Chapter 250: Arrival at Changhua

Right then, withholding nothing, he taught her the method of using the sextant. Its use was more convenient and accurate. Li Huamei, who had sailed perennially, couldn't put it down after trying it out.

"Such a useful thing—truly rare." When returning the sextant to Chen Haiyang, she was reluctant to part with it. "Can you sell one to me?"

"Later," Chen Haiyang said. "We still have difficulties manufacturing them ourselves."

"Is the lens hard to make?"

"That's right," he said while guiding the students to use it in turn. "Grinding the lenses ourselves isn't easy."

Li Huamei sighed. "You have so many good things, and you just won't sell them."

"Watch the landing point of the light spot. Hold your hand steady. Correct!" Chen Haiyang didn't answer her. Which things could be sold—that was up to the Executive Committee.

"I have a feeling." Li Huamei leaned close to Chen Haiyang and spoke softly. "You people know everything, you just won't say!" The distance between them was so close he could feel the woman's breath against his hair roots, raising goosebumps on his skin. The favorable impression he had begun to feel cooled down again. He didn't reply, but instead shouted loudly at the students:

"Begin measuring navigation speed!"

Hearing the command, the students formed groups of three. One person threw a small wooden board out of the ship; one side of this board was wrapped in lead sheet so it would stand upright after hitting the water. Another student held a retractable reel, connecting the board with a cord. The student throwing the board watched it fall into the water. When the small board emerged from the wake at the stern, he immediately shouted:

"Start!"

The student holding the reel began to release the cord. The reel spun rapidly, and the cord was continuously paid out. Meanwhile, the student holding the hourglass immediately flipped it, and the fine sand began to flow swiftly.

"Stop!" As the sand in the hourglass ran out, the timekeeper shouted the command. The line holder jammed the reel.

"Three knots!" The line holder reported based on the markings on the cord. "Current sailing speed: three knots."

Chen Haiyang observed whether their movements met the standards. He nodded: "Good. Next group!"

Li Huamei watched them and said, "Your seamanship was definitely learned from the English."

"Why?"

"Only English sailors use this method."

A ship speed of three knots was considered normal for sailboats—slightly slow, but safe. The Chinese sailing guides and charts in their hands were all drawn based on twentieth-century data; the situation along Hainan's coast in this timeline remained a blank.

The sun gradually slanted westward. The wind force began to increase, and the waves grew larger. The measured speed had already reached five knots. Lin Chuanqing, worried, grabbed the walkie-talkie hanging around his neck and asked:

"Lookout, lookout—how is the sea surface situation?"

"Everything normal," Huang Zhuazi, responsible for the lookout at the masthead, replied. From the top of the mast, the field of view was unusually wide, though the swaying was particularly severe. From up there, he could see quite a few ships nearby—mostly fishing boats, with occasional large vessels sailing under full canvas. Overall, it was peaceful.

"How is it? Can you handle it up there?"

"No problem. The scenery is good up here, the air is good, haha." Huang Zhuazi had adapted particularly well.

"How are the cloud conditions?"

"Altocumulus, moving from east to west."

This indicated perfectly normal weather; there wouldn't be any storms.

"Ruan Xiaowu, you climb up and join Instructor Huang on lookout!"

The child called Ruan Xiaowu looked a bit scared, but still stepped forward, grabbed the rope net on the mast, and climbed upward.

The first day passed smoothly. Under the breeze, the fleet traveled about forty nautical miles at a speed of three knots per hour. Since they were navigating along the coast, sailing at night carried the danger of hitting reefs. Near 18:00, Lin Chuanqing found a desolate bay by the shore to anchor for the night. He calculated the local coordinates: 19°44′0″N, 109°9′0″E. Checking against the map, this place corresponded exactly to the location of Yangpu Port in Danzhou.

Yangpu was one of the finest deep-water ports in western Hainan. In this timeline, it appeared empty and desolate. The bay was enormous, crisscrossed with sandbars. In the distance, one could see several sailboats docked by the shore and a small fishing village.

After lowering a rowboat to sound the depth and determine the channel and anchorage, the Zhenhai lowered its outboard motors and towed the Hangzhou behind it, carefully entering the port at low speed.

Li Huamei stood on the quarterdeck, watching the churning water below. So this was the reason they didn't mount many guns. It seemed that iron ships weren't the only ones that could sail without sails or oars; wooden ships could too. This was achieved because they had installed something on the ship. And that something should be in some compartment right beneath her feet...

Wang Luobin decided to stay in Yangpu for a day or two. Yangpu was the deep-water port with the most development value in western Hainan—a port the future Transmigrator Regime would focus on developing—so gathering more information was necessary. He immediately ordered the assault team to go ashore, control the situation, and replenish food and water while they were at it.

Through the telescope, the coast of Yangpu was extremely desolate, but there was a fishing village by the shore. The Special Reconnaissance Team took the marine detachment ashore in rowboats and immediately stormed the village. The entire settlement had no more than a dozen households, and more than half had already fled—as soon as they saw strange ships entering the port, the local fishermen ran, leaving only a few old and infirm who bowed and scraped when the strangers arrived. Fortunately, they spoke the Lingao dialect. Through locally recruited marines, the transmigrators learned they were begging not to have their houses burned or boats seized, saying to just take the fish if they wanted.

Xiong Buyou from the Foreign Affairs Department comforted them with kind words, explaining they were only ashore to replenish water and food and would pay for everything taken. He also gave gifts of sewing needles and white sugar, pacifying the elders. Meanwhile, rowboats continued to ferry people ashore. The transmigrators, having been tossed about all day, were now recovering slightly. The feeling of seasickness passed, and their appetites returned. They all schemed to go ashore for a walk. Some even proposed going ashore to hunt and get some meat, and they also wanted to see if there were fish, vegetables, or eggs to purchase in the village. Wang Luobin thought that since they were going to delay in Yangpu for a day or two anyway, he might as well let everyone go ashore.

After the marine detachment landed, they quickly secured the whole village, ignoring those who had already fled. They swiftly set up temporary shelters next to the fishing village using tents and barbed wire, and dispatched observation posts to nearby high ground, settling in for the time being.

The amateur hunters conducted a disheartening hunt on shore. The local area could be described as having three abundances: abundant wasteland, abundant stones, and abundant cacti. Under these "three abundances," there wasn't even a hare to shoot, and wild vegetables were naturally nonexistent. After wandering for half the day, they returned essentially empty-handed.

That night, Chen Haiyang had to continue comparing astronomical measurement techniques with Li Huamei in the middle of the night. She demonstrated on-site how to use the quadrant. The students were tongue-tied at the huge difference between the data obtained from the quadrant and the sextant. Although the error rate was less than five percent—less than 0.1 degree—when converted to distance, it was nine kilometers. In the vast ocean, this small error was enough to cause many fatal mistakes. No wonder early navigators preferred to sail along the coast—after all, landmark measurements from the coast were more accurate.

The next day, the exploration team members surveyed part of the bay, and the Navy measured the water depth, selecting several berths. The survey of the surrounding natural environment concluded that the local area was extremely barren, with basically no large natural rivers, making access to water difficult. Arable land was scarce, and trees even scarcer.

"If the industrial water problem can be solved, this would be a good place for industrial development. It doesn't occupy farmland at all, nor does it destroy the environment." Wang Luobin sighed after the field investigation. "The environment is already bad enough."

Early on the third day, the fleet continued its journey. After several more days of such stop-and-go survey activities, finally, at noon on the fifth day, the ships arrived at the estuary of the Changhua River. Here, the river divided into north and south branches to enter the sea. The south estuary was named Sanjia Port, and the north river wound south of the county seat to enter the sea, named Wuni Port, which was closer to the county seat. It was the main port of Changhua County.

However, through Lin Chuanqing's telescope, the northern Wuni Port was obviously unsuitable for anchoring. There was massive siltation, and apart from some small fishing boats, there was no sign of any ship docked there.

Li Huamei was quite familiar with the hydrological conditions here: "Dock at Sanjia Port. A four-hundred-liao ship would run aground in Wuni Port."

So the fleet changed course to dock at Sanjia Port on the south river. As the ships entered the harbor, they saw several villages on the shore, as well as some broken walls and ruins—it looked like it used to be an army garrison, now abandoned.

It was spring, the dry season, so the flow of the Changhua River was very small. Streaks of dry riverbed lay exposed, revealing snow-white fine sand and withered water weeds. The north bank was a plain. The vegetation by the river was mostly severely destroyed, forming a withered tropical savanna environment similar to the African grasslands. There were sand dunes in many places, extending far inland.

At the end of the plain was a set of rolling hills with relatively dense vegetation, estimated visually at between two hundred and four hundred meters high. The south bank of the Changhua River was also a plain, with faint signs of paddy fields and a walled city—that should be the county seat of Changhua County during the Ming Dynasty.

"Where is the Haiwei Town quartz sand mine President Wen talked about?" Bai Guoshi asked. The Haiwei Town quartz sand mine was a key target of this exploration. The local quartz ore sand had a raw silica content of 99.8 percent and iron content of 0.1 percent, with few impurities and uniform particle size. It was rare in the whole country, and the reserves were enormous.

"Isn't that it?" Wang Luobin pointed to the snow-white sand on the distant beach.

"Where's Haiwei Town? There should be a town—"

"This is 1629."

Wang Luobin ordered a small boat to be lowered. Several members of the exploration team rowed the sampan toward that beach. Before long, they brought back several rattan baskets of sand. Wang Luobin pinched some in his hand and examined it carefully. Under the sunlight, the sand in the center of his palm was white as snow—truly good stuff! He naturally knew its value; such fine quartz sand would be a waste to use for wine bottles and mirrors. It could also serve as raw material for circuit fuses, display screens, and the like.

(End of Chapter)