How important is whaling? The meat on a whale accounts for half or more of its weight. If you hunt a sperm whale weighs 50 tons, you can get 25 tons of whale meat. Even a smaller baleen whale weighs about 25 tons and can produce more than a dozen tons of whale meat.

What does this mean? It means that the meat produced by a whale can feed many people! If you produce 25 tons of meat based on the weight of a sperm whale, it is 55,000 pounds of meat! Even if each person eats two pounds of meat a day, this is enough for 27,500 people to eat a day. In fact, for the poor people of this era, it is considered a good life for each person to eat 1 pound of food every day, let alone meat?

If the standard of 1 pound of meat per person per day, 55,000 pounds of meat can provide 55,000 people's daily consumption. As long as 365 sperm whales are caught, it can provide 55,000 people's food for a year. Not to mention that whales also provide a large amount of whale meat, and whale bones can also be used as fertilizer and fertilizer fields.

Moreover, in this era, there were very few people who hunt whales around the world. Even if there were people who hunt whales, they used small boats to kill small whales. The indigenous whalers of this era dared not mess with them at all. Because the boat was gently pulled by a large whaler, the boat capsized.

Not only that, there were very few whaling races in this era. It can even be said that there were very few fishing boats on the sea in this era. Even if there were, they were mostly small fishing boats that were active offshore, and there were no trawling nets that were super efficient in fishing in later generations. They only had small hand-pulled nets, and the amount of fishing was extremely limited.

This also led to the extremely abundant fishery resources in the ocean in this era, which also means that whales have extremely abundant food sources. Therefore, there are too many whales in this era than in later generations. I dare not say anything else, but in areas where small fish and shrimp are rich, there are a large number of whales waiting to eat nearby...

In places like Newfoundland fishing grounds, fishermen can see the water spurted by whales every day. Even in the North Sea, whales can often be seen squirting water. But even fishermen who know how to catch whales often dare not start easily, because their boats cannot withstand the drag of large and medium-sized whales.

Therefore, Marin asked people to develop whaling cannons. It was not because the whaling cannons had a fast harpoon and could hunt whales that swim quickly, but because the whaling cannons were powerful and could penetrate deeply into the whales, or even hit the key part of the whales, quickly causing the whales to be inactive, so there was no such thing as dragging the fishing boat.

After all, no matter how big or strong a whale is, the whale fork fired by a whale cannon will lose its combat effectiveness. Just like a person stabbed into the internal organs by a knife, he will quickly lose the ability to counterattack.

In traditional whaling, the javelin-type whaling fork held by fishermen can be pierced into the outer skin of the whale at most. Although it can get stuck in the whale meat, it is not fatal at once. In that case, the whale will run wildly due to the severe pain from the skin. It would be fine if it drags the whales forward, but it would be a long time to waste your energy and give the whales too much blood and die.

But this process is very dangerous. It’s nothing to be dragged forward by a whale. If the whale suddenly dives into the bottom of the water, it will be a lot of fun...

The whaling fork thrown by manpower pierces into the whale's skin, just like hurting a human skin, which can only cause painful skin damage to the whale. After being hit by this painful skin trauma, whales often run away crazily due to the pain, causing high-speed drag on the whale boat...

If you use a powerful whaling cannon, it will be different. Because of its fast speed and great power, whaling forks can easily pierce into the whales' bodies and even penetrate into the internal organs of whales under the drive of whaling cannons. Whaling forks driven by the explosive power of gunpowder can also cause great damage to the target whales and cause the whales to lose their combat effectiveness in a very short time. In this way, the possibility of a whaling fishing boat being dragged by the whales and capsizing is greatly reduced.

Therefore, Marin felt that whaling cannons are of too high importance. Once the research and development is successful, Beihai will have endless whale meat.

You should know that after World War II, Japan was forced to dispatch fishing boats to hunt whales due to severe lack of food and meat to obtain enough meat to make up for the dilemma of domestic food shortage.

At that time, many of the children who grew up after World War II, namely the Japanese elderly in the 21st century, grew up eating whale meat, and even the school cafeteria provided cheap and easy-to-get whale meat. This also led to the fact that in the 21st century, many Japanese elderly people were very fond of whale meat and even regarded whale meat as a belief. However, young Japanese people in the new century did not like to eat whale meat. Because they had not experienced the era of food scarcity in Japan when World War II just ended, so they naturally had no feeling about eating whale meat.

At the end of World War II, Japan's population was as high as 70 million, but most people actually relied on whales to supplement meat nutrition. Therefore, it can be seen how large the whaling scale was in Japan. In the 1960s, Japan had a total of 7 whaling fleets, with an average annual number of whales reaching 20,000, and it could obtain more than 100,000 tons of whaling meat. At its peak, Japan's whaling catches in Antarctica were as high as 300,000 tons, accounting for 78% of the world's whaling volume.

In other words, Japan obtained more than 100,000 tons of whale meat every year, which allowed the children who grew up after the war to eat enough whale meat. Therefore, those children became elderly people decades later and were still obsessed with whale meat, which led to the later introduction of Japan's anti-whaling agreement, and continued to hunt large quantities of whale fish in the name of "scientific research" to meet the needs of those Japanese elderly people who had whale meat.

What is the concept of more than 100,000 tons of whale meat? One ton of whale meat is 2,200 pounds, which is enough for 2,200 people to eat a day (each person eats one pound a day). One hundred thousand tons is equivalent to allowing 600,000 people to eat a pound of whale meat every day for a year. If you want to get 100,000 tons of whale meat, you only need to kill tens of thousands of whale meat.

This chapter is not over, please click on the next page to continue reading! After World War II, perhaps Japan still needed to send ocean whaling ships to the waters near the Antarctic to fish. Because too many whales in the northern hemisphere were hunted as early as the late 19th and early 20th century.

But in this era, the whaling industry in the northern hemisphere has not begun to develop. As the most sharp whaling weapon, whaling cannon, has not yet appeared.

Therefore, in Newfoundland fishing grounds alone, tens of thousands of whales are caught every year, and as long as there are enough whaling cannons and fishing boats, it can be easily done. At that time, whales alone can feed hundreds of thousands of people, not to mention that Newfoundland fishing grounds still have a large amount of ordinary fish harvest.

In the following days, the Beihai Kingdom would first arrest hundreds of thousands of Taino people as serfs on Haiti Island to help cultivate the land. However, at the beginning, the arable land had not yet been developed, so they could only rely on the Beihai Kingdom to feed the Taino serfs themselves.

A person consumes hundreds of pounds of food every year, tens of millions of pounds of 100,000 people, and hundreds of thousands of pounds of pounds of 100,000 people. At present, food is so expensive, so Marin cannot bear it all to feed the Taino serfs.

Therefore, it is also a good choice to fill the food gap in the first few years of the Tylenol serfs by fishing and whaling. Moreover, while obtaining a large amount of whale meat, you can also get a lot of whale oil, which can be used to make products such as candles and soap, which is definitely a killing of multiple goals.

Thinking of this, Malin's eyes suddenly lit up. Because, he had already thought of a good way to make a fortune - to sell soap to the Ming Dynasty!

Previously, Europeans also relied mainly on the oil of livestock, such as butter and sheep oil, which cost more. Marin had his subordinates thrown by manpower to catch whales. Although whales could be caught, the number of whales may be limited and the amount of whales they might be killed is also small.

However, once the whale gun is developed successfully and the application of large whale ships is used, the supply of whale oil in Beihai will be extremely astonishing in the future.

But how to apply so many whale oil is not only used to make candles, but also seems to be used to make soap, which is also a very good use.

You should know that when I was reading historical time travel novels in my previous life, making soap was one of the most powerful tricks to travel through ancient China, and almost every time traveler would use it.

The raw materials for making soap are very simple, nothing more than animal oil and caustic soda. Caustic soda is mainly obtained by reacting lipid and lime, and the cost is low. The only trouble is the acquisition of animal oil.

In the Ming Dynasty, animal fats were treasures in people's eyes and were an important way to obtain oil and water. Therefore, in ancient China, both lard and mutton oil were rare. Sheep oil was also an important raw material for lamp oil in ancient China. As for pork, it was a very important source of oil and water for the ancient Chinese, and it was extremely popular.

Therefore, in ancient China, the most difficult raw material to obtain if you want to make soap was animal oil. If you want to mass-produce soap, you must have a large amount of animal oil. Therefore, those travelers who make soap had to intersect with the grassland nomadic peoples to obtain sufficient animal oil. Otherwise, they would not be able to make a lot of money by making soap normally.

But Marin is different. He now occupies Newfoundland fishing grounds and has the ability to control large areas of North Sea fishing grounds. Once the whale cannon is successfully developed, the source of whale oil will be almost continuous.

With whale oil, and importing a large amount of cheap syrup from the Ming Dynasty, you can produce soap or even soap on a large scale. At that time, selling soap to the Ming Dynasty on a large scale can become a very important source of wealth.

With such a huge market in the Ming Dynasty, Malin could conclude that the sales of soap will surely make him rich, counting money and cramping his hands...

Moreover, based on the production of whale oil, Marin can conclude that the production of soap will be very large at that time, so the sales of whale oil soap will smooth out the trade deficit with the Ming Dynasty, and may even produce a surplus.
Chapter completed!