Chapter 464: The Advantage of Water Transport

While the Zhang family’s walnut pastry shop was immersed in joy, Director Hong had almost forgotten about the matter—he was managing a thousand things a day. The confidential document boxes delivered daily by the confidential couriers to the other Senators were “briefcases”; his was a “packing crate.”

The entire Joint Logistics Headquarters was currently overwhelmed with work. As night fell, Hong Huangnan’s desk was still piled high with various documents and charts. After signing a dozen documents, he yawned and instructed his orderly to light the wick under the “five-watch chicken” pot—inside was his carefully prepared late-night snack. When it came to eating, he never delegated, especially not to the half-baked maids trained by the General Office.

“Guangzhou is truly worthy of being the capital of our great ‘foodie province.’ The ingredients are so abundant,” Hong Huangnan said, once again looking at the faint flame under the pot. He stood up and stretched his back. “How is the map-making coming along?”

“Chief, the maps of Guangzhou and most of the counties under its jurisdiction have been completed,” his busy secretary reported.

“Let’s go have a look,” Hong Huangnan said. He was very anxious about this matter.

He left the office with his guards and went down the corridor to another room. This room had no partitions; it was a single, vast, open space.

Along the walls were shelves, layered one on top of the other, piled high with long leather tubes and thick loose-leaf binders. In the middle were seven or eight large tables.

On the tables, under glass plates, were maps. There were maps of the entire Guangdong province and maps of its various counties—all large-scale maps without exception. Many naturalized citizens were busy around the tables. Dozens of kerosene lamps illuminated the room brightly.

The work being done here was the “correction” of maps. The naturalized citizens working here were “elites,” “specialists” specifically trained in surveying and mapping. For more than three years, they had been working and studying, basically practicing surveying and drawing.

Because large-scale maps were classified, the Executive Committee, despite its best efforts before D-Day, had not been able to obtain military-grade large-scale maps and had to settle for slightly inferior ones. Fortunately, through the North American branch, they had obtained some large-scale, county-level maps of the Chinese coast and major regions surveyed by the US military in the 1940s.

These large-scale maps, collected through various channels, were the Senate’s most precious assets and an important guarantee of the Fubo Army’s combat effectiveness. Whether it was suppressing bandits in Lingao or the later security warfare in Qiongzhou after the Spring Awakening campaign, it could be said that they relied on these maps to ensure that the Fubo Army, who were complete outsiders, would not get lost in the wild and could act according to their operational plans.

Of course, there were still discrepancies between the 20th-century maps and the actual geographical environment of the 17th century. On Hainan Island, such errors were within a tolerable range: at most, settlements and roads didn’t match up, but the errors in topography were not significant.

However, in the Pearl River Delta, the situation was different. The Pearl River Delta was originally a shallow bay with many islands, a delta formed by the silt deposited by the West, North, and East Rivers from different directions. After the West, North, and East River systems entered this area, they diverged and radiated, forming a dense, spiderweb-like network of river channels. The low-lying areas formed a constellation of lakes and marshes. In an area of less than 10,000 square kilometers, there were 10,000 intersecting river channels. Some of these channels were naturally formed, while others were artificially dug. The extensive rice cultivation and dike-pond aquaculture on the delta made this already river-crossed plain even more fragmented. For travelers, villages were more like islands, and many places were inaccessible by land.

Hundreds of years of river erosion, soil loss and deposition, and land reclamation… these natural and man-made factors combined to create a ridiculously large gap between the maps and reality.

This situation was actually reflected in the Pearl River Estuary Raid. After the troops dispersed, they began to find the maps unreliable. The main method adopted at the time was to use naturalized citizens as guides. At that time, because the combat area was not large and the main objective was plunder, the use of guides was still manageable. But for a full-scale conquest, it was far from enough.

After the Pearl River Estuary campaign, the Foreign Intelligence Bureau, under the command of Lin Baiguang, formally took over the intelligence work of the Guangzhou Station. The main task was to collect intelligence on Guangdong’s geography, products, resources, and public sentiment. From this activity, a large amount of geographical intelligence was accumulated. The map correction work being done now was based on this intelligence.

“Chief…” a naturalized officer from the General Staff Department in civilian clothes came over and saluted when he saw him enter.

“How is the progress?” Hong Huangnan asked with concern.

“The correction work for forty-five prefectures and counties has been completed,” the officer reported. “The workload for the mountainous and inland counties is not large. It’s mainly the counties in the delta region that require a lot of correction. The rivers and roads are almost all inaccurate.”

At this, a look of confusion appeared on the officer’s face. It was the first time he had seen such a large error in a Senator’s map. In an atmosphere where “the Senate is omniscient and always correct,” to have something with such a large error was no wonder he was puzzled.

“These are maps from hundreds of years ago, of course they’re not accurate,” Hong Huangnan said without batting an eye. “The maps of the Pearl River Delta region must be completed as soon as possible. This is a top priority and absolutely cannot be delayed!”

“Yes, chief! We will do our best!” The officer quickly stood at attention in the German style, with his heels together and a nod.

“You must complete it with both quality and quantity,” Hong Huangnan added. “Especially the hydrological conditions and navigability of the various river channels in the Pearl River Delta. They must be clearly marked. If there is anything unclear, you must immediately report it to the intelligence team for communication.”

The reason Hong Huangnan was so concerned about this correction work was for logistical supplies. The supply plan he had drawn up relied mainly on water transport.

The logistical characteristics of the Guangdong campaign were long front lines and dispersed troops. The fragmented and watery terrain of the Pearl River Delta made the past model of building roads as they advanced difficult to implement in the short term. Except for the main post roads, most of the towns and villages in the Pearl River Delta had no formal land roads connecting them. People mostly traveled on the ridges between fields and river dikes. The circulation of personnel and materials mainly relied on boats.

The reason why Staff Officer Hong had quietly abandoned his “East Wind Carriage Company” plan for Guangdong was largely due to seeing the dismal road condition report.

Even if food and fuel were mainly procured locally, the supply of clothing and ammunition was not small. In particular, the Fubo Army also had to carry heavy support weapons such as artillery and typewriters, which further increased the difficulty of marching and supply. The lack of good roads was a real problem.

Although the Foreign Intelligence Bureau estimated that most of Guangdong could be taken by proclamation, the Ming army still had several thousand combat-ready troops in Guangdong: the Vice General of Nan’ao and the Yao Defense Commander had not participated in the Battle of Chengmai, and their combat effectiveness was basically intact. If the ruling officials were determined to resist, they could also mobilize minority troops and the garrison troops of the local guards. The intensity of the battle could not be underestimated. This was not even the General Staff’s biggest worry. The biggest military threat warning for the Guangdong campaign came not only from the Great Library—more than one Guangdong-native Senator had reminded the General Staff: the conflict between the local Punti and Hakka people in Guangdong was sharp. Once the war got involved in this conflict, it was very likely to trigger large-scale riots. Historically, these clans had strong mobilization capabilities and could easily mobilize tens of thousands of people to participate in armed feuds. They were far more difficult opponents than the Ming army.

Once such a large-scale armed riot was encountered, local procurement would be impossible. Supplies would have to be transported from the security zones. In the social and geographical environment of this time, the only way to transport large quantities of materials quickly and cheaply was by water.

From this point of view, Guangdong was blessed by nature. The provincial capital, Guangzhou, was located at the confluence of the three main rivers in Guangdong province: the North River, the East River, and the West River. The water transport conditions were excellent. The Fubo Army could use the shipping capacity of these three rivers to easily deliver supplies to key nodes: along the West River to Wuzhou, they could block the advance of the Ming army from Guangxi; along the North River to Nanxiong Prefecture, they could control the southward route of the Dayu Ridge Road; along the East River deep into the Chaoshan area, to Languan, they could control the Yueqi Ridge Road leading to Fujian.

By transporting troops and cadres along the rivers, they could expand their control area from lines to surfaces. Even if they couldn’t cover the entire province, they could quickly control the areas along the three rivers. Through the tributaries of the three rivers, detachments using shallow-draft small boats could penetrate further into more remote areas and control more territory.

When Staff Officer Hong consulted the hydrological data on Guangdong’s inland waterways compiled by the Great Library, he was quite pleased to find that there were a great many navigable rivers in the three river systems. If one was not too particular about the size of the boat, a shallow-draft steamboat of a dozen tons could even navigate to quite remote places in the province.

“This is practically a ready-made railway network,” Hong Huangnan lamented. “No wonder the General Staff wants to attack Guangdong first. It seems it’s not just because it’s closest to Hainan.”

He leaned over a map of Guangdong province in his office and studied it carefully, using colored pencils to draw various symbols for depots and supply lines on the glass plate, pondering how to set up this supply system.

“Report!” With the report, the secretary brought in the latest documents. “These are the drawings of several new types of riverboats from the Hong Kong shipyard, sent by Chief Shi for your review.”

“Put them on the table,” Hong Huangnan said. At this moment, he was drawing and redrawing on Foshan Town with red and blue pencils. This place was truly blessed by nature. Not only was it a necessary stop for boats from the West and North Rivers heading to Guangzhou, but it also had twelve river channels connecting to various parts of the Pearl River Delta. It was the commercial distribution center of the Pearl River Delta, and it was no wonder it had developed into one of the four great towns under heaven.