I am the prince of the Ming Dynasty, I don't give up

Chapter 175 Zhu Houxuan’s Concept
The Jingyu Type 24 is not large in size, 5 meters long and 100 meters wide. According to the modern displacement calculation method, its displacement should be about tons. It can only be said to be a small sea vessel. Except for the use of soft sails, its appearance is not much different from that of an ordinary sea vessel.

After all, it is a fishing boat, and the speed requirements are not high. It is just to allow the craftsmen of Qizhou Shipyard to practice and become familiar with the manufacture of sea vessels.

Even so, these fishing boats are several times larger than the current Ming Dynasty fishing boats.

It is said to be a specially designed fishing boat, but in fact it is just a boat with the bottom cabin converted into a pool for storing fish, a crane added to the rear to release the fishing nets, and many sets of pulleys on the boat to recover the fishing nets and fish.

There is no place for people to live in the cabin, because this type of fishing boat focuses on fishing and returning home on the same day.

Theoretically, this type of fishing boat can carry 20 tons of fish, but in reality, there are conditions for filling it up, that is, it needs to be in winter. If it is in other seasons, such as summer, it can return after catching 10 tons of fish, because by the time it takes to catch another 10 tons of fish, the first 10 tons of fish will have begun to rot.

In fact, these four fishing boats were not sent to Bohai Sea specifically to support the construction of Nanbu Salt Field, but they just happened to be there.

Zhu Houxun had coveted the salt industry of the Ming Dynasty for a long time. While planning how to seize control of the salt industry, he was also preparing other things.

In his plan, he took control of the salt industry of the Ming Dynasty, and the salt production of the Ming Dynasty would usher in an explosive growth, so he considered in advance how to use so much salt.

The food industry was the first way he thought of using salt, which led him to the fishery industry.

The fishery in the Ming Dynasty was not well developed, and it was mainly freshwater fishing, with almost no marine fishing.

Because there are densely populated areas near the rivers, lakes and reservoirs in the Ming Dynasty, the fish caught can be consumed quickly.

But the situation is different with marine fisheries. Most of the current marine fisheries in the Ming Dynasty are shallow-sea and offshore fishing. Because of the maritime ban, there are not many large cities along the coast and the demand for fresh fish is limited.

Some people may say that since the demand from people living in coastal areas is limited, then just pickle the fish and sell it inland. Salt is cheap along the coast anyway.

This brings up another question - is selling salted fish equivalent to selling illegal salt?

After all, salted fish contains a lot of salt. When a salted fish is transported to inland areas, the value of the salt it contains is several times that of other parts.

Merchants controlled the salt industry in the Ming Dynasty. They wanted to manipulate the price of salt. However, it was not enough to control the salt itself. They also needed to control the ways in which people obtained salt, such as salted fish and pickled vegetables.

In this way, the price of salt can be controlled.

Moreover, the salt on the coast is cheap, but that depends on how much you buy. It is indeed cheap if you secretly make some salt for your own consumption, but it will not work once the quantity increases, because private salt production is illegal. If you want to obtain large quantities of salt, you can only go through salt fields, and then the price will go up.

However, pickling salted fish requires a large amount of salt, which has become a dead end.

Even if we get a large amount of salt and pickle a large amount of salted fish, the sales become a problem.

In addition to the maritime ban, funds were unwilling to flow into marine fisheries, so the marine fisheries of the Ming Dynasty shrank greatly.

This is the result of market, policy and technology. But all these problems are not a problem in front of Zhu Houxuan!
That's why he thought about going into fishing, and he was not satisfied with fishing in the nearshore and shallow seas. He planned to fish in the open sea and deep sea from the beginning.

He planned well, but he still miscalculated.

Marine fisheries in this era had not yet begun to develop and the technology was very backward, which resulted in the fish resources in the sea being much greater than in later generations.

In later generations, the number of fish resources in the ocean has been greatly reduced due to various types of fishing, which has forced the governments of later generations to introduce something like fishing moratoriums to allow the fish resources in the ocean to recuperate.

But this era does not have such a problem at all.

The fishing nets used by these fishing boats are not the hand-thrown nets that are popular in the Ming Dynasty. That kind of net is not suitable for use in the ocean.

The fishing nets used by these fishing boats are trawl nets modeled after those of later generations, but the materials of the nets are not as diverse, strong, and tough as those of later generations.

It is made of thickened hemp rope, which is corrosion-resistant, long-fibered and tough. Before the invention of polyester fiber, it was one of the most suitable materials for making fishing nets.

Under such technical conditions, Zhu Houxuan was shocked to find that the fishing net was already full before the fishing boat put down the trawl and went out to sea.
The reason why distant-water fishing was developed in modern times is that all the fish in the coastal waters were caught. However, there are still plenty of fish in the coastal waters today, so there is no need to go fishing in the distant seas.
These fishing boats were pulled to the north in order to establish a fish food industry based on the future Nanbu Salt Field. After all, salt is the most widely used preservative.

Then we encountered the large-scale construction of Nanbu Salt Field, so we simply caught some fish for the workers of Nanbu Salt Field to provide them with protein supplement.

Zhu Houxuan was planning to build far more fishing boats than just these few. He was planning to build even more.

The grain production of the Ming Dynasty was just so-so. Although the guano and fertilizers that Zhu Houxuan brought back from overseas could increase production, the quantity was still too small and was just a drop in the bucket for the needs of the Ming Dynasty.

Moreover, potatoes and sweet potatoes have not yet been introduced to the Ming Dynasty, and even if they were, it would take decades to promote them.

Therefore, the Ming Dynasty still needed more diverse food sources, especially in the north where resources were relatively scarce.

The effect of animal husbandry is too slow and it consumes food.
Therefore, fishing became Zhu Houxuan's goal. The ocean is a pasture with extremely rich resources, and it is not difficult to obtain food.

Zhou Laosan's family worked hard on 3800 mu of land and only got kilograms of grain in a year, but the fish caught by the Jingyu trawler was more than that.
Moreover, 3800 kilograms of fish may provide more energy than 3800 kilograms of food!
The contrast is extremely scary.

If there are hundreds or thousands of similar fishing boats, how much fish can they catch?

If such fish catches were made into fish food that could be preserved for a long time and flowed into the mainland, it would feed more people of the Ming Dynasty, so that they would no longer fall into hunger and alleviate the food problem in the north.

With so many fishing boats, a large number of fishermen are needed. These fishermen also need to master certain sailing skills, learn how to operate the sails, and adapt to life at sea.
Each fishing boat will become a navigation school, continuously supplying navigation talents to the Ming Dynasty. These navigation talents will become an important foundation for the Ming Dynasty's future overseas expansion.

That is why Zhu Houxuan was so concerned about this matter. The development of marine fisheries was also an important support point for his future strategy.
(End of this chapter)