When I returned to the Keep, Cathy was better but not energetic. Eleanor said she was so sorry she had fed Cathy so many sweets. That is when I confessed my role, which caused Janet and Joan to step up. We decided then and there, we needed a system for spoiling our girl, or it could get out of hand.
I glanced at my daughter while we were talking. I swear the little monster was smirking at us!
The next day I had a council meeting. Tintagel was the Capital of Cornwall, but Owen-nap was the acknowledged center of power. My advisors were here more often than not.
All were at the meeting except Baron Lewanniet. It seems he was about to be a grandfather again.
As always, first on our agenda was the finances. Because of our positive trade balance and mining operations, our problems weren't usual for a government. We had too much money and had to restrict what was in circulation, or inflation would run rampant.
Our mining operations were more productive than we dreamed. The use of blasting powder increased the amount of ore we could process fourfold.
Even though it seemed like half the world had died from the plague, our exports were growing. Our products were even being taken east on the Silk Road. I even sent a map of the sea route around India and Africa to Saltash.
Once again, we discussed raising taxes to take money out of the system. But at the same time, we didn't want to put it in a sock and leave it.
I brought up an improvement I had been thinking about recently. I had a series of drawings ready.
"This is what is called a steam engine. The ancient Greeks proved the principal but never did anything with it."
My drawing demonstrated how water could be heated and expand into a gas. If the gas were contained, it would create pressure and push against things.
I was glad to see the nodding heads at this point.
I pointed out the steam engine could be used to work a pump. There were no blank looks as I showed them that drawing.
The next drawing was the kicker.
"This drawing is of a steam locomotive. You can see water is heated in a boiler, giving off steam gathered in a cylinder. When the steam reaches enough pressure, it pushes against a rod. That rod is connected to another, which is attached to the hub of the driving wheel. The pressure of the steam makes the wheel go around."
"What is the advantage of such an engine?"
"This engine can travel forty miles in an hour. We could be in Tintagel in an afternoon."
That made them sit up.
"That steam engine could pull a plow across a field much quicker than any oxen team. Also, it doesn't tire out.”
Tom Smith caught on quickly. “That means we wouldn't be tied to waterways for power."
“Correct, Tom."
The Archbishop, of all people, said, "Let's build one right now. My butt hurts from riding everywhere."
We had a good laugh at that.
I explained the cost involved and the amount of steel required for railroad tracks. Even iron tracks wouldn't be cost-effective. They warped and had to be replaced frequently.
After an hour's discussion, we agreed to start a test program to build our first steam engine.
I had thought about bringing up electricity at the meeting but decided to leave that for another time.
Since we would be spending a lot of money on developing the steam engine, we decided we didn't need to cool the economy anymore. So we left taxes alone.
Another subject on the agenda was expansion. We were moving people into Armorica with the idea of annexing it.
But the real question was West Wessex. At first, I wanted to leave it alone. After our scouts had explored more, they reported it was virtually empty clear to London.
If we ever wanted to expand without going to war, now was the time.
There was another reason to expand. We are using all the arable land. Our population has grown exponentially in the last few years. Five years ago, we had five thousand people. We now had fifty thousand.
This growth was due to a lower infant mortality rate, migration, and conquest. Our land produced more food than ever before, but we needed more to stay ahead of the curve. We didn't have shortages yet, but there would be if we didn't expand.
Facing this, we decided to expand into unpopulated portions of Wessex. We wouldn't be greedy. Twenty thousand more good acres would be enough to feed a million people.
To get twenty thousand arable acres, we would probably have to annex one hundred thousand acres in total.
We sent out the scouts and surveying teams once more. They were to find us twenty thousand acres of farmland and a good buffer using natural features like a river or high hills.
They were under strict orders not to include any occupied land. We weren't out to steal someone's hard-earned land. We only wanted fallow unoccupied land. Sad to say, they didn't run into any currently occupied.
When they did find a rural farm with all its people dead, they buried them. These farms were so poor there was little to loot.
They were also to stay as far south as possible.
This would open the possibility of other ports on the channel.
Our surveying teams had become sophisticated in their approach and equipment. On their first efforts, they had blazed trails by marks on trees or stacks of rocks. Leaving a plat saying something like, "From the large cherry tree to the small stream."
Now they had a wagon load of mile markers as they hacked out a rough road. And the road builders measured from markers using chains.
We ended up annexing all of what I knew as Devon. It was more than we set out to annex. But the line between it and modern Somerset was the most defensible line they could find.
At least our road crews and other infrastructure people didn't have to worry about no work. Now we needed more people.
A huge difference from my world is that Devon's northern half was considered Welsh. Apparently, the Welsh had invaded across the Celtic Sea extension I called the Bristol Channel.
Taunton was where it was supposed to be. That is this world, and my world agreed on its location. That hadn't occurred often.
We drew a line on a map going west from Taunton to the Celtic Sea at Bideford. This would be our northern boundary with the Welsh territory. The English Channel would be our eastern boundary at Seaton from Taunton due south.
With two lines drawn on a map, we had more than doubled the size of the County of Cornwall.
This gave us the empty port of Exeter. All five thousand citizens had died. We hadn't started the process of removing and burying the bodies.
Once more, I wondered where we would get the people to fill our new land. Just when we expanded, the plague wiped out the population. On the other hand, if it weren't for the plague, we wouldn't be expanding like this.
To protect our new territory, we placed new Keeps along the northern and eastern borders.
They would be twenty miles apart. Hills and rivers kept them from being a perfect twenty miles. It was one day of travel between them.
Eight new Keeps were built, using the same model as the New Keeps built originally to face King Ine. There would be good roads connecting them. We built towers on each of the Keeps tall enough to see the Keeps on either side with a telescope. On top of these towers were semaphore stations.
Each Keep would have an observation balloon that could be raised if enemies were in the area. Under current conditions, that didn't seem likely, but it was better to have them and not need them. Just like the old saying from my time about carrying a weapon.
A road network was built from Exeter, connecting all the Keeps in a spoke configuration. The main road from Exeter to Cornwall was the first built. And the Exeter port was rebuilt to handle our ships. Previously, the only ships that could be put in were much smaller.
While the Keeps and road system were being implemented, the farmers were busy laying out large fields. These were to be corporate farms, not family farms. Most farms in this day and age were run by a single family.
Our new farms would be run by a Master Farmer who acted as overseer to a hired crew.
This helped absorb the young men we had picked up in Armorica and in the war with Wessex.
Our surveyors had several specialists in their crews. Each crew, had a trained person who knew enough about geology to identify possible ore-bearing sites. Once they found a possible site, a mining crew would be sent to prove the deposit.
The teams found tin, copper, and an ore they didn't recognize. It caused me to reread some books and learn how to identify ores using wet chemistry. We won’t have any electronic instruments for the foreseeable future.
The mysterious ore was wolfram, otherwise known as tungsten. It was not pure tungsten. That hadn’t been found in nature.
Tungsten is extracted from its ores in several stages. The ore is eventually converted to tungsten(VI) oxide (WO3), which is heated with hydrogen or carbon to produce powdered tungsten. Because of tungsten's high melting point, we couldn't cast tungsten ingots.
Instead, we mixed powdered tungsten with small amounts of powdered nickel or other metals and sintered the mixture. During the sintering process, the nickel diffused into the tungsten, producing an alloy.
Since tungsten has the highest melting point of any metal, it was a bear to work with. Burning a ton of coal and pumping compressed air like crazy did the job.
It’s as dense as gold or depleted uranium. It was the depleted uranium that caught my attention when I was rereading the book in my mind. The metal would make a good crossbow bolt or bullet in a cartridge.
Expensive by uptime standards, but we had more than we could use in hundreds of years. That is, if we didn’t grow to a billion-plus population. I didn't see that happening soon. I would be happy with a quarter million people.
Tungsten would also be useful for glass-to-metal seals since the thermal expansion is about the same as borosilicate glass.
The most important immediate use would be for high-speed tungsten/carbide tooling. This would improve die set life and cutting edges.
In the future, tungsten and its alloys will be used extensively for filaments for electric lamps.
Another future use would be to make permanent magnets for electric motors.
This was an important find. Not to downplay the tin and copper, which could produce bronze. But we would be making steel weapons now, which were superior to bronze and iron. However, we could sell bronze ingots to the Romans and the Franks.
It was cool to make a lot of money selling metals that made inferior weapons to ours.