Chapter 121: Mwanza Shipyard
January 3, 1868.
The Great Lakes region, Mwanza.
Lake Victoria, with a water surface area approaching seventy thousand square kilometers and an average depth of around forty meters, offers excellent navigability.
To develop the Great Lake, advanced ships are indispensable. Even if they're not exceedingly modern, they must at least outperform the dugout canoes used by the natives.
Moreover, there are over a thousand islands on the lake, many of which are suitable for human habitation. Naturally, some are already home to local tribes.
These tribes rely on fishing for a living and might spend their entire lives on the islands. However, the East African colonial government, which ultimately aims at a policy of "clearing," will not permit this.
Hence, for the sake of developing and utilizing Lake Victoria, as well as clearing the native tribes on these islands, it has become essential to establish our own inland lake forces in East Africa.
Regardless of whether it's for fishermen or for forming an inland lake force, ships are indispensable.
Even in later times, the primary means of transportation on Lake Victoria remained ferries. Uganda, Kenya, and Tanzania all built ports around the shores of the lake, relying on the vast waters of Lake Victoria to establish numerous sizable port cities. Many of these lake ports rivaled some of Africa's seaports in importance.
Furthermore, Lake Victoria boasts abundant freshwater fish resources. With the development of the East African colonies and the colony's restrictions on hunting wild animals for food, finding new sources of meat substitutes inevitably becomes necessary.
Currently, Ernst has two main ideas. One is to develop pastures and engage in animal husbandry. The other is to exploit the freshwater fisheries of East African lakes.
Raising livestock takes time, while the fishery resources of East African lakes are readily available. Lake Victoria, Lake Solon, Lake Malawi, and even Lake Turkana—any one of them alone could satisfy the meat consumption demands of the present East African colonies.
As for marine fisheries, indeed the East African coast enjoys abundant fishery resources. Especially during the season affected by the Somali Current, large fishing grounds form.
But under the current conditions in the East African colonies, it's not feasible to build a large shipyard for seagoing vessels, and using small boats for marine fishing would be unsafe on the ocean.
Hence, it makes more economic sense to develop inland lake fishery resources, as inland lakes don't see the same tumultuous waves that the ocean does.
Ernst plans to set up several small shipyards on inland lakes, producing vessels that would not only serve the fishing industry but also expedite development and expansion in East Africa.
After all, these lakes are large, covering wide areas. Traveling around them by land to reach the opposite shore would require a long detour. Having ships would save considerable time.
Moreover, ships can carry large cargo loads, facilitating the transport of goods and personnel, significantly reducing losses.
Currently, East Africa's most crucial means of transportation are horse-drawn and ox-drawn carts. In many construction sites, numerous wooden wheelbarrows (pushed by manpower to transport grain and other materials) are also key tools of transport.
The first East African shipyard has been located on the shores of Lake Victoria, at Mwanza.
This choice follows a comprehensive assessment of various factors.
Two major cities in the East African colonies are located along the shore of Lake Victoria: Mwanza (capital of the Great Lakes region) and Kisumu (capital of West Kenya). Linking these two cities will accelerate development of the lake, and naturally the link between them will rely on ships.
Additionally, the native tribes living on the islands in Lake Victoria need to be dealt with. Lakes Solon and Malawi do not pose the same requirements, so there's no urgency to build shipyards there.
Beyond that, campaigns in the northwest also depend on the navigable advantages of the lake, and strengthening control over the northwest in the future will benefit greatly from the Great Lake's shipping routes.
Lastly, Mwanza itself has excellent natural conditions. Mwanza Bay makes Mwanza a naturally superb lake port.
Previously, the Sukuma people (commonly known in modern reality as "the Gypsies of Tanzania"; in fact they are the largest ethnic group in Tanzania, which contains more than 120 different ethnic groups) inhabited this area. Later, the East African colony simply occupied the land and took it over.
In the subsequent "purging" campaigns, the Sukuma people of the entire Great Lakes region were driven away by the East African colonial government, joining the numerous ethnic groups in the northwest's "Eight Nations."
The Mwanza Shipyard is located to the southwest of Mwanza City, on the southern side of a small peninsula that juts westward into Mwanza Bay. The water is calm there, the lake waters are deep, and the peninsula is ideally suited for building docks.
…
For the people who came to East Africa, anyone who could have stayed in Europe is definitely facing a hardship assignment here.
Hence, Ernst directly appointed ethnic Chinese interns from the family-owned European shipyard to head to Africa and oversee construction of the shipyard.
These Chinese interns are all students from the Black Forest Military Academy, so they obey Ernst's orders unconditionally.
Compared to their past lives—wandering in the Far East, going hungry day after day—the conditions in East Africa, though tough, don't seem so bad to those young Chinese who once lived in dire straits.
Moreover, during their school years, they had all pledged readiness to go through fire and water for the principal. However, most of them could not serve as interpreters because their spoken German was poor; at a minimum, being an interpreter requires fluent communication skills.
Hence, many students whose language was inadequate remained in Europe to continue improving their German. Of course, the school could not support them indefinitely, so they had to intern at various companies under the Hechingen (Black Forest) brand, working while studying German—a process much faster than studying at school, as most of their colleagues were German, which created a better language environment.
Those students with outstanding performance (good German) were sent to East Africa to serve in the military and local governments, coordinating various tasks.
Because the European local students enrolled relatively late, those early interns in the Hechingen factories were mainly Chinese students.
Rob Lee was one of the individuals Ernst selected. As soon as one hears this name, they know he was originally Chinese.
Rob Lee had previously been an intern at a Venetian shipyard alongside German workers, and later went to work in Hamburg.
Since he was one of the few Chinese students with experience in shipbuilding, he was chosen to go to East Africa to oversee the construction work of Mwanza Shipyard.
Though Rob Lee had only about a year of professional experience, both the Venice and Hamburg shipyards specialize in building large ocean-going vessels, and Rob Lee had studied exactly that kind of construction.
So going to East Africa to guide shipyard construction is indeed like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut.
With hundreds of workers under the guidance of Rob Lee and the German technicians, the coastline was cleared, trees cut, and rubble removed.
This time, Rob Lee was not the only one arriving; there was also a German technician who would stay for only a few months and then return to Germany.
The German technician came to East Africa largely for the generous pay, a gamble of sorts. As a veteran shipbuilder, his economic situation in Germany was already decent, better than most.
So he planned to earn some quick money and then leave. After all, the conditions in East Africa were far too primitive, lacking any entertainment. Moreover, he knew enough geography (thanks to Prussian compulsory education) to confirm he definitely did not want to settle here permanently.
Before long, under the pair's supervision, workers cleared a large expanse of land on the south side of the peninsula, leaving space for future buildings and roads all around.
In order to get the shipyard into production as soon as possible, Rob Lee decided to undertake land-based and water-based construction simultaneously—building onshore facilities and roads while also working in the waters to construct the docks.
In the Great Lakes region, rainfall is plentiful and the forest is dense, offering an inexhaustible supply of timber.
The Mwanza administration organized the populace to log trees, providing raw materials for the shipyard's construction.
These were high-quality, decades-old trees. The native population, with their backward productivity, had no capacity for large-scale logging, which certainly benefited the East African colonial government.
The shipyard is not designed to be very large and does not demand especially advanced technology; mostly, local timber is used for hulls.
Though this is Africa, the production equipment still needs to be imported from Europe. Transporting such equipment is not easy given geographic constraints, but the impact is manageable.
Besides manufacturing equipment, some components—such as nails and paint—also have to be imported.
Though Mwanza Shipyard is small by European standards, it will nevertheless make history by being the first to use the engines and special propellers produced by the Berlin Energy & Power Company.
Currently, many of the technologies at the Berlin Energy & Power Company remain in storage and are not used in Europe, but East Africa poses no secrecy concerns since it's Ernst's private territory, meaning no fear of leaks.
Testing these vessel engines here, collecting data and performance metrics, is quite convenient, effectively paving the way for Berlin Energy & Power Company's future product expansions into watercraft.
At present, these critical components are manufactured in the company's secure factories under Berlin Energy & Power, then shipped by sea to East Africa.
Workers at the Mwanza Shipyard only need to assemble them according to the designs.
Such motorized boats are basically small fast boats with wooden hulls shaped like willow leaves. Once the engine starts up, they zip along at high speeds.
In later times, a simple, easily replicated boat like this might not have been considered anything special. But in this era, a wooden boat fitted with a petroleum engine is cutting-edge compared to other vessels of similar size.
These boats are powered by petroleum, which must be imported. If one is not in a hurry, they can also be moved along by oars.
Apart from these engine-powered boats, the mainstay production at Mwanza Shipyard is traditional small fishing boats with no engines.
The engine-powered boats will be prioritized for establishing a lake force (navy), while the traditional craft will be provided to local fishermen in Mwanza and Kisumu.
Although Kisumu is not very close to Mwanza, once the boats are built, they can be towed in large groups to Kisumu by the motorboats.
Hence, once completed, Mwanza Shipyard will be enough to meet the ship demand of Mwanza and Kisumu (the two cities' combined population is only around 26,000 at present).
In the future, Mwanza and Kisumu will both serve as key urban centers in East Africa. They offer excellent conditions for accommodating a growing population, with abundant water sources and bountiful natural produce—African regions suitable for population clusters. The development of fishing resources on the lake is an important step toward that end.
Thank you for the support, friends. If you want to read more chapters in advance, go to my Patreon.
Read 20 Chapters In Advance: patreon.com/Canserbero10