Chapter 258 The war between the two countries is not as bad as the wives and children

Just when he thought that sinking the boat to the bottom of the river could prevent Chen Ying's army from going north. When Chen Ying found that there was a shipwreck in the Yongji Canal and blocked the channel, he immediately thought of abandoning the ship and going ashore, but the huge pressure of baggage transportation made Chen Ying have to give up this idea.

Chen Ying's army has more than 40,000 mules and horses at this time, the horses are better, and they can deal with it with some forage, but the war horses are different, in the war period, the war horses can not only eat grass, but also have beans and wheat forage to maintain the nutrition of the war horses, so as not to run away from the war horses.

But war horses are no better than people, and the food of these beasts is amazing. The normal supply of forage for a war horse is ten liters a day. If it is in a state of war, it is necessary to feed wheat bran or beans, and even eat fourteen or fifteen liters of forage, Chen Ying's nearly 30,000 war horses need to eat four or five thousand stone of forage every day, and if you count 50,000 soldiers, you have to eat six or seven thousand stone of grain every day.

Six or seven thousand stones, in fact, is not much, converted into tons is only about three hundred tons, the key is that in this era, if it is transported by rickshaw, at least thousands of deer carts are needed,

There is also a more reliable way to adopt hydroelectric transportation. Chen Ying had no choice but to order the soldiers, Zhang Zhongjian's subordinates, and Sun Jingchu's Cao Yun shipwrecks to start salvaging the sunken ship.

When there are no mechanical salvage ships, it is not easy to work on the sunken ship. First of all, these wrecks are filled with boulders, and the sand and gravel are first emptied at the bottom of the water before the wrecks are fished up with ropes.

It took half a day and hundreds of people to work together, and only then did they fish out a sunken ship, "Loser, what a loser!" Looking at a wreck that had just been salvaged, Chen Ying felt powerless. It seems that it has been less than a year since the construction of this Caoyun, and even the bottom ship or the side of the ship have no traces of water corrosion. However, such a new ship was filled with boulders, chiseled through the bottom of the ship, and sank into the Yongji Canal.

The Xia army did not dare to fight Chen Ying head-on, they smashed the cao or wooden stakes into the river, although the average water width of Yongji can pass 3,000 large ships, but the artificial canal is after all a canal dug out by artificiality, and the average water depth is only more than three zhang. Like Chen Ying's flagship "Wan'an", the draft is nine feet deep, and it can barely pass.

However, the sunken ship that sank to the bottom of the canal was not above the cabin roof, including the cabin roof and mast on the upper deck, all exposed on the water. Not to mention Chen Ying's "Wan'an", even an ordinary square ship has no way to pass. Chen Ying had no choice but to move forward slowly while salvaging the wreck.

"yes, what a loser!" Sun Jingchu looked at this thousand-year-old boat, and couldn't help but feel distressed. The cost of a thousand-grain ship like this is not low, and it is worth a thousand.

Chen Ying suddenly had an idea and said, "Like this shipwreck, is it possible to repair it?" ”

Sun Jingchu nodded and said: "Yes, it's not difficult to repair this ship, you just cut off the rudder and main mast, chiseled through the bottom of the ship, you only need to replace the new rudder and mast, replace the chiseled bottom plank, brush it with tung oil, seal the loopholes, and after drying, it can be used." It's not cheap, but it's much cheaper than building a new ship! ”

Chen Ying suddenly found out at this time that he wanted to establish a fleet of Cao Yun, even if he did business alone in the future, he could make a lot of money.

"It's good to be usable, it's good to be able to use it!" Chen Ying said to Sun Jingchu: "You send someone to salvage the sunken ships, and these ships will belong to you!" ”

"What? Give me? Sun Jingchu was as ecstatic as if he had won the jackpot. You must know that the ships that sank into the Yongji Canal were not two or three, but at least thousands. Even if only a third of them are new ships, that's a lot of money. Sun Jing said in the early stage: "How can this be made? ”

"It's nothing, how can it be the turn of outsiders if there is cheapness, General Ben has always been like this, there are benefits, think about your own people first!" Chen Ying said with a smile: "Some of these sunken ships are new ships, some are dilapidated, and there is no repair value, pick some ships that can be used and can't be used, and dismantle them, pick out the wood that can be used, and use the wood that can't be used, and use it as firewood!" ”

Hearing the words "his own people" as Chen Ying said, Sun Jingchu was extremely moved. Sun Jingchu knelt on the ground and said: "Rest assured, Lord, I will send more people to try to dredge the channel as soon as possible!" ”

Just when Sun Jingchu was about to send out an intensified fishing boat, Chen Ying stopped Sun Jingchu: "But your method of fishing for a boat is too slow, you have to wait for you to dredge these sunken ships, God knows if it will be the Year of the Monkey?" ”

Sun Jingchu asked, "What is the master's plan?" ”

Chen Ying vaguely remembers that when he was in school, there was a text "Fishing for Iron Ox", a monk named Huai Bing in the Song Dynasty, he asked people to tie two boats side by side tightly, build a shelf with strong wood, and straddle the two boats. Then he asked someone who was familiar with the nature of the water to dive to the bottom of the water with a very thick rope, and tied one end of the rope firmly to the iron ox, and the other end of the rope was tied to a shelf between the two large boats. The preparations are done. Huai Bing asked the sailors to work together to shovel all the sediment on the ship into the Yellow River. The mud and sand in the boat slowly decreased, the hull slowly floated upward, and the rope that held the iron ox tighter and tighter. The boat relied on the buoyancy of the water to pull the iron oxen up from the mud little by little.

The mud and sand on the boat were shoveled, and the iron ox left the bottom of the river. The monk was not in a hurry to get the iron ox onto the boat, but asked the sailors to row the boat to the shore with all their might, and then let many people work together to drag the iron ox in the water to the shore.

Of course, although Huaibing's method is good, it is too inefficient. Chen Ying was not just eight iron oxen to salvage, but hundreds of thousands of sunken ships.

However, Chen Ying does not need to install sand shovels so troublesomely, first of all, he can take the way of moving pulleys, and use manpower to move pulleys to save effort to fish out the sunken ship from the water, as for the sunken stones in the sunken ship, they are fished out and placed on the river embankment, and built into a small pavilion for pedestrians to rest.

Chen Ying took a charcoal pen and told Sun Jingchu the principle of the movable pulley block, and Sun Jingchu used the 2,000-material wheel ship as the mother ship of the salvage ship according to Chen Ying's drawings, and set up four booms on each of the two ships, using the principle of the pulley block to fish out the sunken ship from the water, and then sent sailors who could repair the ship to rush to repair.

At this time, the shipwright, like the old drivers of later generations, had some faults in the vehicles they were driving, and they could eliminate them by themselves without going into the auto repair shop. They can do things like changing ship boards, patching holes, etc.

After testing, Chen was able to fish out a wreck from the bottom of the water in less than an hour. After a tinkling repair, the wreck was plugged with a loophole, and a spare rudder was attached, so that the ship could be towed. Of course, if you want to undertake normal transportation tasks, you also need to go back to the shipyard for overhaul.

With the investment of this efficient salvage method, Sun Jingchu was overjoyed. In just one day, he not only emptied the equivalent of more than a thousand paces of waterway, but also fished out as many as six ships. After running-in, these shipwrecks are becoming more and more proficient and faster.

After all, at this time, most of the ships were mainly hundreds of ships, usually small ships that could carry more than 100 stones and weighed no more than 10 tons. In the end, the 2,000-material wheel ship can undertake the salvage task of a sunken ship alone, and unless it encounters a thousand-stone shipwreck, two 2,000-material wheelships will cooperate in salvage.

In particular, Chen Ying ordered that whoever salvaged the ship belonged to whom, and in the end, not only Sun Jingchu's people went to salvage the sunken ship, but even the sailors under Zhang Zhongjian also went to salvage the sunken ship, after all, most of these sunken ships were repaired and could be used, and all that was fished out was money.

Not only the people under Chen Ying's command came to fish for the boat, but also some brave people on both sides of the Yongji Canal also joined the team of fishing for the boat.

As Sima Qiangong said: "The hustle and bustle of the world is all for profit, and the hustle and bustle of the world is for profit" This is an unbreakable truth, from the primitive society to the present, there is no transcendence of the word "profit". There is no major event in the world that does not arise because of profit. Animal battles, tribal wars, national disputes, enterprise competitions, neighborhood quarrels, husband and wife disputes, sons win glory, officials fight for power, people fight for profit, actors fight for fame, animals fight for food, all things win glory, ....... In everything, the initiator of the chrysalis fights for interests, fights for interests.

Because of these shipwrecks, Song Zhengben harmed the interests of countless boat bosses, and because of the huge interests of fishing boats, countless people who lived on the water on both sides of the Yongji Canal stood on the opposite side of the Xia Kingdom.

Chen Ying seems to have unintentionally inserted willows and tore a rift of interests for Xia Guo.

Later, the soldiers of the Xia army sank the ship during the day, and the people went to fish it out at night.

With the passage of time, the speed of cleaning up the wreck became faster and faster, and it was just ready to start, Chen Ying's fleet could not walk more than one or twenty miles a day, and now it can basically resume the speed of traveling a hundred miles a day.

Just when Chen Ying's department was about to arrive in Shuiye Town, Xiangzhou, Chen Ying unexpectedly got a piece of news. Datang Hebei Dao Xingtai Shangshu Zuo Servant Shot, Shandong Dao Pacification Envoy, Huai'an King Li Shentong, Tang Dynasty Zuowu Marquis General, Cao Guogong Li Shiji, and Li Yuan's sister Princess Tong'an were escorted by more than 300 people led by a small colonel under Dou Jiande and joined Chen Ying.

Chen Ying really couldn't figure it out, it was said that whether it was Li Shiji or Li Shentong, their weight was not too heavy, and they couldn't interfere with the movements of the Tang Dynasty's court, at least they were also a hostage with a lot of weight, why did Dou Jiande want to put them back, and there were no conditions attached.

Li Shentong shook his head and said, "What General Chen said is not right, Lord Xia is not without conditions!" ”

"What are Dou Jiande's conditions?" Chen Ying asked in surprise.

Li Shiji said: "Lord Xia said that the two countries will fight against each other, and it will not be a disaster for his wife and children!" ”