Thursday, February 1, 1946, the sixteenth day of the lunar month.

The beauty of the parallel Gregorian calendar and the lunar calendar has to be said to occasionally make people feel at a loss. Today is the first day after the end of the annual local winter break, and two days later is the beginning of spring, and it stands to reason that everything will be on the right track again, but the new year's Lunar New Year will have to wait for more than ten days.

The winter break is often accompanied by a series of national holidays in many countries, and the busy pace of work and life in China slows down rapidly during the two-month period, and people will have more time to focus on their family life, such as spending time with family or taking care of important life tasks that they don't usually have time to take care of.

According to the statistics of the Ministry of Civil Affairs for many years, during the winter break, the consumption willingness and household expenditure of local citizens in Huamei will increase significantly, and it is also the most exciting time for businessmen around the country, and the retail sales of goods in large local cities will be more than twice as much as usual, which can be called the peak period of ordinary national consumption.

The national statutory winter break, which has been in place for more than 20 years, seems to be a national policy that is alien to the outside world as a whole, full of human care and beautiful business opportunities, but both the oldest generation of nationals and new immigrants who have moved to North America in recent years have received mixed reviews, especially for factory workers in manufacturing companies.

According to the relevant laws of China and the United States, the winter break in North America refers to the winter break that begins on December 1 of the Gregorian calendar of each year and lasts until January 31 of the following year. Factories and enterprises will reduce their operating rates within these two months, making time for major overhauls of production equipment, and will only be allowed to continue to operate if they have passed the year-end enterprise security inspection by local governments.

Of course, even if some companies don't wear out their equipment to the point where they need to stop work extensively, many local small business owners will have to consider reducing production even without such a mandatory winter break law due to the reduction in ocean-going shipping in the North Atlantic's harsh winter weather and the higher import and export costs of raw materials or goods.

During this period. The average working hours of workers in China's industrial manufacturing companies will be reduced by at least one-third, and if you add several statutory holidays, the actual working hours during the winter break will be reduced to less than half of what is in normal months.

This has had the negative effect of reducing the wages of local workers in Huamei during the winter months. If it weren't for the fact that the company's welfare intensive period at the end of the year partially covered up the feeling of wage reduction, it is estimated that this kind of "human care" may not be bought by everyone.

At least in the current labor and social security laws, there is still no mention of the legitimate rights and interests of workers in this regard, and all enterprises are customary to settle workers' monthly wages on the basis of "working days".

In other words, the kind of labor rights protection that only later generations of trade unions will talk about non-stop thinking, and no one is willing to move out to reflect the "advanced nature of system and civilization" in the current Huamei.

But since 1644, when the cabinet of Guan Ruzhong came to power, the winter break in Huamei has been a little different. The National Assembly and the Cabinet have removed the relevant statutory mandatory content. Leaving the implementation option of the winter break to the discretion of the enterprise can be regarded as further reclaiming the "parent's hand" from the administrative system.

According to the new enterprise safety management regulations, any enterprise that obtains the annual inspection safety certificate from the local government in any month will be able to operate normally for the next 12 months.

The reason for this is not only that the number of enterprises has increased greatly compared with the early years, and the burden of local governments to carry out safety inspections in winter is too heavy, but also because Huamei's industrial production and import and export capacity at this time has been very different from that in the early years of the founding of the People's Republic of China.

After 1640, steam power became the absolute mainstay of Huamei ocean-going ships. In addition, the more mature the routes, the more severe the ocean trade and transportation are no longer too harsh. Of course, for pure sail ships that still take the North Atlantic route, caution in winter voyages is still inevitable. However, from the perspective of the total volume of ocean logistics, the impact of their temporary suspension on local industrial production is actually relatively small.

When the export of goods and the import of raw materials were secured, the winter operating rate of Huamei's local factories was also relaxed. Because of this, the winter break that is hard to enforce every year is a bit of a chicken rib. Moreover, it is particularly unfair to some small and medium-sized enterprises that pay special attention to production seasonality.

Therefore, in addition to some large factories and enterprises with a large loss rate of industrial equipment, they still follow the practice of winter equipment inspection, basically more than eighty percent of small and medium-sized local enterprises have chosen to operate normally, or the winter break period has been greatly shortened.

……

……

Binzhou Yacheng Bay. Several three-masted schooner merchant ships were being resupplied at the same time, and huge nets were hoisted onto the deck with tons of fresh water buckets or food. These are the merchant ships of private shipping companies in China and the United States, which are unwilling to delay their business during the winter season, so they temporarily change their Caribbean routes for a few months.

Due to the short-term intensive increase in the capacity of the southern route, the commercial freight rate of the Caribbean route in winter has declined to a certain extent, which is also a rare good thing for Chinese merchants who travel to and from the Caribbean for trade all year round.

At the mouth of Yacheng Bay, the large five-masted long-sail merchant ship "Meteor", which has grabbed the freight business, is sailing triumphantly to the sea. Thousands of tons of fertilizer and a large number of industrial products were loaded in the hold, ready to be transported to Nanshan Overseas Territory via Butterfly Island.

On deck, more than a dozen European sailors were reluctantly watching the heavenly metropolis that they would never forget in their lives fade from sight, and then continued to work hard under the scolding of the first mate.

The Meteor is part of COSCO International's Mayflower shipping company, and today at least half of its crew is made up of experienced sailors hired from European countries.

In order to reduce the labor cost of its Mayflower shipping company, COSCO International Group began to implement a large-scale foreign sailor employment system in China as early as 1636 in the name of the "Foreign Labor Importation Act".

In order to circumvent the "home prohibition" clause defined in the Act, all foreign sailors are registered in the Caribbean Overseas States for their employment contracts.

Soon, not only did the Mayflower shipping company hire sailors from European countries in large numbers, but even the state-owned ocean-going shipping companies and state-owned ocean-going fishing companies began to follow suit. All of a sudden, a number of intermediary service companies specializing in the introduction of foreign workers have emerged in Twin Ports, the capital of Caribbean overseas states.

In the past two years, the proportion of foreign sailors on the merchant ships of the Oriental Union Group to and from the Far East has quickly exceeded half. According to the Maritime Safety Bureau, which is part of the Ministry of Transport and Construction, the number of foreign sailors in the entire Huamei shipping industry exceeded 3,000 last year, with an average contract period of three years. The vast majority of them work on privately owned ocean-going merchant ships.

They were dominated by Dutch sailors, but also a small number of English, Spanish, Portuguese, Danish, and Italian sailors. Most of the contract wages they receive from their Chinese employers are $8 to $10 a month. Even if it is much lower than the salary of a Chinese American sailor, working for a Chinese American employer for a month is almost equivalent to three months of desperate work in Europe.

Historically, Dutch sailors were as hard-working as German mercenaries on land, and they were experienced and numerous. In the early 17th century, the Netherlands, with a population of just over 1.5 million, had 80,000 registered sailors, and one-third of the population of many coastal towns were adrift at sea.

When the French of the same period lazily demanded that the captain must pay at least 20 livres a month before he could go to sea. Dutch sailors, on the other hand, could do it at half or even a third of the wages of their French counterparts.

As a maritime country that can only be regarded as a nascent state in essence, even though the Huamei ocean shipping industry with the classic image of steam merchant ships is moving towards scale, the cultivation of marine talents is by no means an overnight success, it requires the enthusiasm of the whole society and the deep immersion of marine culture.

Therefore, with regard to the large-scale use of foreign seafarers by domestic capitalists in order to save labor costs, both the Chinese and American Congresses and the Cabinet are happy to see the self-reliance and growth of domestic shipping enterprises.

The advantage of employing foreign seafarers is not only to expand the manpower of Huamei's maritime transportation industry, but also to attract outstanding European marine practitioners to immigrate to Huamei, and to create a good opportunity for the country to integrate more marine cultural factors.

In the last two years. More than one-fifth of the limited number of European migrant families are employed each year. Some veteran European sailors with decades of maritime experience are lured by high salaries or family emigration, and are hired as junior instructors in various maritime academies in China and the United States or senior business consultants in various shipping companies, specifically for the training of new talents in China and the United States.

……

Under the shadow of the sails of the passing ships. The Meteor faded into the horizon. In the dry dock of the Yacheng Shipbuilding Group Shipyard in the depths of the bay, there is also a small 500-type three-masted schooner merchant ship belonging to the United Caribbean Shipping Company, which is lying reluctantly, waiting for overhaul and maintenance.

As the most capable of designing and manufacturing sailing ships in China, Yacheng Shipbuilding Group is the largest sailing ship construction and maintenance center in China.

After several types of multi-sloop merchant ships became the national standard promotion ship type. Some overseas users are also allowed to apply for commercial loans in installments at Atlantis Union Bank in the Azores, USA, and Yacheng Shipbuilding Group has ushered in a period of fruitful development.

But Shi Yige, chairman of the board of directors of Yacheng Shipbuilding Group, has ambitions that go far beyond digging a hole in the sailboat construction and export market, ship repair and refit industry. It is Shi Yige's next main direction of attack.

As one of the three leading shipbuilding enterprises in China, Yacheng Shipbuilding Group itself has technical strength that is not much worse than that of Beiyang Shipbuilding Group and state-owned Qingcheng Shipbuilding Company. Moreover, in recent years, Shi Yige's vision has been much wider than when he was young, and he has also lowered the price floor in the industry again and again in business competition, so as to obtain naval contracts that were once completely monopolized by Beiyang Shipbuilding Group, such as the annual overhaul business of some of the main warships of the Navy.

In addition to the fact that Peter the Great of Russia was anxious for quick success, resulting in more than 100,000 tons of warships rotting in the port due to lack of long-term maintenance awareness, the service life of wooden sail warships in history is actually not low. As long as it is properly maintained and maintained, the service life of a wooden sail ship can be as high as thirty or forty years, and even many famous sail ships have a service life of more than sixty years, and the Royal Navy of England has done a particularly good job in this regard.

Since the first iron-boned wood-hulled USS Constitution, the main warships of the Chinese and US Navy have been inferior to their pure wooden sail warships due to their high-intensity combat readiness attendance and the natural limitations of the anti-corrosion technology of the internal iron-wood component joints.

In fact, this is also a common problem of most of Huamei's iron-boned and wood-hulled ships, resulting in a "bathtub curve" that is not good during normal use. Even the Princess-class light cruisers and the Atlantic Queen, once hailed as the best-built, were overhauled more frequently than the all-wooden Republic-class frigates.

Based on the actual maintenance experience of Huamei Shipbuilding and the industry quality management standards that are far more stringent than those of the European shipbuilding industry, whether it is a naval warship or a civilian merchant ship, offshore inland river or ocean, any Huamei iron-boned wood-hulled ship has a service life of 20 years. It will be a big hurdle that cannot be bypassed, and a complete life-extension overhaul will be required before it can be allowed to continue to be used.

This also makes Huamei's wood processing and paint and coating chemical industry appear to be extremely developed in this time and space, and the annual consumption of anticorrosive coatings for the maintenance of civil ships alone exceeds 1,500 tons. Coupled with the demand and exports of other industrial projects, Huamei consumes a large amount of natural animal and vegetable oils, coal tar or wood tar every year, and related industries are very prosperous.

In other words, for Huamei, which has to add more than a dozen large ocean-going merchant ships with a deadweight of more than 2,000 tons every year, the future of ship maintenance and refit is already a market that cannot be underestimated.

Today, another large dry dock in the maintenance dock area is being filled, and a newly painted Navy warship is slowly rising along the waterline, and hundreds of shipyard workers are nervously waiting on both sides of the dry dock. Ready for what's next.

At the dock, there were no ceremonies or cheers, and more than a dozen middle-aged and elderly people in different costumes were still talking to each other, and the document boards under their armpits were passing to each other, the most conspicuous of which were two men in naval uniforms, one of whom was an old European man with the rank of commodore in the navy.

When the water was filled, a worker at the bow of the ship lifted the red cloth covering the nameplate of the ship's number, and the word "Constitution" came out eye-catchingly.

Constitution, after a year-long "Super Life Extension and Overhaul Project". Finally, it has ushered in a comprehensive rebirth that can be called a makeover since its service.

"Colonel Adair, this sea trial of the USS Constitution will last at least three months, and there must be no hidden dangers. I hope that the naval engineering supervision team will follow up the whole process and give me a detailed report every month! ”

Look away from the USS Constitution. Commodore Kent withdrew from the crowd and brought in Colonel Adair, the head of the military overseer in charge of the Constitution's life extension and overhaul project.

Like Andrew, a long-retired Navy veteran, Kent was one of the first European sailors to join the U.S. Navy and participated in the first military operations in the Far East. He also served as the first commander of the Asian Fleet, and was among the best in the Chinese and American navies in terms of seniority and combat experience.

After Andrew's retirement with the rank of rear admiral a few years ago, Kent was promoted to commodore general. He became the second senior European admiral to take over the position of Director of Logistics and Armament at the Naval Command.

As an old subordinate of the commander of the Home Fleet, Adair, who was born as a transport captain, also served as the captain of the USS Constitution, and also commanded the USS Constitution in the Brazilian War against the Dutch West India Company.

Because he was better at logistics and organization, after the Brazilian War, Adair retired from the combat fleet and served as a senior instructor at the Navy's Long Island College for several years, and now as a superintendent of naval shipbuilding projects.

The new Constitution in the eyes of Commodore Kent is not only a traditional warship overhaul or equipment update, but also involves a bold attempt by the Huamei shipbuilding industry today, so Commodore Kent, the supreme person in charge of the Constitution overhaul, has to be cautious.

The completion of a warship's life-extending refit project can alarm the logistics and equipment directors to be present in person, and there are even technical representatives of the Beiyang Shipbuilding Group and the state-owned Qingcheng Shipbuilding Company in the crowd, which shows that its importance has exceeded its original purpose.

According to the naval expansion plan drawn up by the Navy Command a few years ago, the Constitution, which has been in service for more than two decades so far, will be extended beyond 1655. However, due to the nature of its initial experimental ship type, its structural design and construction process are full of a lot of verification content.

After the boiler explosion accident on the first voyage 20 years ago, conservative thinking prevailed in the Chinese and American Navy, and the greatest significance of the existence of the USS Constitution was no longer a purely military operation, but to provide more reference experience for the construction of future naval ships.

Poor Constitution, despite the fact that it had done its best to clear its reputation for the boiler explosion during its service, and had even experienced the "disgrace" of being demoted from a light cruiser to a frigate after the Brazilian War ten years earlier, had not escaped the fate of being once again reduced to a test subject of the Chinese shipbuilding industry.

The officers and men serving on the USS Constitution do not want to see their beloved ships decommissioned, the Navy Command also has a hard quantitative target to maintain the size of the main fleet, and the Ministry of Industry is even more willing to try to start the ship deep transformation industry.

The extension of life is not only intended to extend the service life of the Constitution, which has been in service for 20 years, by at least another 10 years from now, but also includes a major overhaul of the entire hull structure, including the lengthening of the stern, the widening of the hull, the increase in depth and the readjustment of the power compartment layout, and many of the most risky and difficult projects.

Compared with the ship refit industry that has accumulated rich experience in the major shipbuilding powers in later generations. Huamei's shipbuilding industry is limited to the design and construction of new ships.

For the in-depth transformation of ships with more technical complexity, it is usually possible not to touch them. For many young ship engineers, this kind of high-risk, costly retrofit is far less trivial than building a new ship.

With the rapid growth of the country's economy, the bubble of inflation has gradually been squeezed out, or with the intensification of competition in the industry, the construction price of Huamei ships can be said to have fallen again and again, and it is no longer the exclusive decision of Beiyang Shipbuilding Group more than ten years ago. But the Constitution's life extension and overhaul also cost more than $200,000, which is comparable to the cost of the latest modification of a brand-new Alfalfa-class frigate, and the construction period is up to a year.

Funding is not a problem with the annual donation of the "Navy Club Fund" of the Oriental Union Group. Coupled with the appropriation from the Ministry of Industry, it means that the Navy can get a result without spending a penny of its own money at all, so the Navy's command, which has always been conservative, simply sent the Constitution to the operating table a year ago.

The life extension project of the Constitution is extremely complex, and once the original structure of the ship is greatly changed, it will involve a series of difficult topics such as floating load adjustment and stability calculation of the ship's transformation. Therefore, during the design of the renovation plan, even the Ministry of Culture and Education cooperated and organized colleges and universities and senior shipbuilders to participate in it, hoping to accumulate an industrial experience that cannot be measured by money for Huamei Shipbuilding Industry, and lay a practical foundation for efficient maintenance and modification of old ships in the future.

At this time, the Constitution has changed a lot of details from its original appearance.

The stern was lengthened by 3 meters. The length of the hull waterline was increased from 72 to 75 meters to improve high-speed seaworthiness; The maximum width of the ship has been increased from 10.6 meters to 12 meters, and the length of the underwater keel has been adjusted, which greatly improves the yaw problem of ships in some bad sea conditions.

There is also a slight increase in the depth of the mold. The maximum draft was increased from 4.1 meters to 4.7 meters, and the speed impact caused by the slight increase in the square coefficient of the hull was solved by replacing the steam unit with higher horsepower.

If you add to this the major adjustment of the internal structure, the power pack and the observation equipment are completely upgraded, it is an exaggeration. Today, at the end of the project, perhaps except that the name and basic appearance of the ship have not changed, the Constitution is half a new ship from the inside out.

Of course. The only thing that hasn't changed is the weaponry. With the exception of the redesigned patio turret armoured fence, all naval guns are still the old 120mm and 90mm Wisworth rifles.

Due to the cost of the huge inventory of old naval guns and ammunition, the USS Constitution, Republic-class and Flower-class frigates will abandon the upgrade of the latest expensive steel rifled guns in the life extension and maintenance modification plan of the main warships of the Chinese and US Navy.

The standard displacement of the modified Constitution was raised to 1900 tons at once, and the full load displacement will also exceed 2300 tons. Just in terms of tonnage, it barely reached the standard of a light cruiser of the third rank, after which it will again return to the sequence of light cruisers.

For the upcoming acceptance sea trials, the navy is looking forward to it. According to the plan of the Navy Command, the newly-born light cruiser USS Constitution will leave for the Far East after it resumes service, continue to strengthen the strength of the Asian fleet, and contribute to the upcoming military operations in the Far East.

The sea trials a few days later had to be foolproof, but the on-site staff of Yacheng Shipping Group seemed a little apprehensive. After a brief completion greeting, a few veteran technicians continued to drill into the bottom of the hull, carrying kerosene lamps and continuing to scrutinize some of the cabins. (To be continued......)