On December 10, 1686, Southern Patagonia ushered in the coldest phase of the year. In the summer, Xuefeng Lake, which once showed its beautiful side of lakes and mountains, has long been dressed in ice and snow.

Because of the freezing weather and the freezing of the lake, the Xuefeng Lake Shipyard has entered the annual maintenance season. All kinds of problems accumulated in the production of most of the year, such as the replacement of worn parts, the calibration of testing instruments, the cleaning of the dock, the transformation of the production line, etc., will be carried out at this time. Therefore, the advent of winter does not mean that the employees of Xuefeng Lake Shipyard have ushered in a holiday, on the contrary, they still need to go to the factory every day, and then complete the various tasks arranged by the superiors, which is not very easy on the whole, and there are no allowances and bonuses during the peak production season, which is more difficult to say.

Of course, some people may say that Xuefeng Lake Shipyard is a small factory located on an inland lake in the south, and even in the peak production season, there is no business, and the bonus is really limited. Actually, this is not true! As the only shipbuilding enterprise specializing in the study of iron rib ships and steam turbines in the East Coast Republic of China, Xuefeng Lake Shipyard has been wholly acquired by Montenegro Industrial Company (which has Xuefeng Lake Shipyard, Second Heavy Machinery Factory, Montenegro Coal Mine, Montenegro Iron and Steel Plant, and the East Coast Company has 20% of the shares). After all, many of them are rare talents, and it would be too much if you didn't pay them a little more if you left their homes to come to this remote, cold, dry Patagonia!

The Xuefeng Lake Shipyard, which has sufficient scientific research funds, has indeed produced a lot of achievements in recent years. With the exception of the Seahorse-1 marine steam turbine system, which has been put on the desk of the country's leaders as a major breakthrough, their most important job is probably to improve the reliability of the propulsion system of the all-steam-powered ships on the East Coast by more than one step, which seems to be more important than the former, and is a productivity that can be used immediately.

At present, the new steam propulsion system they have researched and manufactured has been installed on the 400-ton communication ship "Dingjunshan" and has been running continuously for several months, without any fatal failures - although minor problems cannot be avoided, the terrible failure that caused the power system to shut down is gone, and everyone knows what it means.

According to the next step of the Xuefeng Lake Shipyard, the "Dingjun Mountain" will go to India and the Far East with supplies and personnel to conduct transoceanic voyage trials. They seem to want to prove through this kind of move that all-steam-powered ships are the direction of future development, even if the technical conditions are not very mature at this stage, but they should be given more attention and investment, rather than wasting many people's efforts for many years as before.

Major users on the East Coast, including the Navy, the South China Sea Transport Company, the East African Transport Company, the Caribbean Shipping Company, and the Courier Liner Company, expressed their appreciation for this courageous act of the Xuefeng Lake Shipyard. But they still want to continue to observe and see if the Dingjunshan, which is equipped with a new power system, will have some terrible failures from time to time that lead to a complete loss of power, as his predecessors ("Big Fish River", "Tierra del Fuego", "Tahiti", etc.). After all, the danger of sailors on ocean voyages is to fight the fierce waves and vicious pirates with their heads pinned to their trouser belts, and it is not very unjust to be unjust if some ships are destroyed and killed because of the poor power system and reliability of the ships they are driving?

Therefore, after a long period of time, many sea conditions and complex weather have been fully verified and qualified conclusions have been reached, and many users, including the Navy, will not take risks, because it is not necessary. The existing steam engine sailing ships have double power, a lot of maintenance, and have sailed almost everywhere, and they have proved to be extremely good and very qualified, so everyone is willing to order and use them on a large scale. In contrast, the safety record of all-steam-powered ships is not so good, they have a black history of several failures that lead to various accidents (there is no shortage of sinking tragedies), so they were hidden for many years until Xuefenghu Shipyard fully took over the secondary research and development of all-steam-powered ships.

Today, the "Dingjunshan" all-steam-powered ship produced by Xuefenghu Shipyard has achieved perfect success in the offshore and inland river trials on the east coast. But this is not enough, but the weather conditions are more complicated, the wind and waves are more difficult to do the experiment. If it can withstand the test in these sea areas, then this new power system can be called qualified, and the project of Xuefeng Lake Shipyard can be completed.

When Xu Guangzu, who has been promoted to the deputy general manager of the Black Mountain Industrial Company and the director of the Xuefenghu Shipyard, reported to the head office (located in Xingnan County) a while ago, he was quite confident in his words, saying that with the progress of the basic industry on the east coast and the arrival of special funds, the research and development of all-steam-powered ships can actually be called mature today. The dismissal of the previous project can only be attributed to the fact that the users are too conservative and too careful, and the application of new technologies cannot be smooth sailing, but it can only be said that it is too much to be killed by them with a stick and hidden in the snow for many years. Fortunately, now that everything has passed, Xu Guangzu is confident that this power system, which has cost a lot of R&D funds and countless engineering and technical personnel, will be promoted, even if it is tried on a small scale first, but in the end, discerning users should also be impressed by its superior performance.

The company's top management was more interested in Xu Guangzu's remarks. Because the fact is clear, once this steam propulsion system, known as the "Popeye-15" model, is widely recognized by the industry, then the orders from the Xuefeng Lake shipyard will not be pouring in? How big the profit is, I believe that people with a little common sense know very well. The only thing to worry about is that the Xuefeng Lake plant can only produce small and medium-sized boats in the inland lakes deep in the depths, because no matter how big the ships are, they cannot enter the open sea through the Huangyang River and cannot be delivered to customers. From this point of view, in the future, they are afraid that they will have to cooperate with other factories to use their docks to produce large ocean-going ships, after all, this is the main source of profits.

If they can't, they will have to specialize in the production of power systems and sell them to a few large companies, including the Zhenhai Shipyard. Earning less is making a little less, but it is also worry-free, and you don't need to raise too many personnel, which is not bad.

Another major achievement of the Xuefeng Lake shipyard is the initial launch of the "Seahorse-1" steam turbine power system a few years ago. This system has been improved over the years, especially with the use of new materials and technologies. Xu Guangzu and others believe that this "Seahorse-1" can boost the speed of normal small liaison ships and cargo ships to more than 15 knots, and even 20 knots may not be impossible.

You know, this is not a shallow draft like the "Amur" class shallow water gunboats, but a real normal ship type, and the draft will not be less than two meters. This can run at a speed of ten or twenty knots, so it doesn't have to fly! Of course, with the current strength of the hull of the wooden-hulled ship, it will definitely not be able to support such a high speed for a long time. This high speed requires very high hull structural strength, and it has to be an iron ship to be able to withstand it, otherwise don't think about it, honestly play the "Popeye" series, the steam turbine is too advanced.

But how difficult it is to build an iron ship! Let's not talk about its huge consumption of steel, but let's talk about the casting and rolling of iron ship plates, which is not something that backbone metallurgical and manufacturing enterprises on the east coast such as Tieling Heavy Industry Consortium and Ping An Coal and Steel Consortium can win. This required them to design completely new production lines, especially rolling lines, to ensure that they could roll qualified marine plates.

In addition to these problems in the steel industry, if the ship plate is fixedly connected, is it riveted or welded? It seems that no matter what the East Coast people in front of you can do, because this is another technology tree and a series of skill points, it requires a lot of money and manpower to tackle key problems, in short, everything is not easy.

To sum up, at present, the "Haima-1" steam turbine, like many of the technologies in the hands of the East Coast Electric Power Company, can only be hidden in the "deep boudoir" as a technical reserve, and cannot be openly operated in the public. In fact, there are many similar things in the hands of many large state-owned companies with good R&D capabilities, many of which have applied for patents, but they can only be shelved for various reasons, and continue to lie in the safe until one day they are remembered, and then they are taken out again for modification, and then commercial operation is launched.

A fully steam-powered ship is a prime example of this. Now that the business has seen the dawn of success, the era of prosperity seems to be approaching, which is a major boon for the Snow Peak Lake Shipyard and Montenegro Industries. Think of what a sensation it must have been when the Dingjun Mountain whistled from the vicinity of the mouth of the Río de la Plata and then headed east to the Grand Circle Port in the middle of the river. You know, they sailed directly, unlike the traditional sailboats and sailboats, which had to sail a long distance south to find the westerly wind and the eastward current, and then they could reach southern Africa. Returning from South Africa to the mainland of the East Coast is the same, following the Benguela Stream north, then searching for easterly winds and currents around the Gulf of Guinea, crossing the Atlantic Ocean to the port of Junction in eastern Brazil, and finally following the coastline south to the starting point, which is also a time-consuming and dangerous circle.

But all-steam-powered ships don't need to be so troublesome! On December 15, 1686, the "Dingjun Mountain" set off from the port of Qingdao and then headed east, finally reaching the west coast of South Africa on January 7, 1687. The whole process only took about 20 days, which is very amazing. The direct voyage of an all-steam-powered ship is so capricious that it is enough to bring tears to the eyes of all sailboats!