Chapter 6: Port Construction (Part 3)

Finally, they had arrived.

Dong Shiye gazed at the barren sandy beach less than 300 meters away, the green groves of trees. The autumn morning sun was warm and comfortable. Damn it, God, I’ve finally come to ancient times—why did I want to come to ancient times?

This question flashed through his mind and was then pushed aside by the person behind him, who jabbed him in the waist. The deck was noisy and crowded. Although there was a pier, it was not the Shiliupu passenger terminal with comfortable, covered gangways with handrails. Besides the straight-up-and-down metal gangways, there were also large rope nets. As the former president of his school’s military enthusiast association, Dong Shiye was naturally reminded of photos of the Normandy landings. American GIs had also climbed down these things to the landing craft to liberate Europe, and to care for the women of various countries along the way. Looking at the pictures back then, he hadn’t thought much of it. But now, standing on the undulating deck and looking out, below the ship’s rail, which was several stories high, on the dark blue sea, the floating pier and the small boats bobbed up and down. Just looking at them for a moment made him dizzy, and his legs began to tremble.

The floating pier was not large enough, so many people had to be transferred to shore by the few rowboats on the ship. People climbed down the rope nets to the boats. From time to time, people used long ropes to lower various oddly shaped packages from the deck. Cries of “Don’t panic, don’t panic, watch the boat!” and “Don’t come up, the boat is going to sink!” were endless. It seemed everyone was in the same mood: get ashore quickly and start their own era.

At this moment, the first accident occurred. A fat man slipped while passing luggage, his head hit the ship’s rail first, and then he fell into the sea. The deck and the sea immediately erupted: “Xi Yazhou has fallen into the water…” “Quick, save him…”

In the midst of the chaos, the high-powered loudspeaker was constantly roaring, “C0071, C0077, C0081… logging mission!”

C0081? Wasn’t that his own group? Dong Shiye looked at his armband.

“That’s our group,” said a dark-skinned, sturdy man with a sapper shovel tied to his backpack, leaning lazily against the ship’s rail. “My name is Liu Zheng…”

They exchanged names. Since they were in the same group, they were now comrades in the same trench.

“Logging?” That was a new one. Although Dong Shiye was also an outdoor travel enthusiast, had looked at plant identification guides, and had chopped firewood, he had never held a felling axe before.

“Never done it,” Liu Zheng said with a bitter smile. “FML! I clearly reported my specialty as wilderness exploration! Is logging considered wilderness exploration?”

“And we don’t have any tools!”

“Don’t worry about the tools, they must have prepared them. The problem is, logging is a skilled job, and it’s very dangerous! Are there any professional loggers here?”

The people in the nearby groups who had been called all had grim faces. The answer was obviously no.

Over here, they had just fished out the military group’s leader, Xi Yazhou, and sent him to the ship’s infirmary. Over there, a man-made blockage had occurred.

Since morning, after Meng De, with a combination of bluffing and a massive stroke of luck, had sailed the ship into the harbor and securely dropped double anchors at the deep-water berth marked by the landing reconnaissance team, his status in the eyes of the Executive Committee had been upgraded from a half-baked expert to a full-fledged one. He had become the chief consultant to the landing commander, Ma Qianzhu.

He was now in command of the entire fleet’s unloading operation. This was not only because he had arranged the loading, but also because loading and unloading a general cargo ship is a highly technical job. For a 10,000-ton general cargo ship carrying 5,000 tons of cargo, whether using ship cranes or shore cranes, in a well-equipped port, 200-500 tons of cargo can be unloaded per hatch per day, and the ship can be completely emptied in 4-6 working days.

Because Meng De knew that the transmigrators had no practical experience and could not compare with dockworkers in terms of strength and skill, he had not spared any expense on packaging during loading. All kinds of general cargo were packaged into consolidated units.

A common example of consolidated cargo is the container, but due to the size limitations of the Fengcheng and the lack of port equipment—lifting containers in a port with no professional loading and unloading equipment is a challenging task—only a small number of containers were carried on the Fengcheng.

The most commonly used consolidated cargo for general cargo ships is the use of pallets, net bags, and bulk bags to group scattered general cargo and bulk goods. Although not as advantageous as containers, it still greatly facilitates the loading and unloading of various bulk and general cargo.

The Fengcheng had 4 sets of derricks and 8 winches, with lifting capacities of 3, 5, and 10 tons, including one 60-ton heavy-lift derrick. Lifting most of the cargo was not a problem. Operating the cranes was also a skilled job. Fortunately, thanks to the three months of sailor internship, even if they hadn’t eaten the pork, they had seen the pig run. They managed to get all the cranes running, albeit slowly and stiffly. The cranes swung back and forth several times, scaring the transmigrators queuing to disembark on the deck. They all dodged the cranes, and for a time, the order was chaotic. No matter how much Du Wen shouted about “carrying forward the revolutionary heroic spirit, fearing neither hardship nor death” over the loudspeaker, it had no effect.

After about ten minutes of fumbling, the first cargo pallet was finally lowered onto the floating pier after hanging in the air for a long time. The transmigrators, still shaken, did not spare their applause, and cheers erupted.

Less than 15 minutes after the applause, the people on the ship were all dumbfounded. The crane operators had only been focused on unloading the cargo onto the floating pier. In a short time, they had completely filled the pier space under the cranes. Not only could the people queuing to disembark not get down, but most fatally, they had forgotten to first lower the 3-ton and 10-ton Dongfanghong forklifts that were strapped to the deck. The pallets that had been lowered each weighed over a ton. The people below could neither drag them nor lift them.

Now it was a real mess. Meng De ran back and forth on the deck, his forehead covered in sweat. The Executive Committee had just added another blade to his name, and now he was back to square one.

Ma Qianzhu’s mind turned. He ordered the landing craft to be brought over, the forklifts to be loaded onto it, and ferried to the shore first. Then they would drive back to the floating pier from the shore. This roundabout solution finally solved the unloading blockage caused by the procedural error.

The unloading department redesigned the unloading route, painting directional lanes with different arrows on the jetty to ensure that one vehicle could come and one could go at the same time, greatly improving the unloading efficiency. This arrangement was just like the roads in China, completely ignoring the basic rights of pedestrians—no one dared to compete with the forklifts for the road on the narrow, floating jetty. Not to mention, there were more than a dozen small diesel-powered farm vehicles, originally destined for export to Vietnam, driving back and forth on it, demonstrating their rugged durability and superb overloading capacity, running all day on the swaying floating bridge and the gravel-strewn beach. The transmigrators who drove the farm vehicles on the beach those few days were later specially permitted to embroider a patch on the sleeves of their uniforms: the “Farm Truck Assault Badge.”

Dong Shiye, following the crowd, trembled as he climbed down the rope net, transferred to a small boat, and finally set foot on solid ground. For a moment, he felt dizzy. He followed the others to the registration point to register and store his backpack. After his ID card was scanned, he was issued a felling axe. This thing was big and heavy. He didn’t even know how to hold it and ended up carrying it on his shoulder like a dwarf.

The few groups assigned to logging were all at a loss. The tools they received were a motley collection, from large saws and felling axes to fire axes from the ship. There was a bit of everything, but not a single person knew how to actually use them.

While they were at a loss, a burly man came from the registration office. He wore a pair of black military-style high-top rubber boots, carried a large travel bag in one hand, and a large axe in the other. He walked over majestically.

“Brothers,” he roared, “My name is Wu Kuangming, the leader of the Lumber Group. Everyone, follow me.”

After landing, the Executive Committee had dispatched a second wave of resource exploration teams composed of military group and agriculture and forestry personnel to survey the estuary area. The conclusion was that the timber resources here were very scarce. There were some tall trees along the coast, but for the sake of windbreak and sand fixation, such natural forests should not be cut down. Further up the river, they found that there were few mature forests along the banks of the Wenlan River. Small, miscellaneous groves were everywhere, but they were basically not suitable for timber and were only useful for firewood and building sheds.

In the end, they decided to cut down the tall trees in the mangrove forest at the estuary. The mangrove forest along the estuary and the bay was quite dense, with a complete range of vegetation, from shrubs and small trees to large trees. Especially at the edge of the estuary, near the sandy beach, there were patches of Bruguiera sexangula trees over 10 meters tall, which were relatively easy to cut down. So, the first logging site was set up here.

Although it was said to be relatively easy to harvest, they still had to walk into the semi-swampy mangrove flats. Small sandbars crisscrossed the water, covered with various mangrove plants. The branches and leaves were entangled, and there was a musty, rotten smell, which made everyone a little hesitant.

Wu Kuangming had someone bring over several boxes of high-top rain boots and ordered everyone to put them on.

“We’ll be going in to log in a moment. Everyone, be careful,” he instructed. “Absolutely do not go deep into the forest. There are no paths inside. If you fall into a tidal creek, we won’t even know where you are to shout for help!”

With that, he led the team wading through the water. He stood next to a Bruguiera tree, holding an axe, and said to the crowd, “Trees are good things. Anyone who has played Age of Empires knows that—what, you only play StarCraft and Red Alert? Then what are you doing here with us? Hurry up and jump into the sea and swim back. When you cut a tree, be careful. You need to swing the axe at an angle, first from top to bottom, then from bottom to top. When the tree is about to fall, you must shout! When you are cutting a tree, you must always listen for others’ shouts! Don’t get crushed by a tree yourself—if it smashes your head and you die, that’s one thing. But don’t injure your spine and end up paralyzed. The first disability certificate of this new world will be yours. I’m going to get some rope now. I’ll teach you all how to drag the logs with ropes later.”

Wu Kuangming went to the Planning Commission’s office point and asked them to allocate a coil of rope and some hooks to the forest. Over here, the people from the construction group were already waiting impatiently for the new timber at the felling site.

“When will we get the wood?” The guy named Zhuo Tianmin seemed very anxious. He was in his thirties, fair-skinned and gentle, looking like a family man trying to make a living, not much like a construction foreman.

“What’s the rush? We haven’t even gathered enough logs to use as rollers to get the containers ashore yet. Do you think this is Age of Empires, where we just click the mouse and swing our axes and get +10 wood?”

“It should be +12 wood. You just upgraded the rope technology, haha…” The logging group burst into laughter.

“I have +100 wood technology,” he said. He magically pulled out a large, powerful chainsaw, the kind used in Texas Chainsaw Massacre, from his travel bag, gave it a heroic pull, and with a roar of the motor, it began to spew blue smoke. Wu Kuangming grinned savagely, approached a large tree, and swung down hard.