Opening game, American Tycoon

Chapter 277 Become Bigger and Stronger (Third Update, Please Subscribe)
After returning to Nanhua from Dahua Iron and Steel Company, Zhu Xianhai happened to catch up with the launching ceremony of the new ship at Nanhua Shipyard, and went directly to the shipyard without an invitation.

"When the dragon enters the water, it's smooth sailing."

After chanting such a sentence, Zhu Xianhai threw the "Victory Wine" in his hand, and hit the bowstring of the "Zhu Rong".The large cargo ship was amid scattered cheers as the floodgates of the already flooded dock opened.Amidst the piercing whistle, the cargo ship was slowly dragged out of the dock by the tugboat.

Compared with the huge freighter, although the tugboat is not big, it is not small in strength.The cargo ship with a displacement of up to 6000 tons was easily towed out of the dock.

At the same time, the workers who participated in the launching ceremony applauded and cheered. The "Zhu Rong" was the largest merchant ship built by Nanhua Shipyard.

This ship is a mineral carrier designed by Nanhua Shipyard.

The bulk carrier ordered by Nanhua Shipping Company is mainly used to transport coal and other materials between Cape Town Colony and Nanhua.The British colony of Cape Town is the most important source of coal for Nanhua. This is also a last resort. After all, the colony of Cape Town is the nearest source of high-quality bituminous coal. As for other coal mines, they are either too far away or the quality of coal is poor. Coal mines...the output is limited!

"Sir, in the past, our ore carriers could only transport 2000 to 3000 tons of coal at a time, but now the "Zhurong" can transport 6000 tons of coal at a time, and the transportation volume has doubled. The steam engine consumes about the same amount of coal as an old ship, and can reach a speed of 1000 knots even without sails, and 10 knots if sails are used together."

Unlike when he first came to Nanhua, Liu Weiwei can not only speak fluent Chinese, but also write beautiful Chinese.As the earliest naturalized immigrant in the shipyard, Liu Weier has now become the chief engineer of the shipyard, and the facts have proved that he is a very good chief designer. He not only supervises the construction of half of the ships in the shipyard, but also teaches in the affiliated school , Training hundreds of junior technicians and apprentices.

Of course, he has the same views as Zhu Xianhai in many aspects, such as the iron-hulling of merchant ships. It was under his promotion that Nanhua eliminated the construction of wooden-hulled ships a long time ago.

"Coal is one of the largest commodities transported by shipping companies. The company has been seeking to reduce transportation costs, and to reduce costs, it must build large ships..."

Turning to look at Zhu Xianhai, Li Wei said.

"So we designed this coal carrier. It started to design after the company put forward the requirements. Yes, this is also the first large ship completely designed by Nanhua Shipyard. The merchant ships we built in the past, or More or less, it always borrows from the British prototype ship, and at most it only makes some improvements to adapt to the open sea environment, but it is different, it is completely designed and manufactured by us. In order to facilitate loading and unloading coal with a bucket, we have specially strengthened its bottom. The structure is convenient for the quick loading and unloading of the steam shovel.”

The coal carrier of this era has just got rid of the era of manual loading and unloading. There are steam shovels on the dedicated transport dock to load and unload coal, but this requires a dedicated coal carrier. The biggest advantage of the coal carrier is that it can be loaded and unloaded quickly. Of course, the corresponding It can also withstand rough handling.Strengthening the bilge is a normal operation.

"It can be made bigger."

Looking at the cargo ship that had already launched, Zhu Xianhai smiled.

"Mr. Li, according to the company's calculations, in the next three years, Nanhua's demand for coal will exceed 400 million tons, while the mainland can only supply 250 million tons at most, and there is still a gap of 150 million to 200 million tons. It can be solved by importing, whether it is imported from Cape Town or from other places, coal carriers are needed, 6000 tons is still too little, can we consider [-] tons."

"Tons of tons!"

Levi opened his eyes wide.

"Is it a [-]-ton ore carrier? It seems that there are no such large ore carriers in the world."

"Not yet, it doesn't mean that the market doesn't have this demand. Take us as an example, isn't the demand in this area very strong? Not only coal, but also iron ore, timber, etc. in the future Resources need to be imported, so we have a great demand for big ships!"

Zhu Xianhai pointed to the immigrant ship under construction in another dock.

"There are also immigrant ships. Although small ships of several thousand tons are more flexible, large ships can transport more people. This kind of immigrant ships must be at least [-] tons to start. In a word, the bigger the ship, the better."

If it is possible, we do not reject ships like the "Great Eastern". Of course, the technical capabilities of the shipyard are not yet up to the mark. It seems that the progress has been rapid in the past few years, but in fact it is basically in the " "Practice" is to train a group of skilled shipbuilders, which is the biggest progress of the shipyard in the past few years.

"This, my lord, is this the company's request?"

Liang Mingwei interrupted and asked, in the past few years, he has been focusing on the construction of warships, from the more than [-]-ton "Fubo" to the [-]-ton "Shanxi". The shipyard has ushered in the spring of building warships, and now the lord's decision is undoubtedly the spring of the entire shipyard!

"It is not the company's requirement, but the necessity of development!"

Looking at the "Shanxi" under construction in the shipyard, Zhu Xianhai said.

"Only by building large merchant ships can we accumulate experience in building large ships, and then have the opportunity to build warships with larger tonnages. You must know that European powers have already begun to build capital ships with tens of thousands of tons a few years ago. Now we can only It's just getting started!"

Building merchant ships is also for practicing hands!

Of course, it was also because of demand. After returning from the shipyard, Zhu Xianhai’s orders for two types of merchant ships arrived at the shipyard soon—a total of 10000 ships, and the project was under great pressure. The requirements for these two types of merchant ships are all above 10 tons. , the speed requirement of the ore ship is 16 knots, while that of the immigration ship is [-] knots.This speed even far exceeds the speed of European warships at the same time. Fortunately, after years of improvement and research and development, Nanhua's triple-expansion steam engine technology is extremely mature and can provide a powerful engine.Otherwise, just the speed requirement can ruin this plan.

However, in addition to the order of twenty unprecedented 7000-ton merchant ships, there is also a highly confidential order-requiring the shipyard to design a main combat ship with a displacement of about [-] tons.

The moment he received these orders, Liang Mingwei immediately felt that maybe a new era of shipbuilding was coming.

(End of this chapter)