I want to be emperor

Chapter 906 Song Erniu's Ambition
In the depths of the endless North Pacific Ocean, a gigantic ship with an astonishing length of 20 meters, a width of [-] meters, and a draft of [-] meters is advancing through the wind and waves.

This is the largest ship in the Great Chu Empire at present: the luxury ocean liner Su Song.

With a registered tonnage of more than 6000 tons, it is not only the largest civilian ship, but even larger and faster than the Navy's latest new battleship that has not yet been launched into service.

(The full-load tonnage description was used for civilian ships above. This is a wrong description. It should be registered tonnage or registered tonnage)

To a certain extent, this ship embodies the pinnacle of the civil shipbuilding industry of the Great Chu Empire. The construction of a huge hull with a length of 20 meters, a width of [-] meters, and a draft of [-] meters is an extreme challenge to the shipbuilding process!
The latest triple-expansion steam engine, water tube boiler, flying shear bow and a series of new technologies and techniques also allow this huge ship to burst out [-] horsepower.

You must know that this is a behemoth with a registered tonnage of more than 6000 tons. If it is fully loaded, it can even reach more than 5000 tons. Only the new top-level power unit can make it run at a high speed of [-] knots.

According to the scheduled route, the Su Song did not cross the Pacific Ocean directly after departing from Jinshan Port, but first arrived at Xiayang Port (Seattle) northward, because Xiayang City is the second largest city in North America, and the west coast of North America The industrial, commercial, and transportation center in the northern region has a large population and a large number of tourists.

On this voyage, the Su Song first went north to disembark and disembark some passengers at Xiayang Port, and after replenishing coal, fresh water, food, etc., it carried 1000 people in the third class, 350 people in the second class, 350 people in the first class, and a total of [-] people. Nine hundred passengers crossed the North Pacific, taking the classic North Pacific route all the way west.

The fully loaded Su Song did not stop all the way. Relying on the abundant coal, fresh water and food carried by the huge ship, it directly crossed the North Pacific Ocean and arrived at Fukuyama Prefecture in the Fuso area all the way. Fukuyama Port at the northern end carried out coal supply and a small number of passengers.

And the Fukuyama prefecture in this place is the Hokkaido in the Fuso area of ​​later generations... But in the contemporary era, the Fuso shogunate did not completely control the Hokkaido area. There was only a small Matsumae domain, but it only occupied the southern coastal area of ​​Hokkaido. That's all.

In the series of external expansions after the rise of the Great Chu Empire, the expansion of the Fusang area was naturally indispensable. The expansion in the early stage was mainly based on economics and trade and the acquisition of a small number of colonies. and other ways to obtain a large number of colonies.

So far, the Great Chu Empire has completely controlled the Hokkaido region, the Shikoku region, and the Kyushu region in the Fusang Islands. Three of the four major islands of Fusang have been completely occupied by the Great Chu Empire and immigrated on a large scale.

Even in the Honshu Island area, the Great Chu Empire acquired about one-third of its territory through purchases or wars.

As for the Fusang people themselves, due to successive years of wars, the Edo shogunate has long been unable to control the situation. The various daimyos attacked and fought against each other, and the farming and mulberry fields were abandoned, resulting in a large decrease in the local population of Fusang. The Fusang area hired young and strong people to open up plantations in overseas colonies.

This has also led to the fact that in the current Fusang area, the total number of Fusang indigenous people is expected to not exceed 150 million.

In contrast, the population of Chu people in the Fusang area has exceeded the 200 million mark.

In the Fusang Islands, the population of the Chu people has surpassed the Fusang people, and this situation is still changing, because the Chu people are still hiring Fusang people from the Fusang area to develop overseas colonies, and at the same time, the Fusang natives The war is still going on.

In response to this situation, the top leaders of the Great Chu Empire have already negotiated with the Edo shogunate, which is unable to control the situation, and intends to change the location of the Edo shogunate... India is very good!
In the past, many Southeast Asian countries, such as Burma, Siam, and Aceh, these three Southeast Asian indigenous countries, have successively accepted the friendly suggestions of the Great Chu Empire, and their high-level leaders moved some people to India to rebuild their homes.

Now it's Fusang's turn to enjoy this treatment.

If all goes well, the Fusang region will completely become the territory directly under the Great Chu Empire within two or three years.

Today's Fusang area, although there are still many Fusang natives, has actually become the actual territory of the Great Chu Empire.

Here, the Great Chu Empire set up Fusang governor, under the jurisdiction of four directly-controlled prefectures, namely Fukuyama Prefecture, Kyushu Prefecture, Shikoku Prefecture, and Hirado Prefecture, as well as several directly-administered prefectures and counties.

Among them, although Fushan Prefecture is a government directly under the central government, although it has a large area, its population is actually small. After all, this place belongs to the north. Except for the southern coastal areas, the situation is better, and the others are not good. Naturally, it cannot accommodate too many people. population.

However, relying on the Fushan Strait that enters and exits the North Pacific Ocean, and the Fushan Port located in the northern part of the strait, it is still very good to do some business of supplying passing ships and moving supplies.

Because these ports have complete facilities, not only civilian merchant ships used to berth here for supplies, but also the Great Chu Empire Navy also set up a naval base here, mainly used as a sub-base of the Fusang Fleet, responsible for offshore patrols and escorts in the central and northern waters of the Fusang Sea Area wait.

The Su Song docked at Fushan Port for half a day, replenished some coal, fresh water and fresh food, and then continued to sail.

It entered the Beihai waters (Qiong Sea, Sea of ​​Japan), crossed the Tsushima Strait, and by the way, had a short pick-up and drop-off in Busan Port, then continued westward directly to the mouth of the Yangtze River, and then entered under the guidance of a guiding ship. The port is the largest large-tonnage ship in Songjiang Prefecture, which is Songjiang Outer Port.

This port is on the edge of the Wusong Naval Base. It is a deep-water berth port that can dock all the ships in the Great Chu Empire, including the Su Song with a registered tonnage of more than 6000 tons.

The reason why they did not enter the port of Songjiang City, that is, the port in the Huangpu River, was mainly because the Su Song was too big...

Although the navigation conditions of the Huangpu River are excellent, the water depth of the main channel in this place can reach more than ten meters, and the shallow place is more than nine meters.

Su Song, which is 200 meters long, 20 meters wide, and has a draft of [-] meters, is much bigger than a battleship of [-] tons... If you want to enter the Huangpu River, you have relatively high requirements for ship control and navigation. Problems can easily arise if you deviate from the main channel.

The Pacific Trading Company spent huge sums of money to build such a top-level luxury passenger ship, but it will not allow it to venture into the inland river easily.

For the sake of safety, the port of its berth was chosen at the mouth of the Yangtze River and the outer port of Songjiang next to the Wusong Naval Base.

When the ship was slowly approaching the shore, many passengers appeared on the deck and looked towards the land, and Song Erniu was no exception... This was the first time he had returned to the mainland in many years.

Many years have passed, and to be honest, his memory of the local area is somewhat blurred. The only thing that still has a deep memory is the countless factories in Songjiang City and the mellow smell of coal burnt...

Seeing the native land again, Song Erniu, standing on the top deck, couldn't help but open his eyes carefully to look at the familiar place ahead that was already slightly unfamiliar.

Not far ahead, you can see a large number of warships moored at the pier along the river. Song Erniu is not a senior military expert, and he couldn't identify any specific models of the warships ahead, but he was still shocked... because of that It's really much!

Many dock berths extend tens of meters to the river surface, with several warships parked side by side, and there are many such warship docks around the Wusong Port Naval Base.

Most of the warships at anchor are ships with hundreds of tons and more than a thousand tons, many of which are inland warships, but there are also large warships with thousands of tons.

But to Song Erniu's pity, he didn't see the legendary [-]-ton battleship here.

What Song Erniu didn't know was that although the Chu Empire Navy had regarded Wusong Naval Base as the most important port in the early days, with the continuous development of the navy, the number of large-tonnage deep-water warships in the ocean-going fleet increased, and Wusong Port, the estuary of the Yangtze River, The naval base in the area becomes less suitable.

The reason why this place is important is not because its geographical conditions are so suitable for a large-scale military port, but because it is stuck at the mouth of the Yangtze River, and it is a strategic location to protect the prosperous Jiangnan area, and even Songjiang City and the capital.

In the early days, when the fleet of the Great Chu Empire was not too large, and there were not too many large-tonnage warships, this place was barely enough, but it was not enough as the size of the navy increased.

Therefore, after a detailed survey, the Great Chu Empire Navy finally carried out large-scale construction in Xiangshan, Zhejiang to create a brand new super-large military port.

Its construction scale is very large, and the construction time lasted for more than ten years. It began to be constructed in the 20th year of Chengshun, and it was used while it was being built, until today in the 38th year of Chengshun.

Xiangshan Port, which is not well-known to the outside world, has actually become the largest naval base in the Great Chu Empire. It is also the headquarters of the First Fleet and the Third Fleet under the Great Chu Empire's local fleet.

The Wusong Naval Base at the mouth of the Yangtze River, although still an important military base of the Great Chu Empire, is no longer used as a large home port base for the ocean-going fleet, but as the headquarters of the second fleet of the local fleet, the Yangtze River Fleet.

Of course, based on the importance of the Wusong Naval Base, in fact the headquarters of the local fleet is still at the Wusong Naval Base.

So now the warships that Song Erniu sees around the Wusong Naval Base at the mouth of the Yangtze River are all the warships of the Second Fleet, that is, the warships of the Yangtze River Fleet. They are mainly inland river and offshore warships. Generally, the tonnage is not large. It's just a [-]-ton offshore battleship.

If you want to see a large number of cutting-edge battleships of seven to eight thousand tons or even tens of thousands of tons, you can only go to the Xiangshan Naval Port in the south and Guangdong Hong Kong in the south.

Guangdong Hong Kong in the south is the most important southern part of the Great Chu Empire. It can even be said that it is a natural military port with the best conditions in the whole country. It has long been used as the main port of the navy. It used to be the headquarters of the Nanyang Fleet Later, the Nanyang Fleet moved south and evolved into the Indian Ocean Fleet, and the headquarters was also moved to Ceylon.

Hong Kong is used as an important naval base for the local fleet, as well as the headquarters of the local garrison fleet, the South China Sea Fleet.

Today's Great Chu Empire's navy is huge, and the number of main battleships alone has maintained a huge scale of [-] ships for a long time, including battleships, offshore battleships, cruisers, and frigates.

This has not counted the larger number of small-tonnage offshore patrol ships and inland river gunboats.

It also does not count a large number of various auxiliary warships, such as landing ships, communication ships, supply ships, medical ships, and transport ships.

The navy of the Great Chu Empire is huge, and the huge imperial navy naturally needs a large number of excellent ports as military ports.

The main military ports in the local area are Busan, Lushun, Qingdao, Wusong, Xiangshan, Zhoushan, Quanshan, Hong Kong, Guangzhou, and Lianzhou.

In Fuso there are Nagasaki, Edo, and Fukuyama.

In the Nanyang region, there are Cam Ranh Bay, Singapore, and Banten.

In further overseas regions, there are important large military ports such as Colombo on the island of Ceylon, Cape Town in southern Africa, and Jinshan Port in North America.

And there are more small and medium-sized military ports and military-civilian dual-use ports... Basically, wherever there are Chu people, there will be Chu people's warships, and Chu people's warships will naturally have Chu people's military ships. port.

It's just that many so-called military ports overseas are mostly small-scale dual-use ports for military and civilian purposes. They can only berth small-tonnage warships, and they don't have maintenance and repair capabilities. They can only carry out simple rest, replenishment and maintenance.

For example, the current Cadiz in Europe, this place is very important. The European Fleet of the Great Chu Empire Navy has planned to use this place as the home port of the European Fleet, but the infrastructure of this place is too poor, and it is currently impossible for large-tonnage warships to directly It is even more difficult to repair warships when they are docked. Even the maintenance of large-tonnage ships is more troublesome.

In order for the port of Cadiz to play the role of a true home port of the European fleet, continuous construction is required. There must be several deep-water berths, and then a ship repair yard that provides basic repair capabilities for warships must be established, or else it will be It really can only be used to avoid the storm, supply supplies, and let the sailors go ashore for a walk...

Relatively speaking, the conditions of domestic military ports are much better. For example, Wusong Naval Base is not only a place where warships can be parked, because the Songjiang Naval Shipyard is next door, which can be used to maintain, repair, and even refit and upgrade warships. .

After all, the Songjiang Naval Shipyard is currently the most powerful and largest shipyard in the Great Chu Empire. This shipyard has as many as two [-]-ton dry docks... It's a pity that these The [-]-ton dry dock is built for a new generation of warships, but after it is actually built, it can only be used to build civilian ships... because in terms of ship tonnage, military warships have been greatly surpassed by civilian ships.

The luxury liners for civilian use are all rushing towards the [-]-ton battleship, and the navy's warships are still clinging to the [-]-ton battleship, and they feel that the [-]-ton battleship is too expensive and unnecessary, so they turned around and went back to the [-]-[-]-ton shrunken version. The battleship went.

This caused the Songjiang Naval Shipyard, which spent a lot of money to expand the dry dock of [-] tons, to spray a mouthful of old blood on the Huangpu River... They thought that the navy's warships would be bigger and bigger, in order to match the navy's future shipbuilding The plan was to start work on expanding the dry dock a few years in advance. I didn't expect the dry dock to be built. The Navy said that they would not build large-tonnage battleships for the time being... they would go back and build seven to eight thousand tons of shrinking monkey battleships.

If it hadn't been for the order of multiple civilian luxury passenger ships of [-] tons and several tons, the [-]-ton dry dock built by Songjiang Naval Shipyard would have caused great waste!
The construction of such a large dry dock requires huge funds, even if the dry dock is expanded from the original [-]-ton dry dock, the cost is still very high.

If it is not used to build large-tonnage ships after completion, it is actually a waste of production capacity.

However, the fierce competition between Pacific Shipping Company, Jiangnan Shipping Company and several other ocean shipping companies has caused major shipping companies to continuously pursue large-tonnage luxury passenger ships, from [-] tons to [-] tons, to the current one [-] tons, and there are [-] tons under construction and even [-] tons of large luxury passenger ships under design.

The construction needs of these large luxury passenger ships prevent the large tonnage dry docks of large shipyards such as Songjiang Naval Shipyard from being wasted.

Otherwise, apart from the navy's battleships and the large luxury passenger ships of major shipping companies, there are really not many giant ships with a registered tonnage of more than [-] tons...

In fact, the main passenger ships or transport ships of major contemporary shipping companies are generally ships with a registered tonnage of several thousand tons, and passenger ships with a registered tonnage of [-] to [-] tons are contemporary private transport ships, whether they are passenger ships or freight. The main force of the ship.

As for the ships over [-] tons, they are all the signs of various shipping companies... It is not so much used for business as it is used as a sign to show the strength of the company and drive the general passenger ship business under it...

Therefore, in the passenger transport market these days, it is actually small and medium-sized passenger ships that make money.

Although the business of large-tonnage luxury passenger ships is also very good, you can often see the situation of being full, and it seems to be very profitable at first glance, but considering the expensive construction costs and the equally high operating costs... want to rely on luxury passenger ships to make a lot of money? Earning is actually impossible!

However, various shipping companies are still interested in large-tonnage luxury cruise ships, because what everyone values ​​is not the operating income brought by the luxury passenger ships themselves, but the improvement of the company's brand and the stimulation of other passenger transport businesses. .

At the same time, in order to increase the operating income of luxury passenger ships as much as possible, major shipping companies will also launch a series of value-added services on luxury passenger ships, that is, eating, drinking and having fun.

Ordinary passengers who take ordinary ships bring shipping companies only ticket revenue... But mid-to-high-end passengers who take luxury ocean liners of more than [-] tons bring not only ticket revenue to shipping companies, but also Revenue from many value-added services.

Because each shipping company has a variety of entertainment facilities on their luxury liners, with everything to eat, drink and have fun, and on a cross-ocean trip that can easily last a month or more, you are not afraid that you will not spend money...

The luxury passenger ships of various shipping companies rely on the value-added services on board to obtain more income.

But even so, even if the daily operation of luxury passenger ships seems to be very profitable, but considering its high construction cost, if the cost of the ship is finally converted into it... Shipping companies actually do not make much money on luxury passenger ships.

The real main force for making money is those seemingly inconspicuous small and medium-sized ships of several thousand tons.

It’s just that many ordinary people don’t know about these things, just like many ordinary people don’t know about many luxury jewelry brands in the future. The high-end series with a price of hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars are basically just for display...they can’t be sold all year round. How much revenue.

What really makes the company make money is the amount of cheap money... What it makes is the money of middle and high-income earners who imitate the life of the rich.

As for the money of the really rich?

How much are the rich in total, and how much can the rich spend all day long?

Therefore, any large-scale enterprise with a bit of pursuit and ability is too lazy to do business for the so-called rich. It is hard to make money and there are too many things.
Many passenger shipping companies in the Great Chu Empire followed the same path as the luxury jewelry companies of later generations. Luxury cruise ships were used to show off their strength. As for the real moneymakers, it was those humble ordinary passenger ships.

And Song Erniu's clothing company is similar. Song Erniu's clothing company also has finished clothing of several brands of high, medium and low. The category has also expanded from the simple canvas clothing in the past to clothing of various fabrics. Last year, it even launched high-end What about custom business wear brands?

However, the main revenue of Song's Clothing Company still comes from denim brand canvas clothing, and the canvas clothing of this brand is actually work clothes... The core competitiveness is wear-resistant, convenient for work, and cheap.

The main users of denim brand canvas clothing are ordinary people at the bottom, especially miners, workers in factories and even ordinary farmers in rural areas are important customer groups of Song's clothing company.

The majority of low-level people in the Americas like to wear the denim brand canvas clothes of Song's Clothing Company, which is why a millionaire like Song Erniu has been piled up...

If it was relying on the so-called high-end brands such as high-end woolen business wear and traditional silk Hanfu, Song Erniu would have gone bankrupt...

However, Song Erniu's clothing company is mainly engaged in the canvas clothing business, and the consumption of all kinds of canvas is increasing. At the same time, as the competition for ready-made clothing in the North American market is becoming more and more fierce, Song Erniu returned to China this time in addition to dating and showing off. , I also want to find suitable suppliers of canvas and other fabrics in the local area.

Save the steps of trading companies, and reduce the supply cost of raw materials as much as possible.

The low-end ready-to-wear market is very sensitive to prices. If you want to maintain market competitiveness, the selling price should not be too high. If the selling price cannot be high, then all costs, especially raw material costs, must be controlled.

The cost of sourcing various fabrics through trading companies these days is too high.

If a suitable supplier can be found locally and directly purchased and shipped to North America, then the cost of this piece can be reduced a lot.

In addition, Song Erniu also plans to set up a branch factory in the local area to produce denim brand clothes that are popular in the American market and popular with the local people, and promote them to the local market in an all-round way!
This time he returned to his native land, he came with ambition!

He wanted the old lady of the boss, and he wanted the local ready-made clothing market even more!

(End of this chapter)