The Queen of England was dead.

I heard the funeral was a grand affair.

Thousands of mourners, clad in black, reportedly followed the funeral procession through the streets. A wax effigy, a faithful recreation of her living self, sat atop the casket as those who had cherished her in life wept, bidding her a final, sorrowful farewell.

Raleigh was among them, of course, though he never admitted to crying. He likely considered such a display of emotion unmanly.

Because London had been abandoned to the plague, she could not be interred in Westminster Abbey alongside her ancestors. However, I doubted she minded much; she had come to consider Roanoke her true home.

Elizabeth left behind a vast legacy. Having lived her entire life as a queen of multiple nations, her estate was naturally immense. According to her will, her collection of artworks, treasures, and personal effects became the property of Raleigh, her most favored subject. Raleigh traveled all the way to England to collect these mementos, filling the house where she had lived to the brim. For a while, the once-silent residence in Roanoke was alive with the noise of porters and activity. In his own way, he was honoring the memory of the woman who had been both his sovereign and his lover.

The Queen’s fishing boats, cosmetics, and various trinkets were bequeathed to Margaret. I saw Margaret weeping as she touched the Queen’s makeup jars, eventually tucking them away in a jewelry box like sacred relics.

Since Francis Drake had passed away only a short time ago, the various ships ordered from the Chesapeake shipyards in the Queen’s name were passed down to his descendants. The rest of her holdings as Queen of England and Ireland would likely be divvied up by her successors as they saw fit.

“The Queen truly left you a great deal,” I remarked, watching Raleigh direct the laborers as they hauled the Queen’s effects into the house.

Raleigh shook his head, offering an unexpected response. “No. These trinkets are merely for my own satisfaction. Collecting them helps me cope.”

“Is that so?”

“It is. Truly.” Raleigh looked away from the men unloading the crates and met my eyes. “Her Majesty left something far greater for me, for you, and for this entire community.”

“…”

“Perhaps she did it just to give James one last headache. But I don’t think so. I believe this was her way of saying thank you.”

Raleigh might have been right. I took a moment to reflect on the legacy she had left behind—the parts that were truly vital to our survival and growth.

“Her Majesty was expressing her gratitude to you, Nemo. Gratitude for making her life meaningful and for making her death peaceful. She gave this gift to you, and to all of us.”

I thought about what the Queen had bestowed upon this community. Raleigh pulled out a document and gave it a sharp flick. “I shall forward the terms of her treaty to King James immediately.”

The contents of the treaty Elizabeth had summoned me to sign just days before her death were simple yet profound: ‘Ownership of all ironworks and shipyards owned by the Kingdom of England located in the New World shall be transferred to the Continental Covenant.’

She had handed us the very facilities built with English manpower and loans. With that single stroke of a pen, the ownership of Roanoke and its industrial base was neatly settled.

People often say that iron is the rice of industry because it is used in everything. And ships, even in the distant 21st century, remained the primary means of global logistics. Now, the means to produce both had become entirely ours.

Finally.

I skimmed the treaty Raleigh held out, my gaze lingering on Elizabeth’s sprawling signature at the bottom. Unlike Raleigh, I didn’t feel a sharp ache in my chest; she hadn’t been that dear to me. Instead, I felt a deep sense of appreciation for her foresight. This was the Queen’s final gift, and with it, our small, fragile community could finally achieve things we had never dared to attempt before.

Great things.

“And so,” I murmured, “the ‘holy land’ of Croatoan is finally linked to Chesapeake.”

The Queen’s legacy was leading the way.

***

Croatoan in the south and Chesapeake in the north are separated by a straight-line distance of over 180 kilometers—further than the distance between Seoul and Daejeon. A proper travel route would be significantly longer. Connecting the two was bound to be a massive project that would span years.

The biggest hurdle was that Croatoan was an island. A barrier of water—sea, swamps, and rivers—stood between the two points, far more formidable than any forest or mountain range. Fortunately, Croatoan wasn’t a lonely island in the middle of the ocean; it was a barrier island in Pamlico Sound, part of a long chain of sand and gravel deposits. By hopping through the cluster of nearby islands, reaching the mainland was relatively feasible.

Plans were drafted, and opinions were gathered in Virginia to overcome the obstacle of the sea. Detailed blueprints for breakwaters, bridges, and the roads that would run atop them began to take shape. The most pressing issue was the materials needed for such a gargantuan undertaking.

Everyone agreed that iron was the most critical resource. Even the simplest task of providing tools for the laborers required a steady supply of it. Our ironworks had already undergone several upgrades to meet the skyrocketing demand for steel and wrought iron, driven by our revolutionized tractor production lines.

After much trial and error, we had successfully adapted the reverberatory furnace method—originally used for smelting bronze—to produce steel, which caused our output to soar. By now, most of the ironworkers on Roanoke Island were proficient in both reverberatory and crucible steelmaking. We just needed to scale up. Fortunately, the influx of immigrants fleeing the chaos in England included a fair number of skilled smiths.

Simultaneously, we had to ramp up our mining operations. The iron mines on Roanoke were still producing well, but iron was no longer the bottleneck.

“Is it the stone?” someone asked.

“Bridges and breakwaters of this scale require more than just quarried stone. We need cement.”

The 17th-century people weren’t ignorant of cement. It had existed since the days of Ancient Rome, so it was a known substance. However, most treated it as a decorative finish or a simple construction adhesive; using it as a primary structural material for large facilities was rare. They understood that cement could be mixed with water and various aggregates to create concrete, but they simply lacked the experience of using it in large-scale engineering.

Following my “catalog,” we established mines in a limestone-rich area relatively close to Roanoke. Mining was a popular occupation at the time—much like cotton farming—so finding labor wasn’t difficult. To maximize efficiency, we began building a cement factory right next to the mines. We lacked the refined “know-how” for mass production and application, but I decided we would solve those problems as they arose.

Manufactured cement generally involves grinding lime, mixing it with other additives, and heating it. This meant we needed fuel—lots of it—to power both the cement kilns and the expanded ironworks. Luckily, bituminous coal, an excellent fuel source, was being mined in large quantities in the former territories of the Powhatan tribe.

Another mine was established, and a “Miner’s Monastery” was built nearby to house the workers. However, because the site was inland, transportation became a serious headache.

“Fortunately, following the James River leads straight to the coal deposits,” a clerk noted.

“True, but sailing upriver against the current is no easy feat. I want us to find a better way.”

“A better way, Nameless One?”

“Yes. And with the phosphate mines in the south expanding, they’re facing the same issue with river transport. We need a solution.”

“Isn’t that just the nature of the river? It’s still better than moving everything by land…”

“No,” I told my staff firmly. “There is a way. We shall build ships that require neither oars nor the whims of the wind.”

When they asked how such a thing was possible, I gave them the simplest answer I could. “We have already built carriages that move without the help of horses or oxen, haven’t we?”

Steam tractors.

“By the same principle, we can move ships.”

Steamboats.

***

A steam engine and a steamboat in the 17th century.

Even as the words left my mouth, it felt a bit surreal. If I hadn’t had 21st-century materials and technology to lean on in the beginning, I would have ended up with nothing more than toys. But in certain fields, our technology had already reached 18th or 19th-century levels. It was something to be proud of.

The first thing we built with a steam engine was a simple pump used for draining wetlands. After that, we moved straight to tractors, which we then modified into tanks.

Wow.

It felt like I had skipped a massive number of intermediate steps, but none of it would have been possible without my basic knowledge of agricultural machinery and the educational comics I’d read in my past life. Since we had already successfully developed steam tractors, mounting an engine on a boat and making it “row” itself shouldn’t be that difficult.

According to the books I remembered, the first steamboat was developed in 1807, the early 19th century. That meant we were exactly 200 years ahead of schedule. Considering the first tractor didn’t appear until 1856, we were well within the realm of possibility.

The only thing that made me nervous was that, unlike farm equipment, I was a complete amateur when it came to naval engineering. But I hoped that working alongside the master shipbuilders who had helped me create the clippers would allow us to correct my minor errors.

Boats usually move with a screw propeller, right?

As far as this “non-boat-expert” knew—and as the countless educational comics about the Industrial Revolution in my house testified—the ultimate winner of the seas was the screw-propelled vessel. I sketched out a simple design and showed it to the shipbuilders under Raleigh’s command. It was a juvenile drawing—essentially a boat with an upside-down fan attached to the back—but it conveyed my intent perfectly.

“I see. If this works, we could travel freely without rowing or relying on the fickle winds,” one of them mused.

“Exactly. What do you think about using this design for our new steamboat?”

“Hmm…”

The shipbuilders’ faces clouded with uncertainty. One of them spoke up. “It seems like a solid design, but I foresee several problems.”

“Problems?” I asked, tilting my head. That’s strange. I’m literally copying the answer key from the future.

“First,” another shipbuilder explained, “water will likely leak into the hull through the gap where the rotating shaft is mounted. Beyond that, manufacturing this ‘screw’ looks incredibly difficult.”

Lack of watertightness. The issue was that water would flood the boat through the propeller shaft.

“Also,” he continued, “looking at the structure, the draft appears quite deep. This steamboat is intended for rivers and coastal waters, isn’t it? It won’t be easy to navigate such shallow depths with a design like this.”

A deep draft. The structure would be a hindrance when navigating shallow riverbeds.

That is… a fair point.

When we actually built and launched a small model, more issues cropped up. Debris and floating plants in the water kept getting tangled around the screw. The design was definitely the “correct” one for the future, but it was currently beyond our technical reach.

For the first time in a while, I tasted the bitterness of a plan not going quite as expected. But the work didn’t stop. I had a Plan B. If things were going to be this way, I had to fall back on the early forms of steamboats—the ones I knew from “that place.”

I quietly left the Chesapeake shipyard and returned to Croatoan. I went straight to my house and turned on the computer. It had helped me when I was building the clippers; it would help me again now.

With a sharp click of the mouse, the sound of a violin filled the room, and text flickered onto the screen.

‘Anno Domini 1800.’

As expected.

A city-building game set in the 19th century.

It was exactly what I needed right now.