After Qian Liqun's Anlan completed supplies at Cala Port, it bypassed the city of Ghana and went straight to Cadiz, finally transporting a cargo of goods to its destination before the delivery deadline.
After the successful delivery, Qian Liqun accepted a new transportation commission in Cadiz to transport part of the wheat and wool back to China.
The freight for the return voyage this time is not much... but the time is relatively loose and there is no strict time limit.
This is also a common pattern in the contemporary shipping industry, that is, the freight from the mainland to overseas is higher, while the cost of shipping from overseas to the mainland is much lower.
Shipping ships travel across the ocean and make money mainly by transporting export commodities. As for the agricultural products or mineral products transported back, those items are not bulk goods with relatively low unit prices... They are not very valuable in the first place, so naturally they cannot charge high freight rates. .
Ships have to return eventually, but things shipped from overseas to China are basically very cheap... There is not much shipping fee, and in order to ensure the safety of ship navigation, ships generally do not run empty and need ballast.
If cargo is not transported, for the sake of safe navigation, even stones and sand must be moved to the ship to act as ballast.
By transporting things like wheat and cotton, you can still make money on the ship operating costs on the return trip...otherwise, you will lose money.
Such a practice has been formed for a long time!
Of course, the prices of these agricultural products and mineral products are low, and the freight charges are also low, so there is no big time limit for transportation...
You get what you pay for!
After being loaded with return cargo in Cadiz and carrying dozens of passengers along with it, the Anlan began its return journey and then headed straight for the Port of Cala.
In this way, the Anlan became the first ocean-going merchant ship to come over for supplies on its own, and also the first ship to return to Kara Port for supplies.
The arrival of the Anlan has brought great confidence to Chen Jingyun and others... The return of the Anlan shows that the Anlan is satisfied with their supply service, otherwise it would not have come all the way when it returned. ...After all, there is a supply port in Ghana City along the way.
But the Anlan did not go, but chose Kara Port.
And after the Anlan is the first example, there will be a second one, and even a third one...
The positioning of Kara Port as a supply port has been initially established.
Even if there are not many ships coming to supply, rest and dock in the future, then only a small number of ships will be enough for Chen Jingyun and the others to be satisfied.
After all, the material supply of these ocean-going merchant ships is a big deal. There are a lot of various material supplies. For example, coal can carry hundreds of tons.
At the same time, the ship comes to replenish supplies, which will allow the crew to go ashore to relax for a while...and crew members have always been a high-income and high-consuming group. I don’t know how many service consumption industries in port cities are supported by these crew members. .
Kara Port can also make a lot of money from these crew members who go ashore to relax and spend money.
After business at the port picked up, Chen Jingyun also breathed a sigh of relief.
Although the current income from the port is not much, it is finally not the previous model of only going out but not entering... As long as the port can make money, the consumption rate of its own reserve funds will be greatly slowed down.
This will support the harvesting and selling of a large number of economic crops next year, and there will be greater certainty.
However, it is not without problems, that is, as the number of ships coming to Kara Port for replenishment gradually increases, the demand for coal increases significantly... When these large ocean-going ships come to replenish, they have to replenish hundreds of tons of coal.
But the coal mines in the rear could not keep up with the production of coal, so that the coal reserves in the port were dwindling... This was too dangerous.
After all, in port business, if you encounter other people’s ships coming all the way, or even bypassing the city of Ghana, to come to you specifically to add coal... and then you tell them that there is no coal now, then for the supply business of Kara Port The reputational hit will be huge.
In order to ensure the coal supply of Kara Port, Chen Jingyun even went into battle himself and went out to fight with his mercenaries...
Coal mining at the coal mine has no technical content. It still uses the most primitive manual mining. At most, it is just the use of better manual mining tools, but don't expect mechanical equipment.
Chen Jingyun's West African kingdom does not have the authority to import machinery and equipment from Chu...
At present, the machinery and equipment of the Dachu Empire are only fully open to the territories directly under the Central Government, and the administrative territories are limited to a limited extent. The territories of the vassal states are restricted to restricted industries, and are limited to special approvals. The currently open industries are limited to mining. A few areas such as agriculture, transportation, and port equipment can only be purchased and used by Chu people's enterprises. Subsequent equipment also needs to be inspected and supervised regularly to avoid leakage to those indigenous people.
As for Chen Jingyun and his family, this West African kingdom is not even a vassal state of the Chu Empire... they have no authority to directly import the machinery and equipment of the Chu Empire.
In the Dachu Empire, equipment is more strictly controlled than weapons... Weapons, even rifled weapons, can be purchased and used through overseas security companies and maritime security companies. Chen Jingyun can By cooperating with overseas security companies and hiring security companies to work for themselves, they can indirectly obtain civilian rifled weapons.
But the equipment...there's nothing we can do about it, there's not even a detour.
But it doesn’t matter if you can’t get mining equipment on the surface… there’s still a black market.
All kinds of ordinary equipment can still be found on the black market. As long as you are willing to spend money, it is not a big problem to buy mining equipment. At the same time, Chen Jingyun claims to have the tacit approval and recognition of the Golden State Governor's Office. The officials should turn a blind eye to these small actions of his. Close one eye.
Of course, the premise is that Chen Jingyun only uses these equipment for mining, not for manufacturing weapons and equipment, nor is he some wishful thinking to torment his own machinery industry by imitating the copycat model.
The Great Chu Empire was very vigilant about the development of industrialization in indigenous countries and even vassal states, for fear that one day a second industrial country would appear to compete with the Great Chu Empire.
To this end, a multi-level and strict technical blockade has been formed.
The last piece of insurance is: once it is discovered that the indigenous-controlled areas or the vassal countries are secretly engaged in industrialization such as machinery manufacturing, the Chu Empire will not hesitate to find various excuses to send troops and directly destroy the factories of the indigenous or vassal countries. .
Again, according to the positioning of the top management of the Da Chu Empire, whether it is a vassal state or an ordinary indigenous country, you can just farm and mine honestly. At most, you can start a service industry. If you have a good attitude, I will give you permission to develop. Several specific light industries.
But in key fields such as steel, machinery manufacturing, shipbuilding, chemical industry... Chu people simply do not allow outsiders to get involved, and they will directly attack every case they find.
The kind of attack that directly sends troops!
As a former Chu state, Chen Jingyun, who had long wanted to build a country, was naturally very aware of these attitudes within the empire, and had studied them carefully... In the end, he came to the conclusion that his West African kingdom was not incapable of it. Develop industry, but absolutely not develop industries that may threaten the empire.
Industries such as steel, machinery manufacturing, and chemical industry are forbidden areas that cannot be touched... At least for now, they are forbidden areas.
As long as you dare to touch, the Chu people will dare to find any reason to send troops to kill you... Most of the time, the Chu people don't even find a reason, and just say "endangering the security of the empire" and that's it.
Chen Jingyun knew this, so he had no intention of touching it. All he wanted was to get some equipment and mine more coal... And the development of minerals was something that was relatively supported within the empire.
It is impossible to develop industries such as steel and machinery, but it is also excellent to develop mineral resources and plantations.
Under such circumstances, Chen Jingyun secretly purchased a set of coal mining equipment through the black market. Although it was only a set of backward third-hand equipment used in small coal mines, he did not know that it was dismantled from a closed small coal mine in China.
But the price is not cheap.
However, even if the price is expensive, it is worth it. With this set of equipment, the mining volume of the only coal mine in the West African Kingdom will quickly increase several times to fully meet the coal supply needs of passing ships.
In addition to purchasing equipment, procurement also requires more manpower. Now the tens of thousands of prisoners of war in the West African Kingdom have their own arrangements. For this reason, Chen Jingyun personally led the army in order to obtain more labor force, and patrolled dozens of kilometers around the area. Other indigenous tribes within the range launched mopping-up operations.
It didn't take long for tens of thousands of young and strong prisoners of war to be obtained.
With the addition of this group of young prisoners of war, the labor shortage in the West African Kingdom has been initially alleviated.
However, as the number of prisoners of war continues to increase, a dangerous situation has also emerged in the West African Kingdom, that is, the number of nationals and foreign workers or mercenaries only totals five or six hundred.
However, the number of black prisoners of war under the control of the West African Kingdom has reached more than 40,000.
The ratio between the two parties is seriously imbalanced. If anything happens, serious turmoil may break out, destroying the foundation that Chen Jingyun has finally built.
So now, the most urgent thing before Chen Jingyun is: he needs more people!
This population does not refer to those prisoners of war who have no freedom, but specifically refers to people of West African Kingdom nationality or Chu nationality... that is, Chinese people of the same race.
If that doesn't work, some people in the vassal states can make do. They can let those in the vassal states do some low-end jobs, thereby freeing up the small number of Chu people's labor force to engage in more important jobs.
It was too difficult to attract Chinese people, so Chen Jingyun set his sights on the free people in the vassal countries!
Moreover, if you introduce people from the vassal country, there is another advantage, that is, you can sign a contract with them to work for free for several years to offset the cost of the ship ticket.
Well, this model is the indentured servant model that the European colonists liked to use before... This can greatly reduce the cost of immigration, and even make profits through the immigration business!
Of course, even so, Chen Jingyun does not want all the free people in the vassal countries... For example, many people in southern India are black, and Chen Jingyun does not want... There are a lot of black natives in Africa. Introduction.
And some ethnic groups with more special beliefs cannot be wanted. These ethnic groups are often very difficult to assimilate.
If left unchecked, they would not see any significant changes even if dozens or hundreds of years passed. Chen Jingyun did not want the immigrants he spent money to obtain, and in the end he would have to carry out indoctrination policies... a waste of money and time.
In this way, the only people suitable for introduction are the free citizens of the European vassal states, some free people of the vassal states in northern India who are not so black, and the Fuso people.
Soon, Chen Jingyun sent people to Europe to recruit immigrants. Their first stop for recruiting immigrants was Spain, where the economy has completely collapsed in recent years and famines occur every year!
Life in Spain has been very difficult in recent years... First of all, there was a war with the Chu people, because the Chu people were new to Europe at that time, and Spain also had a certain degree of self-confidence, so the Spanish resistance was relatively large-scale and intense. It's also more intense.
At the same time, the speed of information transmission was slow, and many Spanish nobles who did not understand the situation in time enough continued to resist even after the main force was defeated.
As a result, throughout the war, agricultural production and handicraft production in Spain were severely damaged.
After the war, Spain was burdened with heavy foreign debt. At the same time, after being forced to fully liberalize the market, the domestic handicraft industry collapsed.
Together, these further aggravated the internal turmoil in Spain. In the end, a large-scale multi-party civil war broke out within Spain, and multiple regions independently declared their country... Now there are four kingdoms in the entire Spanish region, fighting each other.
This directly led to severe damage to agricultural production in Spain and famine across the land.
Under such circumstances, the people sent by the Kingdom of West Africa to recruit immigrants set up a stall outside the city of Cadiz. They just said that they were recruiting people to settle and farm in Africa, and they would take care of the food when they came. This attracted a large number of local people to sign up. participate.
Many people don't even care what is written in the contract, they only care about the bread in the other party's hand...
Therefore, the West African Kingdom's operation to recruit indentured slaves in Europe went smoothly beyond imagination, and it did not take long to recruit thousands of people.
And among these thousands of people, in order to optimize the population structure, especially considering that many local citizens in Kara and mercenaries from the Chu State are single, or although they have families, they work alone overseas and are not interested in the opposite sex. The demand is very strong.
Many of the thousands of indentured slaves recruited were young women.
Thousands of people were recruited at once, and because there were so many people, the small broken ship owned by the security company in the Kingdom of West Africa could not even accommodate them.
I had to temporarily purchase a decommissioned and scrapped ship in the name of a security company to transport it together!
As for why we bought a ship instead of renting a ship... because this decommissioned and scrapped ship is an old ship from Chengshun for 23 years. It belongs to the first generation of steam engine ships, but the technology at that time was not mature, and with the long-term high Intense use has brought this ship to the point where a steam engine failure may occur at any time.
There is even a big hole a few meters above the waterline of the hull, and seawater will flow into it when the wind and waves are strong... It was caused by a collision that happened not long ago.
Because the repair cost was too expensive, the original owner simply stopped repairing it and simply sold the thing as scrap metal.
When the scrapped ship was being auctioned, the other bidders were all ship-breaking yards and planned to buy it for scrap metal... Only the people from the West African Security Company planned to buy it and continue to use it.
After all, the West African Kingdom doesn't care whether it's scrapped or not... as long as it's cheap and usable, if there's a problem, just tinker with it a little more.
As for the large hole in the hull, water will enter during strong winds and waves, and it may even cause the ship to sink!
Moreover, it is not impossible to find some planks to patch up the hole in case of emergencies. As for the strong wind and waves after going out to sea, it may cause the ship to sink...
Well, it sinks!
To do big things, you must have the determination to take risks.
Besides, if there weren't these holes, they wouldn't be able to sell it to you at the scrap price... After all, it's a sea-going ship with a full displacement of more than 2,000 tons.
(End of chapter)
