Chapter 100: Docking

The timber for the slipway and the keel blocks was all provided by the Bopu timber factory. Besides the wood cut from the coastal mangrove forests, there was also a lot of large timber from the beams and pillars of the demolished houses in Gou Family Village, which was just right for building the shipyard’s facilities.

Generally, the timber for a slipway needs to be American pine with a diameter of 30*30. Of course, there was none here, but fortunately, ordinary timber could be used as a substitute. However, a length of 40 meters was quite difficult to obtain, requiring the splicing of multiple pieces of timber. Splicing was not a difficult task for the mechanical department, but the approval procedures were a bit more complicated—any use of metal materials currently required the approval of the Planning Committee.

To simplify the difficulty of docking, the slipway was arranged longitudinally. An electric winch could easily burn out due to overload during docking, and such accidents were common even in shipyards. For inexperienced people like them, it was safer to use a boiler-turbine to drive the winch.

After the winch was solved, the biggest problem was the “ground dragon.” The so-called ground dragon is a large pile buried horizontally underground. When the winch pulls the hull, the ground dragon serves as the point of application for all the force and has to bear a huge pulling force.

The ground dragons in shipyards are mainly made of reinforced concrete and concrete-filled steel pipes. In the past, wooden ground dragons were commonly used. The requirements for this ground dragon wood were very high; it had to be both highly durable and corrosion-resistant. Generally, a large hardwood with a diameter of 30-50 cm and a length of no less than 3 meters was selected. It also had to undergo a series of dehydration and anti-corrosion treatments.

In the end, Wu Kuangming from the timber group found a suitable piece of timber for him from the stockyard. It was a certain type of hardwood from Southeast Asia, with a diameter of nearly 50cm and high corrosion resistance. It could be used directly without any treatment.

“This stuff is good enough to make a coffin. You can have it for the ground dragon,” Wu Kuangming said with some reluctance.

“What, you want to enjoy the treatment of a landlord too?” Yan Quezhi teased him.

“Hehe, not really. But anyone who used to work with timber knows that the wood used for the coffins of the rich is the best, the kind that doesn’t rot in the ground or in the water. Taking it away like this is like digging out a piece of my flesh.”

After all the devices were installed, they began to prepare for docking. Docking is a technical job and very dangerous. Shipyards are prone to work-related accidents in this process.

“Listen up, all of you!” Wu De looked at the various groups of people who had just been summoned below. “Docking is a dangerous job. You have to keep a close watch on it at all times while you’re working! If you get hit by a rope, you’re done for!”

He then went over the various precautions—in fact, Wu De himself only half-understood them, but he had at least seen it done in the village and had participated in the work of docking a fishing boat. Besides that, there was an old reader on “Simple Ship Repair” that he had found on the computer. Whether the docking would be successful depended entirely on Wu De’s memory and the accuracy of the knowledge in this book.

Everything that could be dismantled on the ship was taken down, even the mast was removed to lower the center of gravity. The tow rope used was a steel wire rope dismantled from the Fengcheng—the hemp rope self-made by the timber processing factory had proven to be not strong enough in a tensile test. The slipway was already coated with lard—this was the only grease that solidified at room temperature that Wu De could get. So much lard being taken away made Wu Nanhai heartbroken. How many pigs had to be killed to get so much oil!

There were fifteen or sixteen people at the docking site. Although this job was very dangerous, Wu De did not ask the commune members to do it. This job required constant communication. No matter how well the commune members spoke Mandarin, they were, after all, not from the same era. If there was a misunderstanding or delay, it would immediately lead to a loss of life.

“Start the engine!”

The steam engine had already been fired up. With Wu De’s command, the winch, driven by the flywheel, began to turn slowly. The iron chain on the ground dragon began to tighten, and the steel wire rope creaked as it rubbed against the pulley block. The strength of the wooden-structured ship was limited, so the steel wire rope was wrapped around the stern.

As the winch turned, the steel wire rope tightened completely, making a creaking sound. Wu De was a little worried: nine out of ten casualties in docking operations were related to the breaking of the tow rope. Once it snapped, the steel wire rope, under great tension, would whip out like a whip, and the workers around would be sent flying. Whether they could survive would depend entirely on luck.

The steel wire rope was taken from the Fengcheng. In theory, there should be no problem using it on a wooden boat of about 100 tons. Even so, the sound was still very scary.

“The ship is moving forward!” came the observer’s report over the walkie-talkie. Two-thirds of the people involved in the docking operation were observing from all directions to prevent any deviation.

As the steam winch turned, the ship swayed and moved slowly from the water towards the shore. The ship was pitching and rolling heavily in the waves, which looked a bit worrying.

“Slow down the winch, hold it steady,” Wu De kept reminding them over the walkie-talkie. “Everyone, watch the direction of the ship. Align it with the slipway.”

The first approach was indeed off-center. This kind of work was also handled by specialized technical workers in a shipyard. Of course, it was impossible for non-professionals like them to succeed on the first try.

“Don’t worry, everyone. Let’s try again. Everyone, check the steel cables.”

Every time they started over, they had to check the steel cables. If the ship couldn’t be docked, at most they would lose the ship. If something happened and people died, they could never be brought back to life.

After nearly 5 hours of repeated attempts, the people present had shouted themselves hoarse just to align the ship. Finally, the ship was steadily parked on the keel blocks. Wu De didn’t have time to be happy. He quickly directed everyone to pick up the lard from the slipway and scattered around, and put it into earthenware pots—it would be needed again when the ship was launched.

“Good heavens, this oil is all black and greasy. It’s disgusting!” a man from the Navy Department said with a helpless look on his face.

“Why do I smell a bit of fried food?”

“That’s probably from the friction heating it up. You have an appetite?”

“Can this stuff be used again? Didn’t they say it has to be very pure? It has sand in it.”

“Just melt it down and filter it again. By the way, Wu Nanhai even came over to say that if this oil can’t be used again, it has to be returned to him.”

“The cafeteria is also preparing to use gutter oil!”

“It’s said that they’re preparing to make soap, but I’m not interested in using this black soap.”

The renovation work was completed in less than a week. All the bullet holes were sealed with caulking, and the larger defects were reinforced with new wood. They also cleaned the marine life from the bottom of the ship and applied a layer of tung oil. The navy planned to add cannons to it—or at least leave space for cannons. The pirates had originally mounted the cannons on the deck, with a hole cut in the bulwark as a gunport, and then covered it with a shed that offered little protection. Now, the weapons enthusiasts of the mechanical group had moved the gun positions below deck to lower the center of gravity. Four gun positions were set up on each side. In the future, 2-3 more cannons could be installed on the deck. The disadvantage was that the ship’s freeboard was not high enough, and it was easy for water to splash in through the gunports when sailing in rough seas. Fortunately, there were gunport covers, so it was not a big problem when not in battle.

But there were no cannons—the problems with the ballista were fully exposed in this battle. The nature of the ballista itself determined that it was a projectile weapon, and its trajectory was often too high, which made aiming very difficult. Secondly, its rate of fire was extremely slow. Each ballista was wound by two gunners simultaneously from both sides, and it took more than a minute to fully wind it once, which was very physically demanding. Finally, its volume was much larger than that of a cannon.

“What’s so strange about that?” Chen Haiyang said. “If the ballista were really as magical as some people in the mechanical department boast, why would the navy replace it with ‘crude,’ ‘clumsy,’ and ‘dangerous’ cannons? It’s clear that even the worst cannon is more effective than the best ballista.”

“We need real cannons! Even if they are muzzle-loaders,” Meng De howled.

Meng De had been meritorious in bringing the ship into port and was once accompanied by flowers and applause. But the large ship could no longer move, and he had been reduced from a captain in the limelight to a member of the Fengcheng’s stay-behind crew. Besides maintaining the equipment on the ship, his most important job was to patrol the bay in a small boat.

He had finally waited until the Dengyingzhou arrived, and saw a chance to return to the center stage. But because he knew little about traditional sailing ships, the captain’s position was taken by Lin Chuanqing. The Dengyingzhou was now the domain of the North American gang, and he had no interest in working under this group of people. After much thought, he realized that only by establishing a fleet would he have a chance to shine. Now that he had a new ship, he spared no effort in promoting his “fleet” plan: constantly advocating for the transmigrators to establish a coastal fleet of motorized sailing gunboats, demanding more budget and more manpower for the navy, and even demanding the construction of a multi-turreted BB—this call quickly gained the approval of several hundred transmigrators, including many members of the industrial department.

The Executive Committee ordered the staff group of the military department to evaluate this issue. After a comprehensive analysis of the local garrison, pirates, equipment, and traffic conditions, it was believed that whether it was pirates or the Ming army, a large-scale attack would basically adopt the method of sea transport. If they took the land route, they would also advance along the coastal roads. The transmigrators could not control the entire Qiongzhou Strait for a while, but they had to have the ability to maneuver fully along the coastline—after all, the transmigrators’ forces were small, so mobility was particularly important.