I want to be emperor

The successful trial voyage of the Zheng He caused a huge sensation in Guangzhou, and after the news of the successful trial voyage of the Zheng He was published in the Da Chu Di Bao, it also aroused a wave of heated discussions on steamships in China. .

Relatively speaking, it is smaller than the discussion on trains, but the overall heated discussion is still very large, and many people are paying attention.

In addition to the comparison of the navy and the shipping industry, many local governments are also comparable.

Even compared to trains, some local governments are more steamships.

These places are basically places with rivers and lakes that can provide shipping. If the terrain of the place is not good, there are many mountains that lead to high railway construction costs, and there is no hope of railway construction in a short period of time, these places It will be more of a steamship.

For example, Guangdong, Guangxi, Thang Long-Yunnan, Fujian, Jiangxi, Sichuan, etc. have poor terrain, and large-scale construction of railways, especially in provinces where it is difficult to get out of the province, is very difficult for steam ships.

They hoped to solve the problem of long-distance transportation through the convenience of steam ships.

In addition to these provincial-level local governments, there are actually a large number of county-level local governments, and they also operate steam ships.

The railway still has relatively large limitations in a short period of time. The huge investment in the railway is destined to be a long process. According to the current construction strategy finalized by the high-level empire, the economically developed areas are given priority, and the plains Terrain priority, north-south and east-west strategic arteries priority.

This means that in the next ten or even 20 years, it will still be impossible for many places in the country to have trains. Even if a province already has a railway, it is impossible for the railway line to reach every prefecture and every county.

And the prefectures and counties in these places need to communicate with the outside world, need convenient transportation, and how to develop the economy?
Land transportation still has to rely on horse-drawn carriages in a short period of time, but the transportation volume of horse-drawn carriages is small and the cost is high. Therefore, if there are rivers available, then river transportation becomes the best solution.

They also did this in the past.

However, in the past, sailing boats were used. It was okay to go downstream, but it was very troublesome to go upstream. It was not impossible to go, but the speed was slow and the cost was high, which was very troublesome.

But now that steam ships have been developed, the problem of countercurrent in river transportation will be directly solved.

Inland waterway transport has great prospects.

For this reason, some local governments with a keen sense of smell are already thinking about introducing steam ships, building docks for steam ships to berth, and building some infrastructure facilities such as coal warehouses to facilitate the use of steam ships, so as to vigorously develop steam shipping.

As long as the transportation is improved, many special products in these places can be transported to the outside world through cheap steam shipping, and at the same time, cheap industrial raw materials or industrial products can be brought from the outside world.

These will have a huge effect on the development of the local economy and the improvement of people's livelihood.

Many local governments operate steamships, and the top officials of the empire are no exception.

In late April, just after Luo Zhixue received the news of the successful sea trial of the steam ship reported by Guangzhou, he had already summoned important ministers to discuss corresponding countermeasures. …

What countermeasure?
Naturally, how to make better use of steam ships to contribute to the empire's economy and the people's livelihood of the empire.

At the same time, it is also necessary to balance the competition with the development of the railway, and try to be complementary rather than competitive.

In early May, after several council meetings, the empire officially issued a series of policies to support and encourage the development of the shipping industry.

Including certain tax incentives for steamship manufacturers and certain tax incentives for steam shipping companies, it will reduce the production and operating costs of steamships as much as possible, and accelerate the popularization of steamships.

Some financial support for local government departments, such as providing higher-level financial support subsidies for local government offices to build new wharves, coal warehouses, etc.

In addition to the many support policies, the high-level empire also issued instructions to the railway company, shipping companies, and local government offices in various provinces, requiring related companies and local government offices to balance the competition between trains and ships, avoid direct competition as much as possible, and try to be as effective as possible. complementary.

At the same time, we must avoid blind investment and spend money wisely!

According to this principle, if some economies are not large in size, and the cost of building railways is relatively high, and there are rivers connecting them, the construction of railways should be postponed and the development of steam shipping should be given priority.

At the same time, in the selection of railway lines, direct competition with the inland waterway shipping industry should also be avoided.

When it is required to carry out strategic planning for new railway lines and shipping lines, it is necessary to report information in a timely manner, understand each other, and avoid potential competitive conflicts.

Now the overall national power of the empire is limited, so it cannot be wasted by fooling around.

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With the issuance of a series of policies, the Guangzhou Shipyard was full of laughter. They were the first in the country to put a high-pressure steam engine on a ship and successfully tested it.

Even after the successful experiment of the Zheng He, they worked overtime to design a variety of inland steamships, including small steamships, ferry steamships, long-distance passenger ships, ordinary bulk cargo ships, and special ore ships. Transport ships, etc., have a displacement ranging from tens of tons to hundreds of tons.

And took advantage of the opportunity to sign the first batch of orders for steam ships with Liuhe Shipping Company. After seeing the trial voyage of the Zheng He, Liu Jiaquan bought the Zheng He ship and refitted it on the same day, mainly to improve passenger transportation conditions and prepare It is used to carry out passenger and cargo flights on the Pearl River Basin.

Of course, more of them are used for exploratory experiments to train technical talents such as steamship captains and maintenance personnel, and also to accumulate various experiences in operating steamships.

In addition to the Zheng He, Liu Jiaquan also signed a batch of orders with Guangzhou Shipyard to order a total of fifteen steam ships, with a total displacement of more than 600 tons, including a large inland shallow water ship with a displacement of more than 800 tons. ship.

This is only the first batch of orders. At the same time, they also signed the second batch of priority orders. The number of the second batch of intentional orders reached 23 ships, with a total displacement of more than [-] tons, including several larger tonnage offshore steam ships.

These ships are not unified, there are various types of ships, most of them are shallow-water inland river ships with a displacement of two to three hundred tons for both passenger and cargo, and large offshore steamers with a displacement of thousands of tons. …

And the propulsion methods of these ships are actually different... After all, the construction time span of these dozens of ships will be very long, and the early few ships will adopt the method of double-sided paddle wheels. If the propulsion method is good, then it will be changed to the propeller propulsion method.

However, whether it is propulsion by paddle wheel or propeller, it still has sails, at least the steam ships built in the early stage will carry sails.

This is mainly to provide an insurance for the high-pressure steam engine whose technology is not yet stable... God knows when the steam engine will break down, and when sailing on the sea or long-distance voyages, you can't lose power just because the steam engine is broken. !
Unpowered ships are very prone to various accidents.

For the sake of safety, there must be two sets of power, so all sails with dual power are used.

In addition to safety guarantees, continuing to use sails is also to reduce operating costs. Coal is still quite expensive these days, and Liuhe Shipping Company must take coal costs into account!
So when sailing, save coal if you can.

Besides, when the wind is smooth and the water is smooth, sailing will not be much slower than pure steam engine power sailing, and even faster in many cases...

In addition, the use of sails to compress the running time of the steam engine, in addition to reducing the cost of coal use, can also prevent the steam engine from running at high pressure for a long time... The quality of high-pressure steam engines these days is not very reliable. It’s okay if you continue to run for a day or two However, if it continues to run for five or six days, the probability of failure is very high. If it continues to run for more than ten days?Hehe, I'll show you the explosion in minutes!
In short, in the instruction manual given by Guangzhou Machinery Company, all models of their high-pressure steam engines warn users not to run the steam engine continuously for more than 24 hours without stopping, otherwise there will be a great risk of failure.

Liuhe Shipping Company has two batches of orders, and the tonnage of the ships ordered has reached [-] tons, which shows its huge ambitions!
Liu Jiaquan has great ambitions. He wants to build a regular route along the mainland of the empire, using large steam passenger ships of thousands of tons to operate, from Liaohekou in the north to Tianjin, and then to Shanghai, Ningbo, Fuzhou, and Guangzhou.

There will also be a Yangtze River flight from Shanghai to Hantian on the way.

The combined operation of a coastal route and a Yangtze River route will allow passengers along the route to have a more convenient and faster travel experience.

Regardless of monsoon or not, you can go sailing every month of the twelve months of the year!

The Liu family has made up their minds to eat the first morsel of the steamship, so they will not hesitate to spend huge sums of money to buy the steamship at the first time, preparing to build two major routes in one go, and at the same time, preparing to deeply cultivate the Pearl River Basin various short-haul routes.

In the future, if the development on the Yangtze River is good, he will increase investment in the Yangtze River route, and go deep into the tributaries of the Yangtze River, such as the Xiangjiang River, the Ganjiang River, and the Han River. In the future, he will even venture into the upper reaches of the Yangtze River. It is the Sichuan River route in the Sichuan section.

The Liu family was ambitious and courageous, and dared to put out huge and huge investments to suppress the steamship at the first time.

You must know that steam ships these days are actually not cheap... After all, high-pressure steam engines are quite expensive, and the purchase cost of these dozens of steam ships alone is very high. …

What's more, shipping this thing requires not only a ship, but also people... Sailing a sailing ship is completely different from driving a steamer, and the training of personnel alone costs a lot of money.

Then maintaining the steamship is also troublesome. The steam engine is a delicate thing. Even if the shipyard and Guangzhou Machinery Company promise to provide a certain warranty and train technicians for free, the cost of manpower training for the shipping company itself is also high. huge.

Finally, we have to consider the issue of coal and fresh water supply along the way. Not every wharf in every place has sufficient coal for supply. Liuhe Shipping Company wants to engage in large-scale steam shipping, so the coal supply along the way cannot be counted on. There is coal locally...

It is best to repair the coal warehouse by yourself in the pre-determined city wharf, store enough coal, and avoid the ship sailing past, and then cannot return because the coal cannot be found.

This series of investments is not a small challenge for Liuhe Shipping Company.

The huge trust and huge orders of Liuhe Shipping Company also made Guangzhou Shipyard laugh from ear to ear!
The previous move of investing money in the research and development of the Zheng He steamship made them a great success!

Their Guangzhou Shipyard is going to eat the first fat of domestic steam ships!

And the most wonderful thing is that they will monopolize the new ship type of steam ship for quite a long time in the future.

Because they signed a strategic cooperation agreement with Guangzhou Machinery Co., Ltd., and made reservations by investing in cooperative research and development, and paying a deposit in advance.

They obtained the Guangzhou Machinery Company’s pre-purchase plan for a total of more than 100 high-pressure steam engines for ships and the subsequent three-year priority purchase rights...

Through this series of cooperation agreements, as long as they are willing, their Guangzhou Shipyard will be able to wrap up the high-pressure steam engines for civilian ships of Guangzhou Machinery Company in the next three years!
Three years is enough for them to swallow the first bite of the most delicious fat, and they have accumulated enough customers and market reputation, and established enough experience in building steamships, etc., to become other shipyards three years later. When they also obtained high-pressure steam engines and started building steam ships, their Guangzhou Shipyard had already had an absolute advantage in both hard power and soft power.

This agreement has made other shipyards jealous. Nowadays, the domestic demand for steam ships is so huge and the market is so hot... But the high-pressure steam engine, the core component of steam ships, can only be produced by Guangzhou Machinery Company. Production, and its production capacity in the next three years is basically covered by the Guangzhou Shipyard!
If you can't get involved in the steamship market within these three years, the day lily will be cold after three years.

How to do?
What else can I do? Anyway, Guangzhou Machinery Company has no choice. They signed a cooperative research and development agreement with Guangzhou Shipyard before... The Guangzhou Shipyard also paid for the research and development of the steam engine for ships, and it also paid for it. A lot of money.

For this thing, their Guangzhou Machinery Company has no way to bypass the Guangzhou Shipyard and supply it to other manufacturers in a short period of time.

After all, the production capacity is only so small, and the production capacity has been covered, so what else can be done. …

As for the expansion of production capacity, they are also doing it, but it will take time, and even if the output after the expansion of production capacity...in fact, there is a high probability that it will be bought by Guangzhou Shipyard with the priority purchase right.

In this regard, Guangzhou Machinery Company is also a little helpless. If it had been known earlier, it would not have played the trick of borrowing chickens to lay eggs... because they found that at first they thought that the R&D funds provided by Guangzhou Shipyard were chickens...

But now, actually, a bunch of technology for their high-pressure steam engine prototype machine is chicken...

After Guangzhou Machinery Company can't make a breakthrough, will other shipyards sit still?

Are you kidding me, these large domestic shipbuilders are not vegetarians, so if you don’t have a high-pressure steam engine, would it be useless?

It has not been developed before, and everyone has no use for it. Now that it has been developed, they will use it if Guangzhou Shipyard uses it.

Since it’s not enough to directly purchase high-pressure steam engines from Guangzhou Machinery Company, let’s find another way... For example, we can cooperate with Guangzhou Machinery Company to set up a factory. What, and then produce high-pressure steam engines for ships in the new company.

In this way, the priority purchase right of Guangzhou Shipyard can be bypassed.

What did you say that Guangzhou Machinery Company attaches great importance to patents and does not adopt technology licensing easily?

As long as we get through these three or four years and get through the shameless pre-purchase rights contract of the Guangzhou Shipyard, then everything will be enlightened.

When the Guangzhou Machinery Company saw it, this was indeed a solution. Anyway, I must have made more money, and it would not violate the contract between myself and the Guangzhou Shipyard.

The most important thing is to be able to quickly seize the market for naval high-pressure steam engines and block the way for latecomers as much as possible.

It has been more than half a year since the Type 21 high-pressure steam engine was successfully developed. During this time, the competitors of Guangzhou Machinery Company have not been idle.

At the end of last year, Tianjin Machinery Company shouted that it would never stop unless it produced high-pressure steam!

Although Dangtu Machinery Company did not shout any slogans, they acted more decisively and resolutely. They directly sold many non-core assets, borrowed tens of thousands of Chu Yuan from the bank, and used the money to recruit Hundreds of engineers have been recruited, and a large number of top engineers have been recruited, and a large number of test equipment has been purchased.

Not for anything else, just to overcome a series of technical difficulties of high-pressure steam engines in a short period of time, and at the same time have to bypass the patent barriers that Guangzhou Machinery Company has established.

The Guangzhou Machinery Company has already applied for patents for a series of high-pressure steam engine technologies developed by themselves, and the empire still attaches great importance to the patent system.

Hastily infringe on other people's patents, even if everyone is a government-run enterprise, they will not be able to afford it.

Therefore, whether it is Tianjin Machinery Company or Dangtu Machinery Company, if they want to develop their own high-pressure steam engine, they cannot directly follow the exclusive patent of Guangzhou Machinery Company, and have to find another way to bypass the patent.

The three major steam engine manufacturers in the empire rose up because they obtained the general authorization for low-pressure steam engines at the same time, and quickly grew into the three major steam engine manufacturers in the empire. Later, although dozens of manufacturers also obtained general patents for steam engines and entered the industry, none of them Can keep up with the pace of these three manufacturers. …

Now the high-pressure steam engine developed by Guangzhou Machinery Company first, it can be imagined the huge pressure brought to Tianjin Machinery Company and Dangtu Machinery Company.

Now these two companies are trying their best to break through the high-pressure steam engine technology.

The technology research and development of these two steam manufacturers has also received the support of many domestic shipping companies, and even the two major armed trading companies and the navy.

Although other shipping companies can also obtain high-pressure steam engines by cooperating with Guangzhou Machinery Company to set up factories and obtain a limited number of technical authorizations, the two major armed trading companies and the navy use military shipboard steam engines, which are themselves Not within the limits.

So they can all get high pressure steam engines from Guangzhou Machinery Company.

But there is a saying that all eggs should not be put in the same basket. They don’t want to see that there is only one manufacturer in China that can produce high-pressure steam engines, and they also insist on complete authorization of technology, and do not conduct complete technical authorization to the outside world at all.

Therefore, it is understandable that they want to support other high-pressure steam engine manufacturers.

Therefore, Tianjin and Dangtu, the two machinery companies, have successively received support from these companies or institutions.

Now I am immersed in the research and development of high-pressure steam engines, but when it will be available is still unknown. If I am lucky, it may only be a few months, and if I am not lucky, it may take several years.

But it can be done anyway. After all, Guangzhou Machinery Company has already figured out the technical route for them. What they have to do now is not to start from scratch, but to figure out how to bypass a series of exclusive products of Guangzhou Machinery Company. It's just a patent.

If patents are not considered, they are actually able to mass produce high-pressure steam engines on a large scale now... After all, the production of this thing is not the credit of Guangzhou Machinery Company itself... It is based on the overall basic technology of the Great Chu Empire.

The fact that Guangzhou Machinery Company can produce it actually means that other companies can also copy their technical route to produce high-pressure steam engines.

After all, many equipment and materials belong to other companies, such as the large advanced high-precision boring machine of Hantian Machinery Company and a series of other high-speed machine tools, the advanced materials of several smelting enterprises, and the precision spare parts produced by some special enterprises.

The two machinery companies Tianjin and Dangtu can actually produce directly as long as they buy the equipment and purchase the parts.

The problem is infringement!

Just when there was a turmoil in the domestic industry due to steam ships, accompanied by fierce competition, the Songjiang Railway was officially opened to traffic as scheduled.

On June 22, 28 of Chengshun, after more than a year and a half of construction, the Songjiang Railway was officially completed and opened to traffic.

On the day of opening to traffic, more than ten passenger carriages pulled by a 21-type locomotive, carrying more than 700 early adopters, traveled all the way east from Shanghai County North Railway Station. The speed of the hour is advancing.

Not only the passengers in the car are constantly amazed, but also the people watching the excitement along the way are even more amazed!
The opening of the entire line of the Songjiang Railway means that the Great Chu Empire has also entered the era of trains. Even though there are only more than 30 kilometers of train railways in front of us, at another section of Shanghai North Railway Station, many workers have already begun intensive work on the Su-Song Railway. construction.

On the other side of Suzhou, there are also a large number of workers working on the construction. The Su-Song Railway, which is constructed in a double-headed manner, is expected to complete the basic project and open to traffic in the second half of next year.

At the same time, several other links of the Jiangnan Railway, such as the railway from Jinling City to Zhenjiang, and the railway from Jinling City to Dangtu Industrial Zone, have also started construction.

If all goes well, the section of the railway from Zhenjiang to Suzhou will also start construction in sections next year.

The Jiangnan Railway is expected to open to traffic within three to four years.

After the Songjiang Railway was opened to traffic on June 28, the refitted Zheng He was officially put into commercial operation in the Pearl River on July [-].

The new era of the Great Chu Empire has arrived!