Jagged Warlord

The first project to issue public bonds was the railway construction project from Yantai Port to Weixian.

Yantai Port is located in Zhifu Bay on the north side of Shandong Peninsula, belonging to the Yellow Sea, facing the mouth of Bohai Bay in the west, and facing the Liaodong Peninsula across the sea.The mouth of Zhifu Bay faces east and is a "U"-shaped semi-open bay. The north and east are supported by Zhifu Island and Kongtong Island, forming a natural barrier. The south of the port area is supported by Yantai City.Zhifu Bay has a wide water depth and is neither frozen nor silted. It is a good natural harbor.

In the first few years of Yantai Port's opening, the port's trade activities were basically carried out on the west side of Yantai Mountain and around the beach of Damiao (Tianhou Palace), and cargo loading and unloading was extremely difficult.Take the unloading of a large ship entering the port as an example. After the ship enters the port, it is moored in the waters west of Yantai Mountain. The cargo on the large ship is unloaded on the sampan, and then the sampan is ferried to the shore. The loading and unloading method can also be carried out in summer and autumn.In winter, the north wind is raging, and the wind and waves in the port are rough, and the waves beat the shore, and the loading and unloading production cannot be carried out at all.Even when the weather is calm, the stevedores have suffered a lot. Because of the icy sea water, the workers have to sew special leather pants (coated with tung oil) as tools to keep out the cold.

In order to change the backwardness of port facilities, Hannan (British), the Taxation Department of the Eastern Customs, proposed to build wharves and other facilities. It was agreed to approve the construction of customs office and wharf on the west side of Yantai Mountain.Only a wharf is very incomplete for a port. Without navigation facilities, it will bring many difficulties to ship navigation.In the year when the Customs Wharf was built (1865), the first lighthouse in Yantai Port began to be built, and it was completed and put into use on May 1866, 1867.

The lighthouse was originally named after Lu Xun, then the Customs and Taxation Department, and was later called Yantai Lighthouse. After the Yantai Mountain Lighthouse was completed in 1905, it was renamed Kongtong Island Lighthouse.According to records, at first, reflective fixed lights were used, with about 1000 candles, and its lights could be clearly seen from 20 miles away.Although the construction of lighthouses and wharves has brought some convenience to sea navigation and port loading and unloading, it has not fundamentally changed the backward appearance of the port, especially it has not fundamentally solved the problem of wave prevention in the port.

Before the First Sino-Japanese War, Yantai Port was the only port open to the outside world in Shandong Province, and one of the three ports in northern China that opened to the outside world.In addition, Yantai Port is located on the south bank of the Yellow Sea to the east of the Bohai Sea. It is the only ice-free port among the three northern ports and has always been an important hub for connecting the north and south coasts.Therefore, the trade status of Yantai Port was stable at that time.However, after Qingdao Port was declared a "free port" by the Germans in 1898, the trade status of Yantai Port began to shake.

Since Yantai Port has no anti-wave facilities, the customs wharf can only berth 500-ton ships, and large ships cannot berth at the wharf at all, and need to stop at the anchorage for barge operations.Whenever there is a northerly or partial northerly wind, the whole Hong Kong is shaken, and the loading and unloading of ships cannot be carried out. It often takes three or four days to wait.At that time, the daily cost of the ship in Hong Kong was about 200 to 250 yuan. For the ship owner, it not only delayed the sailing schedule, but also increased the cost.Especially in the case of more than a dozen ships berthing at the anchorage at the same time, the lack of sampans seriously hindered and delayed cargo loading and unloading.

The Shandong Peninsula where Yantai Port is located is a hilly area, and the transportation between the hinterland is extremely inconvenient, and the collection and distribution of goods mainly rely on livestock and heavy vehicles.The animals walk 100 miles a day, each carrying 200-300 jin of cargo, and thousands of animals enter and leave Yantai every day.It is more difficult to transport on rainy days with steep slopes and slippery roads between mountains.By the end of the Qing Dynasty, Yantai had three main roads leading to the hinterland: one went west, via Fushan, Penglai, Huangxian, Yexian, and Weixian to Jinan; one went east, via Mouping and Weihai to Rongcheng; one went south, via Qixia, Laiyang , Lacey arrived in Jimo.

After the completion of the Jiaoji Railway, most of the goods imported and exported from Yantai Port were diverted to Qingdao Port.Taking grass products, a famous traditional foreign trade commodity in Shandong at that time, as an example, the main production areas of grass products were Laizhou, Pingdu, and Changyi in central Shandong.Grass products from these places are concentrated in Shahe Town on the bank of the Shahe River, where they are traded.Shahe Town is 39.24 kilometers away from Haicangkou, the output port of Laizhou Bay.In the past, grass products were shipped from Haicangkou to Yantai, and then exported from Yantai Port.Since the completion of the Jiaoji Railway, these grass products have been attracted to Weixian or Jiaozhou, and transported by railway to Qingdao Port.The price difference between livestock transportation and railway transportation is too great. It is about 400 taels of silver per ton of goods transported from the mainland to Yantai, while the price of railway transportation is far lower than this price.

In 1910, Qingdao Port far surpassed Yantai Port in terms of trade volume and throughput, and Yantai Port lost its crown as the largest port in Shandong ever since.In order to ensure the trade status of Yantai Port and improve the port facilities and port transportation conditions, the Chinese and foreign business circles in Yantai proposed the construction of railways and sea dams in Yantai.

In 1914, the Yantai sea dam project design plan was approved.This plan to improve Yantai Port proposed by the consuls of various countries in Tobacco was strongly opposed by Mobil Matheson.

Mobil Co., Ltd. is the distribution organization of American Mobil Oil Company in Yantai. It is one of the earliest distribution organizations of western oil companies to enter Yantai after the opening of Yantai. It has a great influence and controls the oil market in Yantai and its surrounding areas for a long time. the first.At that time, the Americans had an oil storage depot on the North Island, and they desperately needed an exclusive transportation route to transport resources out more conveniently.Secondly, it is also convenient to refuel the ships in the port.The British focus more on their colony of Weihai. The primary task in Yantai is to keep the Eastern Customs better and faster and to attract more trade ships, so dam building is the only choice for the British. .

At that time, Mobil Corporation drew up a hand-painted plan for the construction of the Shandong Railway, including the Yanwei Railway.But the British won the "Road and Dam Controversy", and Mobil's plan could only be shelved.

The initiative to build a sea dam (breakwater) in Yantai Port was proposed by the chairman of Yantai Western Chamber of Commerce, Ai Kefu, to Chinese and foreign business circles in 1900, but this initiative did not receive widespread response.With the rapid development of Qingdao port trade and the continuous defeat of Yantai port in the competition, the contradiction of the backwardness of Yantai port quickly surfaced, forcing people to face up to this problem.

In 1909, when the Chinese business community in Yantai began to discuss the "Yanwei Railway", Sun Baoqi, the governor of Shandong, proposed to build the "Sea Dam Project". Donations of goods were used as a source of funds for the construction of the port and reported to the Qing government.At this time, the Qing government was already on the verge of collapse, and had no intention of interfering with the Yantai Sea Dam Project.