King of Mercenaries

For the next few days, aside from New Year’s Day, for the rest of the time, Old Hoffman had rounded up the serfs in the manor to rock briquettes together. The serfs had nothing to do in Winter anyways, since Old Hoffman paid their salaries, they naturally and joyously joined the rocking team, as they rocked and rocked to Grandma’s…

As such, after New Year’s Day, Hoffman’s manor had a huge stockpile of briquettes…

However, when the transport ship from Wiggin’s Merchant Association arrived, Old Hoffman started promoting the briquettes, he was rejected…

The reason behind their rejection was plain and simple, at first, when they heard Old Hoffman’s recommendation, they asked what was in the briquettes. When the Wiggin’s representative heard the briquettes contained a certain amount of yellow mud, they decisively rejected Old Hoffman. Because they believed that the briquettes had yellow mud mixed in, and contained unknown amounts of impurities. That’s why the briquettes could not be considered high-quality coal.

And at this period of the year, coal was already a hard thing to sell. Now that you’ve mixed mud into your coal, who would even want it? That’s why Wiggin’s Merchant Association refused to purchas the briquettes, and only purchased the pure lumps of coal

Old Hoffman could do nothing about that. After all, what you do or do not own was your problem, and whether to or not to purchase was the buyer’s question.

Currently, Marin was coincidentally at home and had not left. So, he interrupted:

“Father, please give me all the briquettes!”

“Wha?”

“I’ll Handle The Briquettes!”

“But, they already said that the quality of these briquettes weren’t up to par of high-quality coal…” Old Hoffman was a bit hesitant, he did not wish to swindle his son.

“It’s fine, I’m just going to use them as fuel to keep myself warm, there’s no need to waste high quality stuff. Besides, we didn’t mix in too much mud in our briquettes, so their quality is still quite good. Also, 1.5 shillings per Chaldron really isn’t that expensive.”

“You have a point…” Old Hoffman was a typical and old-fashioned Germanen, he scorned the disgraceful idea of selling shoddy wares.

Furthermore, to become the supplier of his son, that was more impossible.

Marin also took out the briquettes, placing them into the furnace of their own manor’s blacksmith shop, he discovered there wasn’t much difference. Of course, he might just be unable to spot the difference. At the very least, from the looks of things, there really wasn’t a large difference between briquettes and lumps of coal.

According to Old Hoffman’s statement, the coalmine’s production of coal lumps and coal powder were at a ratio of 2 to 1. In other words, the coalmine produces 50 chaldrons of coal powder each day. Meanwhile, the labor pay for manpower in inland Deutsches Reich was really low, so hiring people to rock coal powder into briquettes was also qute simple, and had a really low cost.

The thing Marin was considering was — what am I going to do with so many briquettes?

50 chaldrons of briquettes was almost equivalent to 75 tonnes of coal. Also, that was from only one day’s production. After a year, that would be a whooping 27 thousand tonnes. Marin by himself, had absolutely no way of using up all of that.

That’s why, Marin must figure out a way to deal with that 27 thousand tonnes of coal. Or, he could also attempt to sell it outside…

The overall price for coal was quite cheap, and were not comparable to firewood which was all the rage now. As a matter of fact, in the current economy, a chaldron of coal was only sold for 4-6 shillings. While firewood of the same quality would be sold at prices of around 8 shillings.

That’s because, after the combustion of coal, it would produce an unpleasant smell (mostly from the sulphuric substances contained in the coal). But there were no similar condition after burning firewood. Besides, the forests were really dense in the European continent, with firewood available, what would they use coal for? Also, when coal is burning, they don’t have sparks which can leap up high, unlike what happens when firewood was burning. Cause of that, ancient people believed that coal wasn’t as useful as firewood…

But in reality, the heat generated by coal was much greater than firewood. Under normal circumstances, the heat generated from smokeless coal was two to three times that of firewood.

Even if the briquettes were mixed with mud, and would not completely combust, the heat value was still twice that of firewood, that was without a question.

In a nutshell, burning briquettes was definitely a lossless trade.

What could so many briquettes be used for, Marin was still momentarily without a plan. However, briquettes are still fuel in the end, and they have their uses. Besides, the coal ash after combustion of a briquette could be used for paving cinder roads.

That way they wouldn’t have to worry about mud puddles when it starts to rain.

Besides, when watching news from Marin’s previous life, it seems that the coal ashes could be used to make concrete or even bricks, or even replace gravel, and act as the aggregate for mixing with concrete.

Anyways, there won’t be a lack of use for briquettes…

The only problem was, by using up coal in such a large amount, the air quality would definitely not improve…

Another thing that poses a huge problem to him was, how he should transport the briquettes to Texel Island. One must know, besides money, Marin only had command over those 400 airheaded soldiers. He did not own any ships, let alone talents like sailors and navigators.

That’s why, how he should transport the briquettes to Texel was a predicament……

However, Marin had already thought up a plan beforehand, to cooperate with someone else. For example, hiring someone’s ship for transportation.

But, Marin was worrying about another problem. Which was, someone else’s ship ultimately belongs to someone else. When they were unoccupied, they could help you transport the coal. But when they were busy, nobody would be shipping your coal.

That’s why developing his own transport fleet, was still something that was very necessary. However, first things first, Marin was without a ship or manpower, so he had no option other than to cooperate with someone else.

Luckily, the representative of Wiggin’s Merchant Association was still here…

Then, Marin and the representative of Wiggin’s reached a consensus, to rent a ‘large’ (one that was considered large for inland rivers) inland river transport galley, which would be responsible of shipping briquettes onto Texel. These galleys could hold up to 100 chaldrons of coal, and within inland rivers, they were considered goliaths.

Marin had specifically rented an idle galley from Wiggin’s Merchant Association for transporting briquettes, also, Marlin had arranged for Kohler to be the escort of their first briquette shipment

Actually, Marin’s real intention was to poach this boat, as well as the captain and sailors of the boat…

It’s not like Marin couldn’t afford his own boat if he really wanted to. But to train skillful sailors, that took a lot of time. Maybe, it’d take several years just to train experienced sailors. While qualified captains were even harder to find…

Marin was reluctant to wait, that’s why he intends to poach talents from others. Coincidentally, rumor has it that the trading vessels from Wiggin’s Merchant Association didn’t have a high departure rate, which means that there would always be some vessels that had a hard time obtaining shipment opportunities.

The cause of these circumstances, aside from the recession in European economy, there was also the factor of nepotism to consider. For example, those with good relationships with the executives naturally obtained more missions, and naturally obtained higher pay. While those with a less than satisfactory relationship with their superiors would have a hard time getting missions, and the crew would be living in difficult conditions.

The reason why Marin specifically asked for an idle ship, was because he intended to poach the ship, as well as its crew altogether…

Only by establishing his own transport fleet, the transportation of briquettes shall be delivered on time as promised, without any hassles…

As for Kohler, his purpose was to befriend the crew of the ship, figuring out ways to win over the members, making things easier for him to use his net for ‘poaching’…