How to Survive in the Roanoke Colony-Chapter 57: New Ventures (1)
Finally, we've completely settled in Chesapeake Bay.
Food to feed 10,000 people continues to be supplied, and the harvest of potatoes, wheat, and barley keeps increasing. The number of livestock has also grown considerably since the beginning.
This means we can now conduct challenging 'experiments'.
I gathered the settlement representatives who had been running around with computers and said:
"Now, we're going to prepare for corn cultivation."
The effort I put into preserving corn seeds while working hard on my garden finally pays off.
"What? By corn, do you mean that crop with yellow kernels that we grow?"
"Yes, that's right, Manteo. It has excellent productivity and tastes good too."
"But don't we and other natives already grow it on our own?"
"I have superior seeds. Besides, the natives have only cultivated it on a small scale until now."
I couldn't grow it until now either. The reason was clear.
Corn grows really quickly, abundantly, insanely, but in return, it depletes the land's fertility.
There's a reason they say corn farming runs on electricity. It takes so much water and nutrients from the soil that land used for corn farming for several years often becomes completely barren.
The amount of fertilizer needed for corn farming... is more than what comes from our house. A field slightly over 10 ares (about 1,000 square meters) consumes an entire bag of fertilizer, how could we manage that?
But now that we've established a settlement in Chesapeake Bay, the soil has improved, and the water supply is much smoother, so it's worth trying.
This place has so much water that our main concern is draining it.
"There are several swampy areas near Chesapeake Bay, so let's turn those into fields. Let's start by setting up windmills and pumps to drain the water."
"If... if it requires that much water and fertilizer, how do we farm corn?"
There's a reason I said the time had come.
"Here, we'll send people near the inner part of Pamlico Sound to extract a certain 'mineral'."
Spreading out a resource map of the area copied from the game catalog, I told those gathered here:
"After some processing of that mineral, we'll sprinkle it on the land and farm on top of it. Then the fertilizer problem will be solved."
"You're saying to use minerals as fertilizer? I've never even heard of such a thing!"
"Yes, Vicente. We will probably be the first."
"What is the name of this mineral?"
"..."
We have sufficient manpower.
Therefore, it's not bad to develop a mine or two.
The product from this mine will soon become as precious as gold...
I told Vicente:
"Phosphate rock."
After wrapping up the matter of corn and phosphate mine development, I adjourned the meeting.
==
Walter Raleigh, returning to Chesapeake after a long time, had secured an enormous amount of capital. This was thanks to the new variety of grapes and aluminum becoming as expensive as gold in England.
Because of this, he was able to bring 50 more heavy cast iron cannons to the Virginia colony. All of them would be loaded onto the clipper ships to be newly built.
It would be nice if we could make cannons directly in the New World, but non-English cast iron cannons mostly crack and explode, so there's a big limitation. What Raleigh didn't know was that it was because English iron contained phosphorus.
Anyway, since we bought English cannons, it was time to build ships to install them on.
"Transparent panel 15 was just used."
Click.
"Transparent panel 17 should go in now."
Click.
The workers move quickly at Walter Raleigh's words. Raleigh, staring at this strange black panel that came into his hands as soon as he returned... muttered:
"Wait, why are 20 panels missing? According to the records, they should all be in warehouse 3."
"Ah, that's... due to lack of space, we temporarily moved them to warehouse 4..."
"Tell me in advance next time! Everything has its role, what if they get mixed up? Find them right away!"
At his words, the craftsmen grumble about things becoming strict but run off quickly. They wondered what difference it would make just moving a few panels to a different place.
And.
In that 'strict' work environment, Walter Raleigh was sweating nervously.
'What is this?'
It had been quite a while since he suddenly received this black slab called a 'computer' from Mr. Nemo.
And it took several whole weeks to learn how to use this strange object. It was only after Mr. Nemo and other apostles cautioned and taught him several times that he barely grasped its basic usage.
Calculate, sort, organize.
Those three seemed to be the basic uses of this thing called 'Excel'. Judging by its structure, there seemed to be other complex and sophisticated functions, but he didn't even dare to try touching them.
But even that was enough.
Raleigh was just beginning to realize how important it is that everything is 'visible at a glance'.
He was able to give procedure and system to processes that everyone used to do by instinct, memory, and habit.
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It feels like moving to another dimension from a work environment where it was natural for a few items to disappear or things to go wrong.
Raleigh assigned numbers to each material and alphabetical symbols to each type of material.
As a result, Raleigh soon came to clearly see where hundreds and thousands of components that make up that ship were going from and to.
Naturally, efficiency increased as well.
Useless tasks and various confusions and frictions were reduced to a quarter.
This strange sense of omnipotence.
The subtle sense of stability that comes from everything finding its place.
Walter Raleigh significantly brought forward the completion date of the ship in his mind.
'This might... be completed even earlier than expected.'
Soon, the world's first 'clipper' will be completed.
Virginia's new warship that will sail the Atlantic at an unprecedented speed.
That's how Raleigh learned the power of computerization.
==
From what I've heard, my PC has several times better performance than the supercomputer set up by the Japan Meteorological Agency in 2002. Of course, they say its reliability can't match industrial computers.
Mmm, I should have learned programming or computer engineering. My computer knowledge only extends to studying for the Computer Literacy Level 2 certification. I've handled computer parts too, but only up to 'assembly'.
Therefore, I couldn't use this computer to calculate the orbits of spacecraft and projectiles, or connect various measuring equipment to predict the weather.
Due to my limitations.
So for me, a computer is a gaming device or an office equipment.
Those bastards at Fansuku Software. If they were going to transport someone, they should have given at least a year's notice. Then I would have stocked up on history books, game packs, and studied for various certifications.
Whatever the case, many problems were solved with just Excel.
