance to study the Four Books and Five Classics, let alone go to Imperial College and take the imperial examination.

Later, Tian Zhuang passed on his dream to Tian Mao and his brothers, hoping that one of them would become an official.

Who would have thought that Tian Zhuang finally sent Tian Mao and the others to study in Taixue, but because the Tian family had no official background or connections, none of them could fill the official position.

Just when Tian Zhuang thought that there would be no official in the Tian family, Li Cun suddenly appeared.

This allowed Tian Zhuang to see an opportunity for the Tian family to become officials.

Therefore, Tian Zhuang dug out the door and sent his only daughter Tian Jing to Li Cun's harem, hoping that Li Cun would give an official position to one of Tian Mao and his brothers for Tian Jing's sake.

However, what Tian Zhuang never expected was that in the end Li Cun actually made him a high official because of his shipbuilding skills, which he did not like.

All of this made Tian Zhuang feel like he was in a dream.

After Tian Zhuang came to his senses, he decisively led the Tian family to vote for Li Cun, and personally helped Li Cun supervise the construction of warships.

At that time, all the shipyards in Li Cun's territory, whether official or private, were building warships for Li Cun.

Tian Zhuang had to travel to many places every day to check the progress and quality of the warships, often traveling at starry nights.

But Tian Zhuang didn't feel tired at all.

With Tian Zhuang's efforts, Li Cun obtained hundreds of warships, many of which were five-tooth warships that Tian Zhuang restored based on ancient books.

In addition, Li Cun captured the gang boats, horse boats, seat boats and other ships at that time.

Li Cun acquired thousands of large ships and countless small ones.

This allowed the Huben navy to easily crush the Song navy, which had long been abandoned, and helped Li Cun gain enough development time.

Tian Zhuang's big gamble and Tian Zhuang's hard work got the rewards they deserved.

Although Li Cun did not reform the system in Jianyuan, he had already made Tian Zhuang the Minister of the Ministry of Industry, making Tian Zhuang one of the six Ministers together with Qian Zai, He Shi and others.

Qian Zai came from the Qian family, the first aristocratic family in Zhejiang and Zhejiang, and his ancestors were emperors. He Shi's ancestor He Zhizhang, together with Zhang Ruoxu, Zhang Xu, and Bao Rong, were called the "Four Scholars of Wuzhong"; together with Li Bai and Li Shizhi, they were called "Yin"

"Eight Immortals"; and together with Chen Zi'ang, Lu Zangyong, Song Zhiwen, Wang Shi, Bi Gou, Li Bai, Meng Haoran, Wang Wei and Sima Chengzhen, they are called "Ten Friends of the Immortal Sect".

Being able to stand shoulder to shoulder with the heads of the Qian and He families made Tian Zhuang extremely grateful to Li Cun, and he then tried his best to build ships for Li Cun.

Let's put it this way, if you ask who has gone to Liuqiu the most in the past two years, absolutely no one can compare with Tian Zhuang, and Tian Zhuang sometimes stays at Liuqiu for three to five months at a time.

If Li Cun hadn't asked Tian Zhuang to build a very large shipyard in Qiongzhou later, Tian Zhuang might have stayed rooted in Liuqiu to build treasure ships for Li Cun.

Undoubtedly, Tian Zhuang was the greatest contributor to the creation of the treasure ship.

Seeing that Tian Zhuang was no longer as obese as he was two years ago and had become much leaner, Li Cun knew that Tian Zhuang must have suffered a lot in the past two years.
To be continued...