If there are no more major accidents, then there will be about a month before the Heitugang coal mine is put into operation. There is another big problem that the Executive Committee needs to try to solve during this period, and that is the current situation of insufficient sea capacity faced by the Crossing Group.

From the very beginning of the crossing, the crossing group has been stuck in the quagmire of lack of maritime capacity. Although there are a lot of ships brought over during the crossing, and the combined displacement is more than 10,000 tons, but because the fuel reserves are very limited, and after coming to this time and space, they are limited to the production level, and they cannot replenish the fuel in the short term.

The last sortie of these ships had been three months ago, and after capturing the pirates, including Takahashi Minami, none of the iron ships had ever left the dock even half a step. If there is no large-scale attack from the sea in the future, the Executive Committee will probably not let these ships move lightly. Regarding the development direction of the future maritime transportation of the Crossing Group, everyone agrees with the point of view put forward by the Ministry of Shipping, that is, the position of sail power as the main power of sea ships will continue for a long time, even if the steamship is launched in the future, the storage of sails on board is also indispensable.

Now that the Ministry of Shipping has opened a golden finger and can grasp the development trend of future ships, it has become a matter of course to build its own shipbuilding. However, it was much more difficult to build the ship themselves than expected, and it would take these novices months to start the construction of this 400-gauge sea vessel. With the scale and speed of the current shipbuilding, several leaders of the Military Police Department doubted whether they would be able to wait until the day when the steam ironclad ship was launched.

This time, due to the development plan of overseas coal mines, the Executive Committee bought and leased three ships at a great expense, forming a basic cargo fleet. But a fleet of this size was not enough for the ambitious Executive Committee, but there was no way to get more ships. The shipping industry between the various ports on Hainan Island was not well developed, and now the Executive Committee has no money in its hands and cannot find a ship to buy. Although He Xi also ordered two 400-material sea vessels at the shipyard in Qiongzhou's capital city, it is estimated that they will not be delivered until the end of the year.

According to the intention of the Executive Committee, it would be desirable to maintain the capacity of 10 to 15 cargo ships on the route between the port of Heitu and the port of Shengli for a long time, but now it seems that the fleet of the Ministry of Shipping is still quite far from this goal. (Baidu search update is the fastest and most stable) and the level of maritime capacity is likely to become a new bottleneck restricting the development speed of the group after manpower.

At present, the only solution that the Executive Committee can count on is to send people to the mainland to buy ships. The last time the shopkeeper Li returned from Guangzhou, he brought back two large ships and dozens of sailors and boatmen, which undoubtedly shows that the mainland's shipping market is much more prosperous than Hainan Island. While the development of the Black Earth Port has begun to enter orbit, the Executive Committee is also considering when to open the shipping route to the mainland.

As for the question of whether to open up a mainland route at this stage, in fact, there have always been two voices in the Executive Committee and even at the grassroots level.

In addition to the well-known reasons for opening up emerging markets, the raw materials and various craftsmen that the mainland can provide to the group are not comparable to the small Hainan Island.

Since the opening of the port, although the crossing group has also tried its best to bring in many immigrants from Yazhou and other places, most of these immigrants have been engaged in agricultural production in the past, and many of the Li and Miao people do not even know how to farm, while the executive committee is bent on bringing in shipwrights, carpenters, blacksmiths, plasterers, stonemasons, and other people with professional skills is very scarce.

This imbalance in the proportion of occupations has caused many technicians in the crossing crowd to have to engage in some simple and repetitive physical labor, which is undoubtedly a great waste for the crossing group that values talents. Yazhou, which has a population of only about 20,000 people, has a very small proportion of craftsmen, and now it is extremely scarce, according to the report sent back by the Yazhou Office, the current housing prices in Yazhou have risen by at least two percent compared with when they first arrived, and a large part of the reason for this is that a large number of carpenters and plasterers have been taken away by the crossing group with generous treatment, so that some people want to repair houses and cannot hire craftsmen.

The situation is not limited to carpenters and plasterers, a brick kiln outside Yazhou, from foremen to technicians, more than 30 people up and down have now emigrated to Shengli Port, because they can get twice as much as they used to get in Yazhou. However, even though the Yazhou Office has been doing its best to bring in craftsmen from Yazhou, the number of these professionals is far from the level expected by the Executive Committee.

The situation on the mainland is completely different, the population of Guangzhou alone has exceeded the entire Hainan Island several times, and the types and numbers of various professional craftsmen are naturally much richer than that of Yazhou, a remote city.

The other faction is more cautious, believing that they should not relax their vigilance just because they are currently getting along with Yazhou officials "harmoniously", and if someone really wants to provoke them, then their identity from "overseas merchants" to "overseas chaotic parties" may just be a matter of paperwork. What's more, now that the crossing group has now extended the tentacles of the private salt business to Qiongzhou and Guangzhou, if it is really caught by the salt department in Guangzhou, the pigtail will be able to make things bigger in minutes.

The cautious faction believes that at this stage, the crossing group should not be in a hurry, but should first bury its head in the development of its own strength, as for the export of goods and the import of raw materials and population, it can be completely handed over to the agents. This will not only avoid the risks of shipping by sea, but also avoid the public from appearing in Guangzhou and attracting official attention.

Of course, if the rationale of the cautious faction is only that, then it is certainly not convincing enough. In fact, there is another very powerful argument of the cautious faction that the general aviation faction cannot refute, that is, the existence of Western forces in the Guangzhou area.

During this period, Guangzhou, as one of the most important foreign trade ports of the Ming Dynasty, had already gathered the merchant ships of various Western maritime powers here. The Portuguese, the Spaniards, the Dutch, the French, and the British, all of whom had long been listed by the Executive Committee as important competitors in the future, were to be completely unpredictable if they had known about the existence of the "Haihan".

It may be that there will be Western merchants who are sensitive to business opportunities to come to Shengli Port to trade with the Crossing Group, but it is also very likely to attract the covetousness of certain forces, especially when they learn that they can produce those industrial products that are not even available in Europe, and it is really difficult to say what kind of attitude they will maintain towards the Crossing Group. No one knows whether these marauding sea robbers will take risks under the trend of profit and adopt some radical and hostile means against the crossing group. For the Portuguese, Dutch, and Spaniards, who had already established a foothold in the Far East, the crossing group, which currently lacked naval power, was simply a piece of fat that could be caught in their bowl as long as they stretched out their hands. They don't even have to attack Victory Harbor, as long as they directly cut off the sea route to the outside of Victory Harbor, they can trap the crossing group in this small harbor.

Of course, there is another possibility, before the fat of the Crossing Group attracts all the maritime powers to Victory Harbor, a large number of pirates in the coastal areas have already been recruited. The pirate gang that attacked from Leizhou last time was just a small team of coastal pirates that had no reputation, and a big pirate gang of the grade of Eighteen Zhi really did not have the ability to resist head-on at all. If they are really targeted by this kind of pirate group, the only thing they can do is to retreat into the fortress of Base 1 to defend themselves, and wait for the other party to lose patience and then retreat on their own.

The shape of the South China Sea is very complex, and the cautious faction believes that at a time when the Crossing Group is still lacking the power to protect itself, it should not rush to wade into this muddy water, but steadily develop to build a reliable maritime force before considering the opening of shipping routes.

The conflict of opinions between the two factions has not stopped since the crossing, the public says that the public is reasonable, the mother says that the mother is reasonable, the keyboard executive committee members will fight happily in the forum every once in a while, and the opinions of the executive committee have been wavering, and no final resolution has been made on this.

This situation lasted until mid-August, when a fleet from Canton arrived at Shengli Harbor, which put an end to the protracted controversy.

After returning from the Guangzhou head office, Mr. Li of "Fu Ruifeng" had already brought a letter to the executive committee, and in the near future, the senior personnel of "Fu Ruifeng" would come to Shengli Port to contact them and discuss a long-term and stable business cooperation model. This time, not only did the people come, but the silver came, and they also brought two large sea ships purchased for the crossing group in Guangzhou.

The fleet had been discovered by the Coast Guard ship outside Shengli Harbor, and after the Coast Guard ship approached, after learning the other party's intention, it immediately notified the port by guò walkie-talkie, and the port quickly contacted the Tiandu Industrial Zone. So several members of the executive committee immediately rode their bicycles all the way back to Shengli Port to meet this distinguished guest, who was said to be a senior executive of the head office of "Fu Ruifeng".