Rise of the 1630s South America

Chapter 387 Lake West ([-])

"The order from above is very clear, that is to advance from your side to the mountains and set up a new settlement to accept the large number of incoming oriental immigrants." Petrov lit a pipe and said slowly.

"In the mountains? Which mountain? The mountains are full of Guarani people! If you want to change me, I will definitely not go." The captain of the Ming production team from Henan shook his head and said: "The children fought with those Guarani barbarians. After two years, although the injury was minor, I was tired, and now I just want my wife and children to rest on the bed."

"Our village is not the first batch." Petrov exhaled a milky white smoke ring, and said, "I heard that the Dafeng Fort came first. The first bureau of the Communication and Construction Bureau has sent people to come to the front station, and now there are already people there." About a thousand South African laborers came up the river to build settlements."

"Sure enough, it's going up the Kamaquan River. From here to the mountain, there are forests everywhere, so people can leave on both sides of the river." The production team leader said: "But haven't we explored that river? Although the river course It is quite wide, but only slightly larger boats can be used during the wet season, and a small flat-bottomed boat of more than ten tons can be used on normal days. Moreover, many places in the river channel are seriously silted. If someone is sent to clear the silt, the project will The quantity is huge."

"No matter how large the project is, it is easier than building a road or railway on an undeveloped forest and grassland." Petrov said, "Also, I heard that a dredger came from the south a while ago and dredged the The river is very efficient."

In fact, as Petrov said, since the second half of last year, the Hyundai Special Shipyard started building a newly designed dredger not long after building a 1150-ton steam engine sailboat.The whole body of the dredger is made of new Huaxia red sandalwood. It is fat and big, with a length of 42 meters, a width of 11 meters, and a draft of 1.6 meters.

The principle is to install a rotatable steam boom above the bow deck—similar to the steam boom used on the wharf. When digging the silt, the iron grab connected to the pulley at the top of the boom by a hinge is lowered. .The grab bucket sinks into the bottom of the water to grab the soil due to its own gravity.At this time, the workers on the ship will start the steam winch, pull the hinge fixed on the grab bucket, make the grab bucket tightly closed, and then rise out of the water.

After the grab is hoisted out of the water by the steam winch, the workers operating the steam boom will turn the steam boom into the mud tank amidships (or the accompanying mud barge), dump the mud into it, and then turn back to the excavation site, For the next dredging job.This kind of ship has shallow draft, high efficiency, and strong adaptability. It can dig more than 40 cubic meters (about 120 tons) of silt per hour, and can work 24 hours a day (when the machine does not break down). The efficiency is comparable to 2500- 3000 river diggers.

In order to prevent the ship from accidents during work—mainly the ship’s rollover, the sides of the ship are specially built into a slope shape, and the bottom iron is loaded inside to lower the center of gravity of the ship and limit the roll of the ship as much as possible. Within 5 degrees.In this regard, the East Coast people have learned a lesson.

Before this dredger, Hyundai Factory once manufactured a dredger, but the center of gravity of that ship was too high, and there was no anti-rolling design. When the grab bucket was dredging on the side of the ship, it happened to be Swells and strong winds hit at the same time, resulting in the tragedy of the ship capsizing.The Ministry of Communications later salvaged the ship at a huge cost, but in the end it still dismantled the ship, and the loss was heavy.Therefore, when designing the new ship this time, the technicians of Hyundai Factory paid special attention to the safe swing performance of the ship. In addition to the above measures, four positioning anchors weighing 500 kg were installed on each of the four corners of the ship. Further stabilize the hull.

The ship is powered by a 62.8-horsepower Popeye series steam engine, propelled by a single propeller, and has a speed of 3 knots. It has now entered the Dafeng Fort at the entrance of the Kamaquan River and started dredging operations.Wei Hua, the director of the Hyundai Plant, and Zhang Xiao, the chief engineer, also accompanied several officials from the Ministry of Communications to watch the work of the dredger, but of course they did not sit on this dredger named "Qingtang Army No. 1". On the dredger—they didn't want to be drowned because the ship turned over, but sat on a 1200-ton immigration ship "Rocket" that had just been completed.

In the second half of last year, after recruiting a new group of personnel, Hyundai Factory expanded a new berth, and then started construction of the third ship dedicated to immigrants.It was just completed a while ago, and then it was pulled out together with this dredger to the lake for trial sailing.Now the three berths of the factory are basically full. Except for one berth which is undergoing steam technical transformation for a certain main warship, the other two berths are currently launching a new 1150-ton steam engine sailing ship. It will be almost the end of May. It can be completed, and then join the sequence of the Blackwater Temporary Dispatch Fleet to transport immigrants to the East.

"The speed of dredging is still very slow." Wei Hua looked at the grab of "Qingtang Army No. Xiao said: "I remember that modern dredgers can dig 1-120 cubic meters of silt per hour with the same volume of grab bucket. The speed is much faster than this."

"Boss, don't you look at how powerful the diesel engines are for those ships in later generations." Zhang Xiao whispered helplessly, "It's pretty good that we can make such a high-output steam engine with a cylinder of this volume. There is really not much room for improvement, unless the safety standards are lowered, or the steel factory simply solves the material problem of the cylinder wall for us. Otherwise, this Popeye steam engine will be like this. Let’s make do with it, I see Qingtang The army is not bad, it can dig forty to fifty cubic meters of silt per hour, if it works well, fifty or sixty is not out of the question, it can withstand the workload of thousands of people."

With a muffled sound of "bang", a mass of silt fell into the mud hold behind the bow, and there were a few small fish jumping around unwillingly in the silt.After unloading the silt, the dredger boom rotates to the original working position under the drive of the steam engine, and then the grab bucket slowly falls into the river water by its own weight when the hinge is loosened, and grabs the silt again.

"The grab bucket has a mud-grabbing volume of 2 cubic meters, a rock-grabbing volume of 1.5 cubic meters, a working radius of 9 meters, a maximum digging depth of 20 meters, and can carry 15 people. It can withstand swells with a height of no more than 1 meter." Zhang Xiao continued. He explained next to him that these data had been read many times during the design, and he naturally came at his fingertips at this time: "It takes three to four months for a ship to almost dredge the water from Dafeng Fort to the upstream to be built. The waterway of this section of the river in the new settlement of the city. The downstream waterway is wide and deep, so the workload is actually not that big. After dredging, the water depth of the less than 3 kilometers downstream of the Kamaquan River can basically reach 72 meters. As mentioned above, there is no problem with sailing in wet season. Even in dry season, if it is a [-]-ton inland river flat-bottomed transport ship that is currently being used in large quantities, it should not be a big problem to go to the central channel. All in all, this dredger is for us Opening up the Outback has helped a lot.”

What Zhang Xiao said was not nonsense.According to the inland area development plan formulated by the Executive Committee, after the arrival of new immigrants, they will advance to the inland area from the north and the south.The Duck Lake Basin in the north is mainly opened up to the hilly area in the west, while in the south it is mainly to cross the West Ridge and advance towards the Rio Negro.As for the expansion to inland areas, it is naturally most convenient to set up settlements along the river, firstly because it is convenient to fetch water for irrigation, and secondly because it is more efficient to transport supplies if there are rivers.

At present, there are many rivers in China that need to be dredged and widened, such as the Kamakuang River in front of you and the Xiaoxi River in the south; the Pingan River, Yakui River, and Meihe River in the north; the Lianghu Canal connecting two large lakes; the Meilin River from Meilin Port to Milin Lake , the Chewi River near Fort Chewi; the Great Fish River, known as the golden waterway, and the Yi River, which is of great significance to the people of the East Coast.These rivers carry a certain amount of sediment in the river water from the upstream, which makes the river bed gradually rise, which is very unfavorable for sailing boats.Therefore, regular desilting is very important.

However, considering the current shortage of human resources in the East Coast Republic of China, this is very unrealistic. Under such circumstances, dredgers came into being.The working efficiency of this kind of boat is comparable to that of thousands of river workers, and when digging silt, there is no need to wait until the winter dry season to dam the upstream river, and it can work at any time; It is enough to drive in. It is definitely a river channel and port dredging tool tailored for people on the east coast. It has inestimable significance for domestic shipping and flood control.

"Sure enough, technology is the primary productive force. Especially for us, this statement is not bad at all." After reading it for a long time, a bureaucrat of the Ministry of Communications said with relief: "I originally wanted to recruit labor from South Africa to clear the silt. , Now that there is the Qingtang Army, I don’t think it is necessary. In this case, I think the ships transporting materials to the upstream stronghold can be replaced with larger 72-ton ships, which is twice as efficient as the 35-ton ships. Woolen cloth."

Wei Hua and Zhang Xiao looked at each other and smiled. It's really not easy to please these gentlemen from the Ministry of Communications.Now, a new settlement is being built at the upper reaches of the Camaquan River and the northwest of Krystal Town, and the construction of castles, houses, aqueducts, etc. has already started.After the new batch of eastern immigrants came, the first batch of 1000 people from the east coast would move over to settle in the wasteland and push their territory westward little by little.

(End of this chapter)