Prosperous Tang Blood Blade

Chapter 557
Just when he thought that sinking the boat into the bottom of the river would prevent Chen Ying's army from going north.When Chen Ying found out that there was a shipwreck in Yongji Canal, blocking the channel, he immediately thought of abandoning the ship and going ashore, but due to the huge transportation pressure, Chen Ying had to give up this idea.

At this time, Chen Ying’s army had more than 4 mules and horses. The mules and horses were better, and they could be dealt with with some fodder, but the war horses were different. During the war, war horses could not only graze grass, but also had beans and barley fodder. Maintain the nutrition of the war horse, so as not to waste the war horse.

But war horses are no better than humans, and the appetites of these beasts are astonishing.The normal supply of fodder for a war horse is ten liters a day.If it is in a state of war, it is necessary to feed wheat bran or beans, and even eat fourteen to five liters of forage. Chen Ying has nearly [-] war horses, and he needs to eat four to five thousand shi of forage every day. Thousands of soldiers will eat six or seven thousand shi of grain every day.

Six or seven thousand stones is actually not too much. If it is converted into tons, it is about [-] tons. The key is that in this era, if you use rickshaws to transport, you need at least a thousand deer carts.

There is also a more reliable way to use water transportation.In desperation, Chen Ying ordered the soldiers, Zhang Zhongjian's subordinates, and Sun Jingchu's water transport boatmen to start salvaging the sunken ship.

When there is no mechanical salvage ship, it is not easy to salvage the sunken ship.First of all, these sunken ships are filled with boulders. First, the sand and stones are emptied at the bottom of the water, and then the sunken ships are fished up with ropes.

It took half a day and hundreds of people worked together to fish out a sunken ship, "A prodigal, what a prodigal!" Looking at a sunken ship that had just been salvaged, Chen Ying felt powerless.It seems that it has been less than a year since the water transport was built, and even the bottom boat or the side of the boat have not been corroded by water.However, such a new ship was filled with boulders, cut through the bottom of the ship, and sank into Yongji Canal.

Xia Jun did not dare to fight Chen Ying head-on. They smashed water transport or wooden piles into the river channel. Although the average water surface width of Yongji can pass [-] large ships, the artificial canal is after all a canal dug by hand, and the average water depth is also But more than three feet.For example, Chen Ying's flagship "Wan'an" has a draft of one foot and nine feet deep, which is barely passable.

However, the sunken ship sank to the bottom of the canal barely covered the cabin roof, including the cabin roof and mast on the upper deck, which were all exposed on the water.Not to mention Chen Ying's "Wan'an", even an ordinary boat can't get through.Chen Ying had no choice but to move forward slowly while salvaging the sunken ship.

"Yeah, what a prodigal!" Sun Jingchu couldn't help feeling distressed as he looked at this one-thousand-material tank boat.The cost of a thousand-grain tanker like this is not low, and it is a thousand guan.

Chen Ying suddenly had an idea: "Is there any possibility of repairing this sunken ship?"

Sun Jingchu nodded and said: "Yes, it's not too difficult to repair this ship. You guys just cut off the rudder and main mast and cut through the bottom of the ship. You only need to replace the rudder and mast with a new one, and repair the damaged one. Replace the bottom ship plank, brush with tung oil, seal the leaks, and dry in the shade, then you can use it. Although the price is not low, it is much cheaper than building a new ship!"

At this time, Chen Ying suddenly realized that he wanted to build a water transport fleet, and even if he did business in the future, he could make a lot of money.

"As long as it can be used, as long as it can be used!" Chen Ying said to Sun Jingchu: "You send people to salvage the sunken ships, and these ships will belong to you!"

"What? Give it to me?" Sun Jingchu was ecstatic as if he had won the first prize.You must know that the ships that sank into the Yongji Canal were not just two or three ships, but at least thousands.Even if only a third of these were new ships, that would be a huge fortune.Ai Ai said in the early stage of Sun Jing: "How did this happen?"

"It's nothing, how can it be an outsider's turn if it is cheap, this general has always been like this, it is good, think about your own people first!" Chen Ying said with a smile: "Some of these sunken ships are new ships, and some are dilapidated, which are not worth repairing. The boats that can be used and those that cannot be used will be dismantled, and the wood that can be used will be picked out, and the wood that is really unusable will be used as firewood!"

Sun Jingchu was very moved when he heard Chen Ying say "one of his own people".Sun Jingchu thumped and knelt on the ground and said: "My lord, don't worry, I will send more people to try to clear the channel as soon as possible!"

Just when Sun Jingchu was about to send out to speed up the search for the boat, Chen Ying stopped Sun Jingchu: "But your method of fishing the boat is too slow, and God knows it will take years until you clear these sunken boats?"

Sun Jingchu asked, "What's the master plan?"

Chen Ying vaguely remembered that when he was in school, there was a text "Fishing Iron Bulls". In the Song Dynasty, a monk named Huai Bing asked two boats to be fastened side by side, and built a frame with strong wood to straddle the boat. on two boats.He also asked someone familiar with water to dive to the bottom with a very thick rope, fasten one end of the rope to the iron ox firmly, and tie the other end of the rope to the frame between the two big boats.The preparations are done.Huai Bing asked the sailors to work together to shovel all the silt from the boat into the Yellow River.The sand in the boat gradually decreased, and the hull slowly floated up, and the rope that tied the iron ox became tighter and tighter.Relying on the buoyancy of the water, the boat pulled the iron bull out of the mud bit by bit.

The silt on the boat was shoveled away, and the iron ox left the bottom of the river.The monk was not in a hurry to fish the iron ox onto the boat, but asked the sailors to row the boat to the shore with all their strength, and then asked many people to work together to drag the iron ox to the shore in the water.

Of course, Huai Bing's method is good, but the efficiency is too low.What Chen Ying wanted to salvage was not just eight iron oxen, but hundreds of sunken ships.

However, Chen Ying didn't have to worry about installing sand and shoveling sand. First of all, he could take the method of moving the pulley block and use the labor-saving method of moving the pulley block to lift the sunken ship out of the water. On the embankment, a small pavilion is built for pedestrians to rest.

Holding a charcoal pencil, Chen Ying told Sun Jingchu the principle of the movable pulley block. According to Chen Ying's drawings, Sun Jingchu used a large ship with two thousand wheels as the mother ship of the salvage ship, and built four booms on each of the two ships. The principle is to fish the sunken ship out of the water, and then send sailors who can repair the ship to rush to repair it.

At this time, the boatman, just like the old driver of the later generations, had no need to go to the auto repair shop for some faults in the vehicle he was driving, and he could fix it by himself.They can be used for things like replacing the ship's plank and patching holes.

After experimenting, Chen took less than an hour to fish out a sunken ship from the bottom of the water.After tinkling repairs, the sunken ship was plugged and the spare rudder was installed, and the ship could be towed and sailed.Of course, if you want to undertake normal transportation tasks, you still need to go back to the shipyard for overhaul.

With the introduction of this efficient salvage method, Sun Jingchu was overjoyed.In just one day, he not only cleared the channel equivalent to more than a thousand steps, but also fished out as many as six ships.After running in, these boatmen who salvage the sunken ship have become more and more proficient in their movements and faster and faster.

After all, at this time, most of the water transport ships are mainly hundreds of feeders, usually small boats that can carry more than a hundred stones and have a total weight of less than a dozen tons.In the end, a wheel ship with [-] materials can alone undertake the salvage task of a sunken ship. Unless there is a sunken ship with thousands of stones, two wheel ships with [-] materials will cooperate to salvage.

In particular, Chen Ying ordered that whoever salvages the ship will own it. In the end, not only Sun Jingchu's people salvaged the sunken ship, but even the sailors under Zhang Zhongjian's command also went to salvage the sunken ship. After all, most of these sunken ships were repaired. What is used and what is fished out is money.

Not only the people under Chen Ying's command came to salvage the boat, but also some courageous people from both sides of Yongji Canal also joined the troop. For these boat salvagers, instead of being chased away, Chen Ying would send them Warm them up with a pot of ginger soup.

Just as Sima Qiangong said: "The prosperity of the world is for profit, and the chaos of the world is for profit." This is an irrefutable truth. From before the primitive society to the present, the word "benefit" has not been surpassed.There is no major event in the world that is not caused by profit.Animal fights, tribal wars, national disputes, business competitions, neighborhood quarrels, husband and wife fights, sons fight for glory, officials fight for power, common people fight for profit, actors fight for fame, animals fight for food, all things glory.In everything, those who started as chrysalis are fighting for their own interests, fighting for their own interests.

Because of these shipwrecks, Song Zhengben harmed the interests of countless ship bosses, and because of the huge benefits of fishing boats, countless people on both sides of the Yongji Canal who rely on water for their livelihood stood on the opposite side of Xia Guo.

Chen Ying seems to have accidentally inserted willows, tearing a rift of interests for Xia Guo.

Later, the generals of the Xia army sank the ship during the day, and left the people to fish it away at night.

With the passage of time, the speed of cleaning up the wreck became faster and faster, and it was just beginning. Chen Ying's fleet could not travel ten or twenty miles a day, but now it can basically resume the speed of traveling hundreds of miles a day.

Just when Chen Ying's troops were about to arrive in Shuiye Town, Xiangzhou, Chen Ying got a piece of news unexpectedly.The Shangshu Zuo Pushe of the Hebei Dao of the Tang Dynasty, the comforter of the Shandong Dao, Li Shentong, the King of Huai'an, the General Zuo Wuhou of the Tang Dynasty, Li Shiji, the Duke of Cao, and Li Yuan's sister, Princess Tong'an, were guarded by more than [-] people led by a small school led by Dou Jiande , and join Chen Ying.

Chen Ying really couldn't figure it out, whether it is Li Shiji or Li Shentong, they are not too important, they can't interfere with the Tang Dynasty's court movements, at least they are not light hostages, why did Dou Jiande release them back, and also No strings attached.

Li Shentong shook his head and said: "General Chen's words are wrong, Lord Xia is not without conditions!"

"What conditions does Dou Jiande have?" Chen Ying asked in surprise.

But Li Shiji said: "Master Xia said that if the two countries go to war, the disaster will not be as bad as their wives and children!"

(End of this chapter)