Chapter 242: The Great Shipbuilding

In early February, the first batch of immigrants arrived at the lower reaches of the Mekong River.

Ruan Shou was one of the immigrants—his family numbered six in all: besides himself, there were his wife and four sons.

Both his parents and his wife's parents had died in the Zheng–Nguyen War.

He and his wife had fled into the mountains and survived only that way.

When the Zheng army withdrew and they returned home, their house had become a pile of rubble and their farmland lay entirely barren.

Ruan Shou knew there was no way to make a living staying in his hometown, so he led his family north as refugees. At Yongxian Harbor he encountered the Company's recruiting officer, signed up on the spot, and after much traveling arrived here.

The moment he stepped off the Fujian junk, to be honest, the scene before his eyes was still quite different from what Ruan Shou had imagined.

Water Chenla was everywhere mangroves and swamps—compared to a rice paradise, it looked more like a green hell.

But the Company's golden rice-stalk flag visible everywhere at the landing port, along with the imposing Nan'ao soldiers, dispelled Ruan Shou's misgivings.

No matter how one looked at it, the jungle swamp before him was still flat land—with a bit of management, it could be cultivated, which was still better than being a wandering refugee in the mountains of Jiaozhi. After disembarking, he could not wait to grab a handful of soil and sniff it carefully—the gray-brown earth was mixed with the fragrance of paddy humus and fresh grass. He squeezed it hard between his fingers; this soil was so fertile it seemed it could squeeze out oil.

Ruan Shou clapped his hands in satisfaction and stood up—this land was indeed fertile, just as the recruiting officer had said.

He returned to the immigrant ranks and listened to the immigration official's address.

"………This area is the First Reclamation District. Within the district, the bao–jia system is implemented: one bao comprises ten jia, one jia comprises ten households, and households within a jia are mutually liable. I am your acting bao chief………"

The first batch of immigrants totaled three thousand people. The Company had carefully broken them up and dispersed them among the inner bao of the First Reclamation District.

The bao Ruan Shou was assigned to numbered just over three hundred people.

After the bao chief finished explaining Company discipline, he began distributing rations and farm tools.

Each household received one hundred fifty jin of rice as rations, ten jin of salted fish, and two jin of salt. This was one quarter's worth of rations; the next quarter more would be issued. In addition, there were two hundred jin of Champa rice or floating rice seed.

The farm tools included hoes, sickles, machetes, plowshares, iron woks, and so on—a motley assortment, quite complete in variety, enough for people who had nothing to start a new life.

Of course, none of the above was given for free.

The "Immigrant Reclamation Cultivation Contract" spelled it out clearly: all Company gifts, including the boat fare, would in the future have to be repaid by the immigrants in grain output. The total debt came to four thousand jin, with an interest rate of 20‰.

During the first five years, all of an immigrant's output, aside from rations and seed, had to go first toward repaying the debt.

Calculated at twenty mu of land per household, under ideal circumstances an immigrant would finish paying off the debt in the sixth year.

Compared with Nan'ao, which encouraged Fujian and Guangdong commoners to immigrate to Dongning by giving out money and plow oxen, the chartered Company's immigration was like making a donkey earn money on its own to buy the millstone it worked at.

After clearing the debt, immigrants moved into the tenant-farmer stage, splitting output at 60% to the Company and 40% to the farmer.

In the tenant state, so long as one did not default on rent and committed no illegal acts, after serving twenty-five years as a tenant farmer one could obtain land title, needing only to pay the Company 40% of the grain as tax.

Among these were all sorts of detailed clauses—penalties that extended the term and rewards that shortened it were all stipulated in writing.

The "Immigrant Reclamation Cultivation Contract" was the painstaking product of Zheng Zhilong leading a group of accountants, calculating again and again, researching it out.

In truth it was a cruel exploitative trap, just like the carrot dangled before a donkey—actually obtaining land title was as hard as reaching the heavens. Even if one did obtain title, the tax rate was higher than the tax burden under Nan'ao's rule.

But compared with Ming landlords who collected fixed rent even in famine years, the Ming court squeezing the Liaodong levy to death, and Lord Zheng's army openly looting as it passed through, this exploitative trap actually seemed rather warm and tender by contrast.

With the help of the soldiers, the bao chief quickly finished distributing the rations and seed.

To Ruan Shou's surprise, because his family had many mouths and he looked honest and dependable, he was assigned the title of acting squad leader.

Over the following week, the three hundred-odd people, led by the bao chief, built warehouses and temporary huts.

Every day they rose at sunrise and rested at sunset—the days passed busily and fully.

At night, everyone was forced to stay in their own huts and was not permitted to go out.

Company soldiers patrolled the bao every night, reading aloud the "Reclamation Regulations" and the "Bao–Jia Mutual Liability Law."

Though the management was strict, Ruan Shou felt a long-missed sense of safety and order.

A week later, the bao chief led everyone again in building dwellings, digging main drainage ditches and field channels, draining the standing water from surrounding ponds, and establishing basic irrigation. They cleared shrubs and undergrowth from the plots, dried them in the sun, then burned them in a central pile, using the plant ash to fertilize the fields.

These tasks were done without distinction between yours and mine—the bao chief gathered everyone to work together. Houses were built household by household, ditches dug one by one—it was much faster than everyone working separately, and better planned as well.

Entering March, a heavy rain fell on the First Reclamation District. Taking advantage of the rain-softened soil, the bao chief led everyone in plowing and building field ridges.

At present the Company's plow oxen were insufficient—the whole bao had only five. When the oxen could not keep up, they had to rely on human muscle to plow. Fortunately the soil here was loose and soft, and the immigrants, sustained by their longing for a better future life, gritted their teeth and persevered.

Ruan Shou discovered that the bao chief not only managed more than three hundred people in perfect order, but was also extremely skilled at farming—for instance, before sowing, he would select fertile land for centralized seed soaking, germination, and seedling raising.

Nor were the immigrants' lives entirely without protection—for dangerous work, the bao chief would not send immigrants to risk their lives, and the reclamation district also had doctors who traveled between the various bao practicing medicine.

Several immigrants in the bao who had contracted malaria were cured by the doctors and snatched back their lives.

Entering April, rainfall gradually increased—the Mekong's rainy season was approaching, and the whole bao formally began transplanting rice seedlings.

Ruan Shou's family was allotted twenty mu of farmland. The whole family pitched in together and worked a full seven days before all the seedlings were planted.

When Ruan Shou, pounding his lower back, straightened up from the mud and water and looked at the unbroken expanse of green before him, his heart was full of pride.

Who would have thought that a few months ago, his family had still been living a life where each day might be their last?

And today, he was already tenant-farming twenty mu of farmland!

He had already calculated: these twenty mu of paddy fields could produce at least three thousand jin of rice grain per season, and the rations and seed he could keep came to roughly six hundred jin. If the family ate frugally, supplemented by sweet potatoes planted at the field edges and fish caught from the Mekong, he could save at least one hundred jin of grain.

With what he saved, he could buy ducks and raise them among the rice paddies—that would give him a sideline, and life would grow more and more comfortable.

Moreover, as a squad leader he was entitled to a debt reduction of two hundred jin of rice.

If he could be selected as a "Model Farming Household" within the bao, he could get another one hundred jin reduced.

At this rate, his transition from tenant farmer to self-cultivating landowner would come faster and faster.

Just thinking about it made him feel life had promise, filled his body with strength, and even the ten thousand times he had bent his back planting seedlings no longer ached.

According to Zheng Zhilong's plan, the first batch of Company immigrants should have numbered thirty to forty thousand people.

Yet in the end, the immigrants numbered only a little over twenty thousand.

This was because starting in the first month, Fujian had suffered a great drought—a disaster that linked directly with last year's severe dry spell.

The common people's grain reserves were exhausted, spring plowing was hopeless, and refugees fleeing famine and disaster were numerous.

The Nan'ao Government Affairs Hall immediately dispatched swift boats to issue instructions to the merchant fleet—to gather surplus grain at Hoi An harbor.

In February, all of Nan'ao's spare whale ships and Fujian junks went to Hoi An to buy grain, and did not stop until they had bought the Hoi An rice market completely empty, rice prices soared, and the common people were full of complaints—only ceasing when Lord Nguyen begged them repeatedly.

The food rations and seed grain for the chartered company's migrants were also purchased from Hoi An, and in the face of an urgent natural disaster, they could only be diverted.

In the fourth month, once the summer monsoon stabilized, the grain ships returned north in a mighty fleet.

After the grain ships docked at Yuegang in Zhangzhou, under the escort of the Nan'ao army, the grain was transported to the various prefectures of the Eight Min.

Those affected by this disaster were mainly the inland prefectures and counties of Tingzhou, Yanping, and Jianning, with roughly one to two hundred thousand victims.

The fleet brought back a total of one hundred thousand dan of grain, which, together with the reserves of Nan'ao and Guangdong, could barely see them through the disaster.

At the same time, the Nan'ao Government Affairs Hall introduced two major policies.

The first was relief through work. The Government Affairs Hall allocated five hundred thousand taels to undertake major repairs of water conservancy, roads, and other infrastructure in the inland regions, keeping production running. The second was migration to Dongning. Since the third month of the third year of Tianqi, when commoners were encouraged to migrate to Dongning, in over a year's time, the Han population of Dongning had already exceeded thirty thousand. This disaster was even more severe, and the number of migrants surged.

Nan'ao's shipping capacity was insufficient, so a large number of civilian vessels were requisitioned; for an entire month, not a single sea-going ship in all of Fujian was left idle.

Those that could not cross the sea transported supplies and grain along the coast; those that could cross the sea carried migrants.

In just one month's time, another twenty thousand migrants were shipped to Dongning.

Han migrant villages and communities expanded further north in Dongning, with stockades of all sizes established at the Taoyuan Plateau, the Tamsui River mouth, Jilong Harbor, and Yilan. The migrants' encroachment inevitably squeezed the living space of the Pingpu tribes further, and friction and conflict between the two sides continued unabated.

Relying on Chen Jiao alone, using the governance methods of managing a colony, was no longer enough to cope.

Lin Qian therefore dispatched rotating officials to Dongning, formally incorporating Dongning into the national territory. Chen Jiao was reassigned as Governor, overseeing the entire province.

The establishment of Dongning Province involved matters that were utterly trivial, thorny, and complicated to the extreme.

For example, Han-native relations, land property division, official appointments, administrative divisions, and so on.

With Chen Jiao and the Government Affairs Hall no longer able to cope, Lin Qian asked Ye Xianggao to come and take charge once more.

Ye Xianggao verbally declined, saying that the tax reform alone already kept him so busy he had no time for anything else, but when the official documents truly arrived before him, he could not rest easy and reviewed them through the night. His grandmother wrote to Ye Zhen several times to protest, saying that her grandfather was getting old and should not be made to work so hard.

The entire upper echelon of Nan'ao Island, from Lin Qian on down, was all in this state of extreme busyness.

On the one hand, the Nan'ao regime was newly established; on the other, natural disasters and man-made calamities struck the southeast coast with frequency.

At the same time, the two provinces of Min and Yue were still undergoing slow institutional reform, while productive forces continued to advance.

This required officials to roll up their sleeves, keep pace with the times, constantly adapt to new situations, and make new responses.

For instance, during this period of shipping grain, troops, and migrants, the problem of limited vessels and insufficient transport capacity was especially acute.

After the capture of Guangzhou, the Xiamen shipyard used Guangzhou timber to build five more whale ships, which had been launched half a year earlier.

The Cavite shipyard used timber to build four whale ships, which were now nearing completion.

Once these were launched, Nan'ao would have eighteen whale ships.

There were also sixty-five Fujian junks for emergency use—that was the entirety of their transport capacity.

In Lin Qian's view, this was far from enough.

Thanks to the timber reserves established at Dongning and Hoi An three years earlier, by now a large quantity of lumber had completed its air-drying process.

The Nan'ao Government Affairs Hall and the Navy Department jointly decided to launch a large-scale shipbuilding program.

With the shipbuilding experience of the Candle Dragon, as well as the experience of dismantling Spanish warships, the Yandun Bay shipyard now had the capability to build large warships. The hull design of the new gun frigates was modeled on the Candle Dragon, scaled down overall, with a full-load displacement of approximately nine hundred tons. It featured two gun decks, equipped with twenty-five twelve-pounder cannons and twenty-five eighteen-pounder cannons, with twelve Folangji breech-loading cannons arranged on the upper deck and the stern deck.

By the British system of ship classification, this hull type barely qualified as a fourth-rate ship.

Two Candle Dragon-class fourth-rate ships were planned for construction, with an estimated construction period of two years.

Additionally, at Lin Qian's direction, the Navy Department also planned to build a batch of lighter, faster frigates with stronger individual firepower, designed for commerce-raiding operations. The frigate design was finalized at ten zhang five chi in length, two zhang seven chi in width, with a full-load displacement of approximately six hundred thirty tons, a single gun deck, and forty twelve-pounder cannons.

Under the classification system, this belonged to the fifth rate.

The Navy Department ordered four fifth-rate frigates, with an estimated construction period of one and a half years.

Both of the above new warship types were drawn up by Lin Qian together with the shipwrights of the Nan'ao shipyard.

Besides ships of the line and frigates, the Nan'ao Navy also needed troop transports.

Previously, the navy's troop transports had been filled by whale ships, but whale ships were ultimately derived from Fujian junks and were too slow.

In mixed formations, they would greatly slow down the fleet's speed.

The longer the time at sea, the greater the uncertainty of encountering storms and the greater the consumption of supplies.

This was without a doubt detrimental to far-sea operations.

Previously, the voyages from Nan'ao to Guangzhou, to Manila, Hirado, and Hoi An were all basically within half a month's sailing time, so the slow whale ships had not yet become a liability. But dispatching troops to Water Chenla had already strained their capabilities.

In the future, if they wanted to send troops to Malacca, Bengal, and other places, new ships were absolutely necessary!

So while the Nan'ao shipyard was busy with warship drafting, the students of the Naval Academy and the craftsmen of the Xiamen shipyard were not idle either.

Design drawings for the new transport ship began to be solicited from both locations.

The solicitation notice concisely stated the design requirements for the transport ship:

First, the ability to sail against the wind must be strong; the angle of approach to the wind must not exceed fifty-five degrees.

Second, the average speed must not be lower than six knots, and the maximum speed must reach eight knots.

Third, the single-ship transport capacity must reach two hundred soldiers and their accompanying equipment (loading soldiers like cargo is not permitted!).

Fourth, the troop transport's endurance must be guaranteed at over two months.

Fifth, self-defense armament need not be considered; only swivel guns need be carried.

The solicitation notice allowed craftsmen and students to form groups and submit proposals together. The ten best proposals would receive a reward of two hundred taels of silver, and the runners-up would receive ten taels each.

As soon as the solicitation notice was issued, it sparked a wave of drafting enthusiasm in both locations.

A month later, preliminary design drawings drifted down onto Lin Qian's desk like snowflakes.

These designs were either stiff and constrained, or wildly imaginative and impossible to realize.

But among the many drawings, there were still quite a few designs that caught the eye.

For example, the drawing from Old Fei's team at the Xiamen shipyard, which combined a clipper bow with European rigging.

In his study, when Lin Qian took out this design to praise it, Old Fei repeatedly expressed his shame, saying that neither the bow nor the rigging was his original creation—he had merely fused the two together.

Mute Huang pulled out a drawing, placed it on the table, and gave a thumbs up.

That ship used a sharp hull with a length-to-width ratio close to 6:1, as well as full rigging borrowed from the Candle Dragon.

Lin Qian saw at a glance that the one who had drawn the design was Zheng Hongkui and his classmate.

The Naval Academy had opened courses in ship design, but since the subject involved so much knowledge of mathematics, physics, and materials science, the instruction was not very deep.

Lin Qian had let the students enter the competition more with the aim of stimulating interest and encouraging creativity and thinking.

Zheng Hongkui's design used an extreme length-to-beam ratio of 6:1, which was clearly too aggressive. Speed would improve, but the danger increased greatly. Old Fei said, "For a wooden warship, a length-to-beam ratio of 5.5:1 is the limit. Beyond that, even if it doesn't capsize, the waves will snap it in two." This was a limitation of materials science.

Mute Huang didn't know the exact numerical value of the length-to-beam ratio, but with years of shipbuilding experience, he could still see the problem. He had picked out this design only because Zheng Hongkui's direction was correct and his creativity was commendable.

Lin Qian flipped through another dozen or so drawings and saw that most of the designs were trending toward fore-and-aft rigs, full ship rigs, and optimized hull forms.

This was the right direction.

In Lin Qian's view, the design of the Zhulong was already the optimal solution for troop transport in this era.

Of course, using a warship to transport troops was a tremendous waste.

One could use the hull form and rigging of the Zhulong as a base, slightly increase the length-to-beam ratio, reduce the number of gunports and cannons, shrink the size and tonnage, and then borrow design concepts from the clipper ship to create a new type of troop transport.

However, creativity needs proper divergence. If one always pursues what is correct and reasonable, one will inevitably become set in one's ways.

Lin Qian flipped through the drawings, suddenly stopped, and smiled knowingly. He had found the divergent creativity he was looking for.

He pulled the drawing out and placed it on the table. Mute Huang and Old Fei came forward to look, and saw that it was a rough conceptual sketch.

It was drawn very meticulously, but it was not realistic — the length-to-beam ratio was still too large.

Around the design drawing, many annotations were written, all in Spanish.

Lin Qian pointed at one of the annotations and said, "This word means 'pig iron' in Spanish. This person wants to build a ship out of pig iron." Mute Huang and Old Fei suddenly felt a surge of respect.

This design was not only wildly divergent, but it had also guessed the future development trends of naval architecture and materials science — truly rare.

But under the technological constraints of the present era, even casting a keel out of pig iron was impossible. Using it to build a ship was nothing short of a fantasy.

"Bartolomé Narváez, Guipúzcoa."

Lin Qian read out the man's name, then asked Old Fei, "Is this man new here?"

Old Fei grinned and said, "You could say so. He's a Spanish shipwright from the Cavite shipyard, and he just arrived in Xiamen not long ago."

Lin Qian thought to himself, "As expected of the first empire on which the sun never set — even in some backwater corner they've hidden talent. The Cavite shipyard wasn't plundered for nothing." Judging from this Spanish shipwright's name, his surname carried the suffix "Guipúzcoa."

This was a province in the northeast of the Spanish Empire, separated from France by a single mountain range.

The Cantabrian Mountains within that province produced high-quality, hard oak — a top-grade material for building warships.

For this reason, the region had a deep tradition and skill in shipbuilding, and many master shipwrights serving the Spanish Navy came from there.

Now that this man had fallen into Lin Qian's hands, there was no going back to his homeland.

But if he performed well, perhaps he could become an "honorary Han," establishing a second home on Nan'ao Island.

Since Bartolomé had aspirations to build iron ships, keeping him at the shipyard would be a waste. It would be better to arrange for him to go to Civilization University, where he could study the academic knowledge of shipbuilding on one hand, and, taking advantage of the proximity to Foshan, learn about and promote the Ming iron industry on the other.

Lin Qian immediately signed the transfer order.

Afterward, the three of them selected the outstanding works from this call for submissions. Although not a single one was usable, as long as this enthusiasm for learning and innovation was maintained, Nan'ao would soon achieve self-sufficiency in ship drawings.

As for the new troop transport, Lin Qian ultimately settled on the Zhulong model fused with clipper ship concepts.

The ship was thirty-six meters long and ten meters wide, with a full-load displacement of approximately seven hundred twenty tons.

It adopted the same full ship rig as the Zhulong, complete with lateen sails, gaff sails, and staysails, with a total sail area of about one thousand square meters. The ship's complement: 85 crew members, 200 soldiers, and 15 officers and logistics personnel, totaling 300 people.

No gun deck was installed. All cabin space was used to stow supplies and troops, and openable ventilation portholes were added to the sides.

Eight ventilators were placed on the deck, and twelve swivel guns were mounted along the bulwarks on both sides.

At full load, the ship's endurance was about sixty days.

Speed, stability, maneuverability, and windward capability were essentially the same as the Zhulong.

This new type of troop transport was named the "Shark Ship" by Lin Qian.

Compared with the Whale Ship, the Shark Ship's size and tonnage did not increase much, and its troop-carrying capacity was essentially the same.

The main changes were in the rigging and hull form. The two ships looked almost completely different, and their sailing performance was like night and day.

Additionally, because the Shark Ship emphasized hygiene and ventilation, soldiers suffered less physical and psychological torment during long sea voyages, and non-combat attrition would be lower.

Lin Qian placed an order with the Xiamen shipyard for five Shark Ships, with an estimated construction period of one and a half years.

Once these five Shark Ships were launched, although they could not completely eliminate the use of Whale Ships for troop transport, at least the outdated Fujian junks would no longer need to be pressed into service.

At the same time, the Xiamen shipyard also received an order from the Nan'ao Administrative Department for four Whale Ships.

These orders nearly exhausted the timber reserves, and were enough to keep the shipyard busy day and night without rest.

While the Naval Department was building ships on a grand scale,

the Army Department could only concede its inferiority. Apart from paying soldiers' wages and normal procurement of guns, cannons, and military supplies, it had no other major moves.

This was because the army's military expenditures were simply too high.

Under Lin Qian's orders, the more than twenty thousand new troops that the Army Department had recruited in the fourth month of the seventh year of Tianqi had now completed their training and been merged under Regional Commander Lei's command. The Nan'ao New Model First Army now numbered thirty-two thousand four hundred men, organized into six battalions of five thousand four hundred men each, commanded by Brigadier Generals. Calculated at the base soldier's wage of 1.6 taels per month, the annual wage expenditure was six hundred twenty thousand taels of silver.

At the same time, after the streamlining, downsizing, and screening of the camp soldiers and guard station troops of Fujian and Guangdong provinces, they totaled more than forty thousand men.

These men currently served as garrison forces, defending the various towns, passes, and fortresses, and their wages naturally also fell under the Army Department's military expenditures.

Their annual wages came to five hundred seventy-six thousand taels of silver.

Of course, unlike the Nan'ao army, the wage structure of the camp soldiers and guard station troops was very complex. The camp soldiers' pay inherently included a food allowance. And the guard station troops theoretically still had military farmland, so their food allowance was even lower.

This figure of five hundred seventy thousand taels was the discounted amount after accounting for military grain and military farmland, and it was still no small expense.

There was also the expenditure for fifty thousand Fo Ye 01 matchlock muskets, as well as expenditures for weapons, armor, cannons, and war horses.

The Army Department, merely by maintaining its current military expenditures, had already incurred repeated dirty looks from the Civil Affairs Department.

And after the two battles of Manila and Water Chenla, having signed two highly profitable treaties, the Navy had tasted sweetness and, without any teacher, had figured out another function of its own.

The Minister of the Navy stated clearly on various occasions:

As the halberd on the shield-and-halberd banner, expanding Nan'ao's territory and creating wealth was inherently the Navy's proper business.

If the Civil Affairs Department lacked sufficient funds, that was the Navy's shame!

No matter how powerful the fleet or how fortified the port, as long as the helmsman gives the order, the navy can conquer it!

Of course, to expand territory, necessary investment is unavoidable.

Can we build a few more cruisers? And the marines—can we expand recruitment a bit more?

Yahei

Fenyuan

Pen