The ship’s construction hall welcomed its new supervisor after a long absence.
Before this, Liv had communicated with the heads of various departments almost exclusively through letters.
Furthermore, as long as her subordinates didn’t seek her out, she would never take the initiative to contact them.
Having such an indifferent leader, the subordinates once thought the Republic was going to give up on shipbuilding.
So today, when Liv stepped out of her carriage and walked into the office building, they were all incredibly excited.
This was great; it seemed the Governor’s Mansion hadn’t disbanded this department because of financial problems!
Liv nodded slightly to acknowledge them, gesturing for everyone to remain seated and continue their work.
She went straight into her office.
The secretary’s desk on the side of the office remained.
Previously, she and Julia had worked in this very office together.
Liv walked to Julia’s former desk and sat down.
The desk was piled with completed documents.
She gathered them together, organizing them, and began to read through them one by one.
First were feasibility studies and cost budget lists for some newly built vessels.
Merchant ships, barges, and other auxiliary vessels made up the absolute majority.
The Republic had built eight giant merchant ships in one go, with tonnage almost equal to the Royal Oak.
It seemed they were all prepared for trade with the Kingdom of Elves.
The funding for these merchant ships basically came from investments by merchants.
By taking shares through these investments, they would share the profits from the merchant ships’ transport fees and enjoy priority rights when transporting goods they ordered or sold.
The merchant ships were even designed with gun ports for light artillery.
This was very strange.
In theory, it wasn’t that merchant ships couldn’t be fitted with cannons — especially when there were unstable factors on maritime trade routes.
Cannons could effectively deter pirates and allow them to fight back when facing small gunboats.
But these merchant ships were configured with a large number of auxiliary facilities for navigating the Great River, including tow posts, towpath holes, reinforced bows, and a staggered distribution of heavy and light oars.
There was no doubt that these merchant ships could, at the very least, sail or be towed in the lower reaches of the Great River.
Equipping them with cannons in the Great River basin was clearly not for the purpose of deterring pirates.
This was odd.
Liv continued to flip through the pages.
There were actually quite a few newly built warships as well, but most of them were small brigs or gunboats.
Among them, the number of newly built river gunboats had increased sharply.
‘This is truly strange. The Republic was clearly considering gradually giving up cruising control over the Great River basin. What do they want to do by building so many river gunboats?’
There was only one new capital ship being built in the dry dock of Kioran Port.
Judging from the design blueprints of this capital ship, it had actually abandoned the Republic’s usual three-deck cannon design.
Instead, it used a two-deck cannon layout, greatly reducing the number of cannons.
There were only sixty-four gun ports in total.
Furthermore, the number of sails was also fewer than those on a three-deck capital ship.
The construction cost of this warship was less than half of the Ricardo Dandolo.
Even so, the Council only approved one-third of the budget in the end for laying the keel and building the gun decks.
The remaining two-thirds would be suspended until next year’s budget proposal.
As for whether it would pass or not, it was hard to say.
‘Has the Republic already become so impoverished?!’
Trade with the Kingdom of Elves was extremely lucrative.
Could it be that so many shiny ducats couldn’t even fill the holes in various matters?
Liv organized all the documents regarding the new ships and put them together.
She continued to flip through the documents underneath.
At this time, a subordinate timely brought hot tea.
Liv didn’t care if it was scalding or not and took a large gulp.
Next were documents regarding the expansion of shipyards and ports.
The Republic decided to expand the shipyard at Kioran Port on a large scale and even build new shipyards next to two coastal towns near Kioran.
These shipyards were clearly prepared for the large-scale construction of river gunboats.
Kioran Port was closer to the mouth of the Great River.
This wasn’t surprising.
In addition, the Republic also intended to invest in the Elven military port at the mouth of the Great River.
They planned to build dedicated berths and anchorage areas for the Republic’s fleet.
Based on the Estuary Shared Cooperation Treaty signed between Hobrick and Elindria, this was also permitted.
However, with the Republic facing financial problems, such a grand investment in a military port seemed a bit strange.
Liv organized this part of the documents, set them aside, and continued to flip through the remaining ones.
‘Ugh, my subordinates really have no sense at all. Aside from hot tea, they should have sent some snacks as well.’
The next documents were even more trivial, occupying the vast majority of the stack.
They were mainly expenditure records for the maintenance and repair of warships in dry docks.
Liv found these very boring and flipped through them quickly.
A gun port collapsed; maintenance cost eighty ducats.
A ship took on water and was patched; maintenance cost sixty-five ducats.
A mast broke; maintenance cost 210 ducats.
The keel showed serious deformation and could not be repaired, scheduled to be scrapped.
‘Ah, I didn’t expect that warship maintenance, though consisting of small items, would add up to such a massive expense. No wonder the Republic’s naval expenditures are so staggering.’
Liv flipped through them listlessly.
Ship leak repaired, 230 ducats.
‘Eh?’
To what extent did this ship leak that it actually required 230 ducats to repair?
Another ship’s repair only cost sixty-five ducats earlier.
She flipped back, searching for quite a while before finding that previous document for the sixty-five-ducat repair fee.
The ship in both repairs was called the Northern Fortress.
It was a sailing cruiser.
Liv curiously compared the two maintenance records.
She found that there were seven leaks the first time and three leaks the second time.
The amount of wood used was also more the first time and less the second time.
No matter how Liv compared them or looked for reasons, the first time was clearly much more serious than the second time.
Moreover, the interval between these two repairs was less than a month.
The second repair was just within these past few days.
It was impossible for material and labor costs to have changed so much.
If anything, because the economy had worsened further these past few days, wood and labor costs should have been even cheaper.
Why was this?
Liv sensed something was wrong.
She pulled these two documents out separately and then continued to group similar maintenance items together, dividing them into several stacks.
Then, she carefully compared the expenditures for the same maintenance tasks.
It was very obvious that the newly reported maintenance items over the last few days were far more numerous than before.
The recently reported maintenance costs were also higher than previous ones.
The price increase was very sudden.
Finally, among the newly reported ships for repair, some ships even appeared repeatedly.
For example, the capital ship Wolf Gemini.
Within a few days, first its mast broke and needed repair, then it leaked and needed repair.
Even in such a state, it wasn’t clear if this miraculous ship had even been fixed before it had to head out to sea again, only to hit a reef and have the bottom of its bow snapped off.
Miraculous.
In Liv’s eyes, this ship’s movements were simply abstract.
Consequently, it had successfully spent 800 ducats.
Liv bet that the ship indeed had a broken mast and had been in the dry dock for repairs the whole time.
As for whether the subsequent events were true or false, that was hard to say.