""Okay.//www.//Britain is now at the end of - how should I say it - a chain of running buckets made up of ships. This is the position it has always been in. Now, the buckets are always being beaten.

Not to mention, the tonnage of British merchant ships is increasing rapidly. But the rate of increase is unstoppable.

To meet domestic demand? How many tons of merchant ships do we need to supplement now?"

The officer yawned secretly.

"Victor has heard a lot about this secret in London, so he already knew it."

"good."

"Good. Then you know the curve is going up. In this war, nothing else matters. Britain will soon run out of fuel and food, and then it will be finished. Once its machinery stops turning,

As soon as its battleships are not burned and its people are left without food, the British government will collapse. There is no other way out."

"Is there no other way out? My country still has plenty of fuel and food - and steel and shipyards - and we are open to foreign trade."

The banker smiled coldly.

Another doctor interrupted and said:

"Now the growth rate of supplies consumed every day has exceeded our transportation capacity, and the number of merchant ships that need to be replenished exceeds our shipbuilding capacity. Did you know?"

"I know that,"

said a colonel.

"Except for coal and iron, Britain needs to import everything else. Without enough merchant ships, it is impossible to win this war."

The silence in the room lasted for a long time, and then a vague rustling sound came from deep in the chair.

"That won't happen. Wait until the first month and we will have new merchant ships."

“Buy from Americans?”

"China!……""

"The New York Times Made in China"

After any merchant ship sails into Lianyungang Yingyoumen, they often don’t have much direct impression of this large port. Except for the scale of the wharf, which is the largest in China, I am afraid that it is also the equipment such as tower cranes and so on.

Apart from the 6 kilometers of pier shoreline, there seems to be nothing to attract people’s attention.

But if the ship enters the port at night, when they pass the Liandao seawall, they will be surprised to see that the area around Haitoujiao is brightly lit, half of the sky is illuminated white by the lights, and the exposed

On more than a dozen slipways, the arc light of the electric welding flashed, and the sparks of the welding were like fireworks, falling from both sides of the merchant ship under construction.

This is Yingyoumen Shipyard, now the largest shipyard in Asia. Although the shipyard occupies a small area, this shipyard with twelve large slipways and six large docks has great shipbuilding capabilities.

, but it is ranked first in Asia, and even compared with other shipyards in the world, it is not inferior.

Every day, thousands of tons of steel plates are transported from Lianyun Iron and Steel Company to Yingyoumen Shipyard. After the steel is processed into components in the workshop, it is towed to the slipway by a flatbed trailer and is hoisted by a crane.

Large components are assembled on the slipway. In fact, Yingyoumen Shipyard is more like an assembly plant, with only cranes and slides.

Just two years ago, Yingyoumen Shipyard started a revolution, a revolution in the shipbuilding industry, that is, using the "building blocks" originally provided by Li Zicheng and some technical information to begin trying to assemble "Ford-style large-scale assembly"

"Production" is applied to the field of shipbuilding. First, Yingyoumen Shipbuilding draws out tonnage drawings. At the same time, the shipyard's technical department also produces precise models of various parts. Take the engine room as an example. The model is so detailed that it even includes the number of boiler water pipes and the direction of cables.

Achieve a level of accuracy.

These precision models were produced for a revolutionary, new way of shipbuilding. The experimental cargo ship was divided into several different departments, such as bow, cargo hold, mid-hull, stern, bridge, engine room,

The main engine, boiler, etc. are subcontracted and built by 11 companies in Lianyungang. Finally, they are sent to the shipyard on wheeled flatbed trailers and assembled together with the help of cranes and traveling cranes.

Finally, in July of the third year of the Republic of China, the first experimental merchant ship started construction. It only took three months to complete the construction of three merchant ships. And that was just a test. According to the shipyard's speculation, they could build it in a shorter time.

Within, it even takes only one month to complete the construction of a merchant ship.

At this time, various countries were building merchant ships with excellent quality and expected service life of up to 30 years according to traditional shipbuilding techniques. However, their construction cycle was too slow, generally taking more than 9 months, or even more than a year and a half.

After the war broke out in Europe, Britain and France faced the shortage of their own shipping capabilities. In December of the third year of the Republic of China, they successively sold hundreds of thousands of tons of goods sold to China Ocean Shipping Company before the war at three times the pre-war price.

Merchant ships, and even so, were unable to meet the rapidly surging transportation demand.

At this time, the London branch of the ** Company submitted a report to the British Admiralty: "...a merchant ship that can meet the basic requirements for transportation, but with slow speed, crude equipment, and rough structure can be urgently produced.

Judging from these two requirements and mass production, the design of this ocean-class cargo ship can be said to be practical. In an emergency, this kind of cargo ship can be built, and of course it can still be used in peacetime."

At first, the British Admiralty refused. They had entrusted American shipyards to build cargo ships for them. At this time, the British shipyards were ramping up their efforts to produce battleships, cruisers, destroyers and escort ships. Therefore, they put their hope in the United States.

In terms of shipyards, the huge shipbuilding capabilities of American shipyards are used to meet the needs of the United Kingdom. Not only the United Kingdom, but France also places its hopes on American shipyards.

Faced with orders for merchant ships of up to one million tons, almost every shipyard in the United States from the east coast to the west coast has received orders, ranging from cargo ships of 10,000 tons to cargo ships of 10,000 tons. For a time, the shipyards and slipways of American shipyards were full of orders.

Merchant ships from Britain, France and other countries were under construction, but the demands of the war exceeded everyone's imagination.

By May 1955, the gap between the British mainland's material needs and transportation capacity exceeded one million tons for the first time, and France also exceeded two million tons. At this time, the American shipyards were already saturated, and the shipyards did not dare to accept any more.

For new orders, because they could not guarantee to provide ships within the specified time, Britain and France then set their sights on the Far East - Japanese shipyards became the first of Britain and France.

But for Japan, which had just lost a large number of merchant ships and warships, they urgently needed to replenish their merchant fleets even more than Britain and France. In the end, the inspection teams of the two countries purchased a dozen ships from the China Ocean Shipping Company and were salvaged by China.

While repairing Japanese merchant ships, they also inspected Chinese shipyards. As a try, the British placed an order for five 10,000-ton ships to Takayumon Shipyard. The contract stipulated a delivery period of twelve months.

Thirty-two days later, the first 10,000-ton ship was launched and delivered. In the next fifteen days, Yingyoumen Shipyard completed the production of five 10,000-ton ships. Although the British still did not trust "welded merchant ships"

, but they were still stunned by the shipbuilding capability of "building five ships in forty-seven days, with a deadweight tonnage of 7,157 tons and a cargo carrying capacity of 10,170 tons."

When the first 10,000-ton ship "Guanfu" was fully loaded with supplies and arrived at Southampton Port in England from Lianyungang, at the meeting of the Admiralty, the captain used his credibility to guarantee that "this is an extremely sophisticated merchant ship."

Subsequently, after a month of inspection, the British Admiralty finally recognized the "official-class" work. The British Admiralty ordered 60 10,000-ton merchant ships from Yingyoumen Shipyard. The total value of the 60 cargo ships ordered by the British was 10,000.

GBP.

The cargo ship order with a total value of more than 10,000 taels is the largest industrial order in China's history. Not only that, this order alone is enough to consume 50ml of Lianyun Iron and Steel Company's steel output, and the specified delivery date is

For ten months, ten months, the turnover was 20,000 yuan, and the net profit exceeded 50%. The words "ships make money" immediately resounded throughout the country. And then the arrival of fifty 10,000-ton cargo ships from France

The order immediately made Yingyoumen Shipyard a well-known shipyard in the world, and it was also the shipyard with the largest number of orders.

It was also from that time that Yingyoumen Shipyard expanded its recruitment while working day and night to build merchant ships in order to complete orders from Britain and France before the contract expired.

"Prime Minister, last week, a delegation from the U.S. Department of Commerce visited the shipyard. They placed an order with us for fifteen 10,000-ton ships. The delivery date is June next year, plus four ships from Japan and two ships from Thailand.

There are three ships in Brazil, five in Argentina, and five in Italy. Now the shipyard has orders for 160 10,000-ton ships. If the shipyard does not expand, these orders will be enough for the shipyard to produce until the end of next year!"

In the office building of the shipyard, Wei Pingtao reported to the Prime Minister's Office, which was inspecting the shipyard, that in the eyes of outsiders, Li Zicheng may be the prime minister, but in this city, everyone knows that this little Prime Minister Li is everything in this city.

developers and business owners, Yingyoumen Shipyard, is also one of them

"Expanding the shipyard?"

Frowning slightly, Li Zicheng looked out the window. From the window, he could clearly see a beach. This shipyard building was built on Haitoujiao. In fact, Haitoujiao is a dividing line. South of Haitoujiao is the reclamation line.

, a deep-water port can be filled in, and with the help of seawalls, the shipyard coast can be dug out through deepening, but if it is to be expanded

"Prime Minister, the net profit of the shipyard this year exceeds 10 million yuan, and building a shipyard only requires an investment of 5 million yuan. Considering other investments, it will not exceed 8 million yuan at most. It is undoubtedly appropriate to expand the shipyard now..."

When Wei Pingtao used the shipyard's profits to try to lobby the prime minister or chairman, Li Zicheng looked at him and asked.

"Taoping, do you think there is still room to build a new shipyard in Lianyungang?"

A rhetorical question made Wei Pingtao suddenly fall silent. Lianyungang no longer had a suitable coastline to build a shipyard. In fact, in northern Jiangsu, only the more than ten kilometers of coastline in Lianyungang was suitable for building ports and shipyards. Northern Jiangsu was once the Yellow River.

At the seaport, there are a large number of dark sands and sandbars not far from the coast, which limits the use of the coast.

"But, Prime Minister, the profit of one ton of steel is now 97 yuan, while the profit of one ton of merchant ships is 20,075 yuan. Now the third phase of the steel company's project has begun, and the second phase of the project is nearing completion. By the end of next year, after the completion of the third phase of the project,

The steel company will produce 3 million tons of steel. If the steel is exported, the profit will be only 30 million yuan. But if 2 million tons of it are used for shipbuilding, the shipyard's profit will reach 40 million yuan. The profit of industrial manufactured products is much higher than that of industrial products.

Profit from raw materials.”

In fact, there are more reasons in Wei Pingtao's mind to lobby the Prime Minister. For example, the price of iron ore has increased several times, but it is only 8 yuan, and coke is only 4 yuan, while pig iron is close to 86 yuan, and the profit is more than 70

If it is made into crude steel, the profit can reach 80 yuan. If it is made into steel, the profit will be close to 100 yuan. This is a very simple formula.

"So, Taoping, do you have any good suggestions?"
Chapter completed!