Chapter 108: 666 Planning
Chapter 108 666 Planning
There were quite a few people gathered on top of the beach to watch the new ship’s trial voyage, which included Bennett Todd and a few of his merchant friends.
He asked his friends around him, “Did you all get a good look at it? That ship doesn’t appear to have a single oar.”
“You’re not wrong, it does have not a single oar, it’s all powered by the wind.” Salt merchant Ge Dewen confirmed to him.
“I wonder if this time Lord Lord summoned us would be related to this ship.”
“What?”
“Didn’t Lord Greiman mention establishing an ocean trading company before? But at that time there were no ships suitable for ocean voyages, and then it was put on hold, and now such a ship has been built.”
“I don’t know how the performance is yet.”
The merchants were talking on the beach.
……
In the afternoon the Town Hall once again summoned the merchants of Port Fullan and the surrounding area, and sure enough Count Gleiman once again mentioned the matter of ocean trade.
“After building the second ship, I’ll conduct an ocean trial!”
Paul announced as such to the merchants.
“The destination is tentatively set for Balmoral Harbor within the Kingdom, and will sail all the way south to Horn Bay if possible.”
Balmor Harbor Bay was located at the mouth of the kingdom’s largest river, the Xena River, from where one could swim upstream until the royal capital, Jingyao Fortress.
Someone soon asked, “Lord Gleeman, will your ship be sold to us folk merchants?”
“Of course I will, the more you buy the happier I will be. But it must be after the needs of the army are met. We must have a strong navy to ensure the safety of the route, you guys don’t want to go out to sea and run into pirates, do you?”
“You all can now go ahead and place your orders at the shipyard, first come, first served oh!”
“The head of the Council of State’s Hansel will depart south to the royal capital in a matter of days, you can either go south yourselves or send a representative along with him to examine the market conditions in the south.”
After hearing this, the merchants boiled over and prepared to do something big with their fists.
Council of State under the rule of Alda and Bairdine two places, there are now more than a dozen private factories in Paul’s technical support emerged, they are either sole proprietorship, or a joint venture, the production of products including paper, porcelain and canned goods, and the coast has also established a number of salt tanning farms, the price of salt in the local and the surrounding territories has begun to reduce.
Of course, the private operators who invested in these industries made a fortune, and they were eager to expand their market reach.
To Paul’s great surprise, he was “invented” canned goods, because the memory of the information said that the use of wide-mouthed glass jars, so according to the information up, but the folk canned goods producers actually replaced the glass jars with clay jars, so that the cost is greatly reduced.
This is also a very good “innovation”, and it is true that the businessmen’s profit-seeking nature is terrible.
In order to prevent the cannery he had built from becoming obsolete, he ordered that canned goods be made in earthenware jars as well.
……
While Paul was painting a picture for the businessmen, a military meeting was taking place at the heavily guarded naval base.
Among those in attendance were Chief of Staff Schroeder, Admiral Austin, Chief of Equipment Kelly, Chief of Logistics Ron, and Bryce, the commander of the Army’s 1st Battalion, who had just arrived in Port Fullan.
“Chief of Staff, here’s the outline of the development we’ve drawn up.”
Austin respectfully handed a stack of paper to Schroeder.
Schroeder took it and looked it over carefully.
He frowned and handed the outline to the others to pass around. Bryce, the first to receive the outline, probably scanned it and said in a slightly shaky voice, “Isn’t the Navy’s appetite too big?”
“To expand to 600 men in the next two years?”
“Sixty guns of all sizes?”
“To equip at least six sailing ships?”
Bryce slammed the table and said rather indignantly, “Austin, you’re not shitting me, are you? There are only eight guns in the entire Army right now that can really be called artillery.”
Austin pointed it out to him, “You’ll have to look closely, a lot of those 60 guns are gadgets like the cyclorama.”
Bryce shook his head, “That’s too many!”
Austin said, “This is what we’ve come up with after much deliberation, and it’s been quite conservative; 600 men, 60 guns, 6 warships, or ‘Plan 666’ for short.”
He explains to the crowd, “His Excellency the Earl ordered the navy to open the shipping route to the south as soon as possible and to ensure its safety, with these few paddle sailing ships now, and hundreds of new recruits equipped with just swords and a few muskets, how can we eliminate those big and small pirates along the way?”
“The navy must ensure that at the same point in time there are four ships on patrol, one ship in training, and one ship in overhaul.”
Bryce asked, “Training is understandable, and the ship has to be overhauled after it’s built?”
“Of course it needs to!”
Austin patiently explained to the gang of dryads, “It takes a long time to build a qualified battleship, but in order to be able to equip it as soon as possible, our first batch of battleships were inevitably rushed, such as the current Hope, which only took more than 1 month, and many parts of the wood have not been adequately dried, which causes the hull to corrode very quickly, so we need to overhaul the battleship frequently. Of course, even for those qualified ships, regular overhauls are necessary.”
“And what about this ‘Marines’? Isn’t there already our Army?”
“Having a group of personnel proficient in land warfare is necessary, the pirates will not be stupid to float on the surface of the sea and let us take artillery to bombard them, seeing the situation is not good is likely to run to the land, and their lair is either on the island or in some stronghold along the coast, we have to go ashore to clear them out, and at this time to appear to notify the army to cooperate is likely to miss the opportunity of the battle. ”
Reason after reason came out of the Admiral’s mouth so that the crowd could not refute it, and at the end he added:
“I’m sure you all understand the urgent need for ocean trade in Arda nowadays, once the trade is underway, the Council of State will be able to collect more taxes, and will be able to allocate more military funds to us.”
“Not just for the navy, but for the army as well.”
That last statement was a very bright prospect.
Schroeder speculated for half a day and said to Austin, “I agree with this plan in principle, but ultimately we still need His Excellency the Count to make the final call. The current resource allocation is already very skewed towards the navy, the army has more than 1,000 people equipped with 8 cannons while the navy has only a few hundred but is equipped with 10 cannons, many army officers have a strong opinion on this.”
Austin glanced at the indignant Bryce and secretly thought, “There’s not one right in front of me.”
“Even in the face of the threat of Emden, this slant has not changed, and many of the soldiers of the recently expanded 3rd Battalion are even armed with mere sticks. Luckily, God blessed us, the Kent family has no plans to use force for the time being.”
Schroeder stared at Austin and said in a single word, “So the Navy has to come up with convincing results.”
Austin stood up and gave a military salute to the people present and said firmly:
“Please don’t worry, Lord Lord, please don’t worry, please don’t worry, please don’t worry everyone here, we are already teaming up with the Intelligence Department to investigate and organize the intelligence of the various branches of pirates, and very soon we will make a move. I guarantee that a year from now there will only be one armed force of our army on this part of the Northwest Bay.”
Schroeder stood up and patted him on the shoulder and said, “Very well, in order to support the navy’s action, the Equipment Department will build a new ordnance factory in the port of Fulan to provide the navy with the guns and gunpowder as well as all other kinds of weapons it needs nearby.”
This was really good news, Austin said with great excitement, “We will definitely not fail Lord Gleeman’s high expectations.”
Thank you for the reward from “Fate”!
(End of chapter)