"What, can't afford it?" said Roland, sitting in his office, the paperwork requesting the expansion of the administrative staff and the purchase of a sailboat on his desk.

Barov cleared his throat, "Your Highness, it's true. The price of a two-masted galleon is between eighty and one hundred and twenty gold dragons, but this is only the cost of shipbuilding. Counting the people on the ship, it is more than that, and the total price is estimated to be more than two hundred golden dragons. ”

"Didn't I say that I don't need sailors or helmsmen? Neither do captains, I just need boats. Roland asked, knocking on the table. With Wendy here, he doesn't need that many people to run the sailboat. Most river boats have straight sails, and they operate like raising and lowering flags, oarsmen and sailors are redundant, and the helmsman can just pull someone up to try it. Anyway, with vector wind power, are you afraid that the ship will not move forward?

"Your Highness, there is no such deal, at least not in Willow Leaf Town. "You may not know much about the industry, but generally speaking, the owner of the boat is the captain. It may be a merchant or a nobleman, the former recruited by himself and traveled with the ship between the docks of the major towns and towns, trading or transporting goods. In the case of the latter, an acting captain will usually be recruited to follow the ship for him. Employees are not paid on a monthly basis, but on a one- to three-year basis. ”

"Most of the time, the boat and the person are tied together. If you are going to buy a ship from the captain and not hire any of his men, then he will lose his salary. The sum of eighty golden dragons, even for the great nobles, is not a number that can be given up at will. At the beginning of the month, counting the gem rough trade with Willow Leaf Town, there are now three hundred and fifteen gold dragons left over in the town hall, and if you spend more than half of it to buy a boat, your militia team will not be paid the next month. The assistant minister finished in one breath, raised his glass and took a sip of ale.

"Most of the time you say ......"

"That's right," he nodded, "there are two situations in which an empty ship will be sold, one is that the merchant is in dire need of cash and sells his property. At this point he would dismiss all the crew and sell the ship as quickly as possible. The second is to replace the ship with a new one, which is very understandable. But it has to be said that both cases are very rare. ”

"Wait," Roland frowned, "you said you bought a new ship...... And where did these ships come from?"

"Blue Water Harbor, Sea Breeze County, North Lookout. Only seaport cities have docks, and only they can build ships. ”

It turns out that "you can't find such a deal in Willow Leaf Town" is what it means, Roland was silent for a moment, it was too far to go to the harbor city to buy a ship, and he didn't hire a crew, who would help him drive the ship back?" ”

When the assistant minister retired, the prince fell into deep thought.

In his strategic plan, shipping is an irreplaceable link. Without fast and convenient boat transportation, he could not complete the bag with artillery. The troops of the Duke of the Fortress were generally conscripted farmers, knights, and mercenaries, and the march was bound to be not much faster, but it was slower on its own. As Carter put it, a mud puddle would make it difficult for artillery to move by land – and land transportation in this era was not asphalt, not even stone roads. It's just that there are too many people walking, and they are pressing out a way. It's fine on a sunny day, but when it rains, it's muddy.

In the end, do you have to make it yourself?

Roland spread out a sheet of paper and jotted down the specifications he needed.

First of all, it was a ship capable of transporting one or two guns, plus about thirty men, and the ship could be unpowered and sail-propelled. Second, the ship is running on inland rivers, which is required to be stable and reliable, not easy to capsize, and has a shallow draft. Third, it should be easy to operate, so that the militia can get started quickly after a short period of training.

Taken together, there is only one answer...... Flat-bottomed barges.

Before the Roland crossing, such vessels with extremely shallow drafts and very low centers of gravity could be found everywhere, and they were all over almost every river route. In the past, the boats that were piled with sand or gravel and whose sides were almost level with the water were flat-bottomed barges, and with a single tugboat, they could pull several barges forward like a train.

Once the ship type is decided, the next key point is the choice of materials to build it with.

Roland wrote down three options on paper: wood, iron, and cement.

From rafts to sail battleships, from rivers to oceans, wooden boats can be said to have endured. Unfortunately, Roland didn't know how to build a flat-bottomed boat out of logs, and he didn't have any craftsmen under him. If you rely on a few carpenters, it is likely to be a large raft, or the kind that may fall apart at any time.

In the case of an iron ship, the structure is similar to that of a house, with criss-crossing primary and secondary beams forming the keel, which is then covered with iron sheets. If Anna does the welding, the overall stiffness is guaranteed. But this would deplete the already small reserves of iron ore, which were obviously more suitable for the production of steam engines and gun barrels as a last resort.

Then the cement ship became the last option - the walls were already built, the raw materials were left, and Anna only had to calcinate them once or twice to get enough cement powder. The construction process is also much easier than that of an iron ship, as long as the shape is put together with wooden formwork, the iron bars used as steel bars are arranged, and then filled with cement. Even in the countryside of my hometown, several cement boats can be built for fishing. Compared to iron ships, which require regular rust removal and painting, they do not even need maintenance after they are built, which can be described as inexpensive and durable. Even if you haven't learned how to build an ocean-going ship, building an inland cement barge with low technical content shouldn't be a big problem, right?

With the mentality of trying, Roland picked up a quill pen and quickly drew a sketch of the barge.

......

A walled shed was erected along the Chishui River.

In order to facilitate the launch, Roland made the shipbuilding site as close to the river bank as possible.

The shed can be sheltered from the wind and snow, and two charcoal fires are burned in the house at the same time to avoid the temperature being too low to affect the cement hardening effect.

The carpenter's planed timber formwork has spelled out the basic outline of the hull – the bow is rounded to reduce forward resistance, and the tail is squared to increase the load area. The boat is about twenty-four feet (8 meters) wide and has a 3:1 aspect ratio, which is a fat man compared to the 8:1 slender body of a regular boat. There are two masts in the middle. The mast is inserted into the bottom of the ship and is connected to the iron beam that runs through the center line. A wooden stake was also erected at the stern as a rudder reservation. Elsewhere, iron bars crisscross the area.

It didn't matter if there was no wire for lashing, all the intersections of the bars were welded by Anna herself, forming a mesh that stretched all over the bottom of the ship.

When the "formwork" and "rebar" were ready, Roland ordered the workers to begin the pouring operation.

The mixed cement is poured into the formwork by a basin, with a flat bottom in the middle and a height of about one meter and a half around the perimeter, which serves as the side wall of the shipyard. At first glance, it looks like a large bathtub with a unique shape.

None of the people involved in the construction, including Anna, could have imagined that this strange thing, made of the same material as the city wall, was actually a ship.