Chapter 2036 Buying a Ship, Building a Ship and Running Out of Money
After thinking about it, Marin decided to follow the previous plan for the non-cooperative ordinary shipowners, while building their ships at sea, and at the same time sending bandits to move their family's wealth until their nautical business could not continue.
As for the noble ship owners, Marin is not active, but he can use the normal form of commercial warfare to suppress them. For example, send a boat to compete with them. Deliberately low shipping costs to crush them x
However, considering the good relationship between the North Sea State and the Habsburg family, Marin cannot use the name of the North Sea State to engage in it. Therefore, Marin thought of a way to pretend to be a Hanseatic merchant
The rise of maritime trade in the Netherlands was accompanied by the suppression of the Hanseatic League. Originally in history, the reason why the Netherlands was able to rise in the 16th century was because the Kingdom of Denmark defeated the Hanseatic League in the conflict, causing the Hanseatic League to lose the strength and deterrence of the North Sea overlord. Coupled with the turning of the herring production area to the North Sea, it gave the Netherlands a chance to challenge the Hanseatic League. 0
But at present, the Hanseatic League is in full swing, and Denmark, which was supposed to fight the Hanseatic League, was brought down by Marin and the Hanseatic League. Therefore, the Hanseatic League's trade position in the North Sea is very stable, and its ability to suppress the maritime trade of the Netherlands is also very strong.
As for why the Hanseatic League let the maritime trade of the North Sea country be helpless, the Hanseatic League needs the support of Marin's land forces and can only let Marin develop maritime trade.
Moreover, the trade of the North Sea State is very special. He is mainly engaged in the trade of a small number of fields such as grain, salt, wine, spices and oriental specialties. Although the profit is high, the scale is not very large. Moreover, there is not much overlap with the Hanseatic League. The biggest point of conflict is the salt trade. But Marin occupied the Lüneburg Salt Mine and became a supplier of merchants from the Hanseatic League, so the Hanseatic League could only endure it.
However, for the sea trade merchants in the Netherlands, the Hanseatic League is not polite. Not to mention the small nobles of the Netherlands, Prince Philip, the owner of the Netherlands, and the Hanseatic League can not care too much. As long as they don't attack Prince Philip's merchant ships, Prince Philip will be helpless in normal commercial suppression. Why did the Hanseatic League have so many seats in the Imperial Parliament, and the Habsburg family did not dare to offend them too much. If they are angered, dozens of city representatives from the Hanseatic League will unite with the anti-Habsburg nobles to attack the emperor. As long as Prince Philip is not brain-dead, he will not easily tear himself apart from the Hanseatic League.
Therefore, under the guise of Hanseatic merchants, Marin went to the Netherlands to operate shipping and suppress the merchant ships of the Netherlands. It is really reasonable, and it makes people lose their temper
For this reason, Marin acquired the Netherland merchant ships that could be acquired, and at the same time began to deploy, targeting those ordinary Netherlandish shipowners and nobles who did not sell ships.
Then, Marin acquired hundreds of sea ships from the Netherlands. At the same time, most of the captains were hired away. As for the captain who refused to leave, Marin had to arrange for Kohler to deal with them
After that, Marin asked Kohler to arrange some spies lurking in the Hanseatic city, in the name of the ship owner, with some ships, stationed in the Netherlands, and began to compete with the ship owners of the Netherlands. Their method is very simple, that is, they arrange spies to keep an eye on those ship owners. As long as they can take some orders, they will immediately make trouble and grab orders at a price lower than the market price. If these ship owners want to regain the order and continue to lower the price, there will be basically no profit
As long as this process continues, sooner or later, those noble ship owners who refuse to sell the ship will be run out of business.
Then, forced to change careers. But this will not happen overnight, it is estimated that it will take several years.
However, even if the maritime transportation industry in the Netherlands is crushed, it is impossible to obtain enough ships for Marin to transport immigrants within a year.
In this regard, Marin had no choice but to make two plans. On the one hand, he began to consider letting some immigrants go by land. Although it takes longer, it is better than waiting stupidly. As for the high cost of transporting food by land, Marin can only admit it.
On the other hand, there is still at least a year to go before Marin decides to build a ship! x
Right now, the transport ships that Marin can use, including those bought by the Netherlands, are only more than two hundred, which is too far from the demand of 2,500.
Therefore, Marin immediately issued an order to the shipyards of the North Sea State to stop the manufacture of all warships and fishing boats, and make every effort to manufacture merchant ships. Of course, the Dover ships built for England were not affected.
Moreover, in order to take care of the fishing industry, some newly-built merchant ships will be modified to make them suitable for fishing and become dual-purpose ships that can be used for both commercial and fishing purposes. In other words, it can be used for pelagic fishing.
In addition, the shipyard in Long Island, New York, will also send an order to suspend the manufacture of large warships and instead make full efforts to manufacture 250-class merchant ships. In America, there is an inexhaustible supply of red oak for shipbuilding. Moreover, the red oak that can be used to build ships immediately after drying is piled up like a mountain. It is not difficult to just change the shipbuilding specifications.
And the thousands of shipbuilders brought back from the Daming Treasure Shipyard, after long-term training, are now adapted to the manufacture of European-style keel sailboats. Thousands of people work together, and a group of hundreds of people can manufacture dozens of merchant ships at the same time. According to the efficiency of the Beihai State's division of labor and cooperative shipbuilding method, dozens of merchant ships can be produced in three to four months. More than three rounds can be built a year, and at least a hundred or more, or even 200 ships can be built.
But that's not enough!
200 ships plus more than 200 local ships, there are more than 400 ships, which is still far from 2,500 ships
What to do? After thinking about it, Marin had to go to Spain and Portugal to purchase ships first. The sailor captain doesn't need yours, but it's still okay to buy your boat. Although it is said that the Spanish and Portuguese carracks and caravels are Atlantic ships, they are not very suitable for the semi-inland Baltic Sea. However, it can be used barely.
Venetian galleys are not considered, why because galleys require too many sailors!
Generally, a carrack sailing ship, such as a ship of more than 100 tons that Columbus explored in America, can be operated by only 40 sailors. But if it's a galley, like the Calais, with 150 oars, you need at least 150 oarsmen. In addition to the captain and the sailor who controls the sail, the boat is full of paddlers and sailors alone, and they are pretending to be a ghost immigrant
Therefore, Marin can only consider buying Carrack and Caravel sailboats. But the same problem is that Spain and Portugal are not too bad, it is impossible to sell you all the ships. Therefore, Marin estimated that if he could buy 200 ships, it would be the best.
In addition, he also plans to order 200 ships from the shipyards of the two countries, and strive to deliver them in one year. In this way, half of the ship demand will be met.
But Marin felt that it was not enough, so he planned to build a new shipyard to build ships!
However, the wood for shipbuilding is easy to deal with, but it is difficult for shipbuilders. It takes at least two or three years to train a qualified shipbuilder. This is still a genius, an ordinary apprentice, and even 7 years.
After much deliberation, Marin finally thought of the source of the shipbuilders, the Netherlands and England.
As mentioned before, more than a dozen shipyards in Amsterdam were acquired by Marin and turned into furniture factories. However, those skilled shipbuilders are still there, but they have changed to making furniture.
There are more than a dozen shipyards, each with hundreds of shipbuilders. Add up, one or two thousand people is no problem.
What Marin needs to do is to pull these shipbuilders to build ships. As long as there is wood, these shipbuilders can resume work at any time. As for the issue of abolishing Dutch shipbuilding, don't rush to build ships first, and then make furniture.
On the other side of England, there are also many shipyards. There are at least tens of thousands of shipbuilders across the country. As long as Marin is willing to give money, he will pay a high price. Getting them to deliver 300 boats in a year should be no problem.
This calculation can solve thousands of ships. As for the gap of four or five hundred ships, Marin had nothing to do. Big deal, pull again. Or, the rest of the batch went overland instead.
However, in this way, the money spent would be astonishing. Marin felt that he was going to be poor again. Thousands of ships, even if each ship costs 1,000 gold coins, it will cost millions of gold coins! Buying at a premium and rushing to build a ship are even more expensive. One million or hundreds of thousands of gold coins cannot be lost, and the total price may exceed 2 million.
Although the Beihai country uses grain to cash in cash, 2 million gold coins is a trivial matter. But the problem is that Marin has to hide these grains and cannot take them out for cash. Moreover, even if he wants to cash out, the outside world may not have so much currency to buy. The shortage of gold and silver plagued Europe until the American gold and silver mines were developed. In addition, the food stored in Beihai is going to be used to feed those immigrants
So, if I am so short of money, should I go to get some money to spend, for example, go to the Aztec Empire to grab some gold and silver?
It seems that that bastard Cortez robbed mountains of gold and silver in the Aztec Empire. And Marin sent craftsmen to help the Aztec Empire mine silver mines before. Now that a few years have passed, there should be a lot of gold and silver in the Aztec Empire.
The Rise of the Emperor