The words "a century-old navy" express the difficulties of naval construction. Liao Niloc was impatient, so he approached Li Kaipeng to discuss whether he could purchase a large ship from the army and recruit sailors with experience in long-distance voyages. Li Kaipeng found an opportunity to entertain officials of the Coastal Planning Department and navy generals, and proposed the idea while they were drunk, but was flatly rejected. All large-scale ships are registered and inspected regularly. Selling them without authorization will cause loss of life. Experienced sailors are the core strength of the navy. Where will they let go? However, after they heard Li Kaipeng's offer, their eyes became hesitant and their tone became less firm, saying that such matters would be discussed after the war. Of course Li Kaipeng knew what they were thinking. After the war, battle ships would be damaged and there would be casualties. Things sold to Liuqiu Company and personnel lost can be reported as war losses.
Regarding naval construction, Yu Zhu was even more anxious than Liao Nilo. Liuqiu Company tries its best to keep a low profile and pay attention to confidentiality, but the movement of tens of thousands of people coming to the island is really huge, and it will definitely attract the attention of interested people, and in turn attract the attention of hostile forces. "You must not have the intention of harming others, and you must have the intention of guarding against others." Yu Zhu is not worried about what will happen on the island. Those tribes are sparsely populated and hostile to each other, and many tribes even speak different languages. Even if they were organized, it would be impossible to defeat the Liuqiu Company with their bone and stone weapons. Those weapons would not be very lethal if they were not coated with poison, and poison was difficult to prepare and preserve, so it could not be used on a large scale.
Yu Zhu is worried about external forces. The current armed forces include three battalions of the navy with a total of 1,500 people, one battalion of the army with 500 people, and about 10,000 militiamen. After Keelung Port is equipped with artillery, it is not afraid of enemy attack at all. Even if the enemy lands on the beach near the port, the Army is capable of repelling it. However, Yu Zhu and Liao Nilu knew that the enemy would not attack a strong port at all. Instead, after gaining control of the sea, they would take advantage of the ships and harass them everywhere. They would even cut off the route between Liuqiu Island and the outside world or even block the port, so that the Pili Army could not move from there. The outside world receives a steady stream of population, food and other strategic materials. Without a strong navy, there is no sea control, and if the sea control is lost, survival will be a problem, let alone development.
Yu Zhu's worries are not unreasonable. At present, the fifty miles surrounding Keelung Port are under the effective jurisdiction of the company, and many defense facilities have been built, but it is still easy to attack and difficult to defend. In this area of two or three counties, there were originally nineteen cannibal tribes, seven of which were relatives of the Yitata tribe. After communication with the wizard Balai, these seven tribes all agreed to peacefully coexist with the messengers of the God of Thunder. Liuqiu Company also promised that if the Shengfan tribe did not attack, it would provide them with corresponding benefits, including teaching them to grow crops and selling food and salt. , iron tools and other supplies, and also allow tribal children to receive education.
The remaining twelve tribes had no intention of making peace with outsiders. They not only killed the envoys sent by Yi Ta Ta and their relatives, but also continuously attacked site selection officials and prospecting technicians of Liuqiu Company's settlement sites. You're welcome to retaliate. With the Yitata and their kin tribes leading the way, the Liuqiu infantry battalion easily found the attacker's village in the jungle - to be precise, it was a messy group of low shacks. When the personnel were not much different, a well-trained army equipped with firearms faced off against a primitive man with a stone weapon in his hand, you can imagine the result with your toes. These raiding tribes were either wiped out or fled deeper into the jungle.
The soldiers of Liuqiu Infantry Battalion were also injured - many people vomited because they saw human skeletons everywhere in the village, some with tooth marks on them, and there were still shrunken heads and smoke-stained heads hanging in the chiefs' houses. stump. What’s even more exaggerated is that the guide from the Yitata tribe started drooling when he looked at the corpses on the ground. It is said that after the Yitata and their relatives surrendered to the messenger of the God of Thunder, they had promised not to eat humans again. The messenger of the God of Thunder told them that cannibalism would be punished by God, but how could the habit developed over thousands of years be changed in a short time? The soldiers in the infantry battalion looked at the raw guide who was leading the way and chewed it with a look of extreme joy on their faces. Their stomachs couldn't help but churn, and they all held on to the tree and retched.
After driving away those cannibal tribes that refused to coexist peacefully, Liuqiu Company set up nearly a hundred settlement sites in this area. Each of these settlements has about four to five hundred people, and they are located along the coast or near rivers where boats can navigate. In addition to settlement points, mines, lumber camps, etc. are also mostly located in places with convenient coastal and waterway transportation, which makes it easy for enemies attacking from the sea to break through these weakly defended places. Although trenches were dug and wooden fences were built in each stronghold, due to insufficient firearms, the defense facilities and defense forces had no problem dealing with wild beasts and small-scale attacks, but they were unable to deal with large-scale attacks.
In fact, Yu Zhu and others were also in a dilemma when it came to selecting sites for settlements and factories and mines. In this wild jungle land, it is really difficult to find a place that is both convenient for transportation and easy to defend and difficult to attack. Since "you can't have your cake and eat it too," Liuqiu Company executives, after repeated weighings, prioritized transportation convenience in order to achieve rapid economic development. Only with strong economic strength and military industry can we build a strong navy and defend ourselves against enemies at sea. Another reason for this location selection is that the current development and construction workload is very heavy, and there is no spare manpower and materials to build bridges and roads. Although these two infrastructure projects are important, they cost a lot of money and are not urgently needed.
Although most of the more than 60,000 people recruited to the island are young and strong, there are still some women, children, old and young, and there are only more than 50,000 strong laborers. Of these fifty thousand, fifteen thousand were in the mines and factories. At present, Liuqiu Company has seven coal mines, five lime mines, three iron mines and a seawater salt field. Factories such as coking coal plants, steelmaking blast furnaces, cement plants, farm implement factories, and arsenals were also built near Keelung. Since both civilian and naval construction require a large number of ships, the shipyard has the largest number of workers, with a full three thousand workers.
There are 35,000 people engaged in agricultural production, including more than 3,000 fishermen, who are managed and operated by the newly established fishery company. In fact, the offshore waters controlled by Liuqiu Company simply cannot accommodate so many fishermen. To catch fish, you have to go to the surrounding waters or the offshore at the southern end of the island. The furthest point is even to the remote sea of Xiaoliuqiu, which brings certain risks. This risk comes from two aspects. On the one hand, the ship may capsize and die in bad weather such as typhoons, or be lost and unable to return. On the other hand, it may be robbed. The robbers are not only pirates, but also other fishermen and even passing merchant ships. There are no legal restrictions on the vast sea, and many people who make a living on the sea are lawless.
The reason why Liuqiu Company executives insist on doing this is actually very simple. One is to gradually explore the waters around Liuqiu Island through fishermen, and the other is to train naval reservists. These fishermen have been militarily organized and trained, and their ships have been strengthened and equipped with weapons. They usually operate in companies and platoons and are called maritime militias. They are not afraid of small groups of pirates at all. When fishing in waters where a large number of pirates are present, there will be naval escort from Liuqiu Company.
