Chapter 1647 - The Vessels

Foshan Town could serve admirably as a major logistics depot—a hub where supplies converged and flowed outward in equal measure. Hong Huangnan weighed the possibilities as he studied his maps. The town's geographical advantages made it ideal for large-scale military procurement: rice, miscellaneous grains, livestock, fruit, cloth— all manner of materiel could be gathered here and distributed with remarkable efficiency.

His thoughts raced ahead. Some procured goods could be processed directly in Foshan, while the remainder would ship to Hong Kong for handling. Unhusked rice, once purchased, would be milled into brown rice at the depot's grain facility and held in storage, then polished white for distribution when the troops needed it. According to Chen Sigen's nutritional theories, the Fubo Army had abandoned brown rice entirely. The reasoning was straightforward: brown rice demanded more cooking time, wasting precious fuel, and its resistance to digestion meant soldiers had to chew it extensively for proper absorption. On the battlefield, there was simply no time for such things.

Beyond grain, vegetables could likewise be sourced and processed locally—dried or pickled to supply the ranks. If transportation time remained under seventy-two hours, fresh produce could be shipped straight to the frontline units.

As for meat, eggs, and even confectionery, Hong Huangnan had conceived plans to manufacture them on-site from local ingredients. Meat in particular presented intriguing possibilities. With a rapid, reliable waterborne supply chain, they might dispense altogether with cured and preserved provisions. He could draw on his expertise in fine cuisine to prepare dishes with extended shelf life for soldiers at the front.

Having completed his schematic, Hong Huangnan returned to his desk. The wugeng ji—the "fifth-watch chicken" stew simmering nearby—had begun to release an enticing aroma. He picked up the tea his secretary had brought, took a sip, and opened the freshly delivered folder. Inside lay hull line drawings for several new classes of river vessels, specially designed and constructed by the Transmigrators' shipbuilding industry for the Guangdong Campaign.

Guangdong itself had no shortage of river craft. Along the waterway between Guangzhou and the Pearl River estuary alone, three to four thousand boats of various inland and coastal-hybrid types lay at anchor year-round. Set aside the fishing boats, flower boats, and other small vessels, and most of what remained was serviceable for cargo and passenger transport. Their carrying capacities were modest, but their shallow drafts allowed them to navigate most channels and tributaries of the East, West, and North Rivers. Coastal merchant vessels were equally plentiful and could be requisitioned without difficulty.

Yet Hong Huangnan found these boats unsatisfying. They were sailing vessels without exception, and their cargo holds could not accommodate the standardized packing crates the Joint Logistics Department employed throughout its operations. While they would need to make extensive use of such local craft in the short term, building a dedicated core transport fleet remained essential.

In Hong Huangnan's conception, these purpose-built vessels should not only be motorized but also possess a degree of protection—particularly against incendiary attacks from the riverbanks. Experience had taught this lesson hard: during the Pearl River Estuary Breakthrough Campaign, the Marine Corps had relied heavily on captured wooden boats, and combat losses had come overwhelmingly from the enemy's fire weapons. For this reason, none of the new designs incorporated sails.

Initially, he had focused on existing naval vessels, particularly the motorized sanfa boats. These small craft drew little water and mounted compact steam engines—excellent for shallow-water operations. The Type 621 paddlewheel tugboat likewise proved highly suitable for river work. Intelligence reports indicated the 621 could sail without difficulty all the way to Wuzhou, and might even push further upstream toward Nanning.

Using Type 621 tugs to tow barges would enable large-scale transport of supplies and personnel. This formed the rough blueprint for Hong Huangnan's envisioned "waterborne supply column." But it was not enough.

For the main channels of the three rivers, the 621's supply columns could move freely. But in certain upper reaches and many tributaries, the 621 was simply too large. What they needed were smaller steamboats with even shallower drafts for transport and towing operations. Such modest steamers had remained active on many of China's rivers well into the 1980s.

Beyond transport vessels, small river gunboats were also required—to protect shipping lanes, suppress river pirates, provide fire support for landing operations, and project intimidating power over riverside settlements.

These combined requirements had become quite a challenge for their esteemed colleagues at the shipyard. Since Shi Jiantao had volunteered for the project, he was assigned to manage it hands-on. As for the designer, naturally it fell to the sole Chief Designer of the "Central Ship Design Institute"—Zhong Ziheng.

Following coordination between the General Military Affairs Council and the Planning Commission, designs would be completed in Lingao while actual construction took place in Hong Kong. Engines and guns would, of course, still ship from Lingao.

The first line drawing Hong Huangnan examined was for the Type 621 "Inland." The designation indicated it was specifically intended for river navigation. Zhong Ziheng had made relatively minor modifications from the original 621 design—primarily substituting a smaller engine to conserve hold space, reducing coal bunker capacity, and converting from side-mounted paddlewheels to a stern wheel configuration to accommodate shallower waterways.

However, the 621's hull had originally been designed for the deep-draft requirements of coastal and Pearl River main channel operations. Its lines had never been optimized for shallow water. Though the smaller engine and other measures had reduced the draft, navigable range remained limited. Hong Huangnan reviewed the specifications: roughly speaking, only on the West River could it travel unimpeded, running to Wuzhou without difficulty.

The second drawing depicted an iron-framed, wooden-hulled river gunboat. By the five-hundred-ton division standard, its 260-ton displacement qualified it merely as a "boat."

This was a river gunboat "meticulously designed" by Zhong Ziheng, modeled on the Western powers' gunboats that had patrolled the Yangtze in the 1920s and '30s. Those vessels, built for "riot suppression" and "intimidation," typically mounted large-caliber main guns alongside considerable numbers of light rapid-fire weapons. Their speeds exceeded those of wooden river craft. The need to transit the Three Gorges during dry season and penetrate into the Sichuan interior dictated exceptionally shallow drafts.

These technical requirements aligned perfectly with the General Staff's planned river operations in Guangdong. Thus Zhong Ziheng had designed the Type 798 river gunboat precisely to these specifications. Principal dimensions: length 54.86 meters, beam 8.23 meters, draft 0.79 meters. Two 500-horsepower reciprocating steam engines and two coal-fired boilers powered the vessel, with a crew of fifty-six. When necessary, it could transport a platoon of infantry. The 798 made no concessions whatsoever to seaworthiness, employing an extreme shallow-draft inland hull form with minimal freeboard. Limited hull space gave the 798 a characteristic shared by such gunboats: an exceptionally long and prominent superstructure. Combined with its towering twin funnels and the massive casemate housing the 130mm muzzle-loading rifled gun, the vessel appeared decidedly top-heavy.

Yet this very design allowed it to navigate most waterways of the East, West, and North Rivers, along with a considerable number of tributaries. With its "towering" silhouette and "great guns," its appearance on any stretch of river would exert overwhelming intimidation on local powers. When the situation demanded, it could also deploy army units or transport supplies. Though the hull used iron framing with wooden planking, all major compartments exposed above the waterline were fitted with hot-rolled thin steel plates as armor. Except for the heaviest Red Barbarian cannons, it was essentially invulnerable at close range to Ming military firearms.

Hong Huangnan was quite pleased with the river gunboat—though given his familiarity with the Planning Commission's parsimonious nature, he harbored doubts about how many dedicated Type 798s they would ultimately approve. Personally, however, he strongly favored this new weapon type. Compared to the thousand-pound siege guns that many transmigrators boasted about, a river gunboat anchored in White Goose Pool would prove far more persuasive.

As if by deliberate contrast, the next drawing depicted a small river patrol boat that the Planning Commission would surely adore. It was modeled on the twenty-five-ton inland gunboats the Japanese Army had employed extensively in China—vessels with practically unlimited navigability. During the War of Resistance, they had appeared everywhere, from Jiangnan's small rivers to Guangdong's creeks. On the Yangtze, their presence went without saying, and the PLA had even used them in offshore operations supporting the liberation of coastal islands. Surviving hulls had continued serving as utility craft along the Yangtze well into the 1990s.

The problem was that these small boats used internal combustion engines, an area where Lingao's industrial capacity remained relatively weak. The design proposal called for a compact eighteen-horsepower steam engine, scaled up from a twelve-horsepower design that Li Di had brought from American steam enthusiast hobbyists. Speed and range were accordingly diminished. Full specifications: length 18.1 meters, beam 3.5 meters, full-load displacement 30 tons, armed with one 70mm Type 32 battalion gun in its naval version—which could also be wheel-mounted as an infantry gun.

"This patrol boat is hideously ugly," Hong Huangnan couldn't help but observe.

Ugly as it was, it would prove a highly useful little craft. The "waterborne supply column" would indeed need such flexible and inexpensive armed boats for escort duties.

Finally came the so-called Type 1024 inland steamboat. Evidently, Chief Designer Zhong had not expended much creative energy on it—he had simply copied existing design data, substituted an eighteen-horsepower small steam engine, and added a coal bunker. Otherwise, it was identical to the "small steamers" that had plied China's inland waterways throughout the twentieth century. The Type 1024 employed a flat-bottomed, low-freeboard conventional shallow-draft design. Though unremarkable in appearance and average in performance, its navigational adaptability was strong—convenient and flexible in operation. Hong Huangnan decided to adopt this type as the Joint Logistics' motorized transport force.

"That should cover it—best to build a batch of all of them." He circled his own name and placed the folder back in the tray, making a rough mental calculation of how many vessels of each type would be needed.

Yet he was somewhat worried. Early autumn had already arrived, and the offensive was scheduled for just over three months hence. He had no idea how many of these new vessels would be ready by then. He knew nothing about the Hong Kong Shipyard's efficiency, nor had any progress reports been sent to him.

(End of Chapter)