Forty-eight years of Qianlong

Like many officers, when Lin Daosheng walked towards the port, he kept guessing what kind of big mission this time was, and actually called back all those who had asked for leave.

Behind him, groups of sailors from the Northern Navy were walking leisurely in the same direction. Some of them wore slim-fitting navy blue trousers and training uniforms without rank badges, and some simply wore short-sleeved blue and white striped sea soul shirts. The average daytime temperature in Ryukyu in November is above 11 degrees. Although it is cooler than in Southeast Asia, the wind on the beach is very strong, so many people wear pointed straw hats or rattan hats.

Compared with the excited young officers, the sailors looked a little depressed. I finally got a chance to go out on vacation, but it ended in only half a day.

Ever since Guo Xuexian heard that the East China Sea Fleet was to be established, and that he was likely to be the first commander, he began to train like crazy. He knew very well that the foundation of these sailors recruited from Guangdong, Guangdong, Fujian and Southeast Asia was too poor. They had no problem operating ordinary Chinese sailing ships. However, for those Northern Navy ships that were modified from Western-style sailing ships, many people were immediately confused as soon as they stepped on the deck.

So these young sailors have to train during the day, memorize the operating theory of ships and weapons by rote, and take literacy classes at night. There is a small test every week, a big test every month, and surprise inspections and drills every three to five, which makes these people complain endlessly. Even talking in their sleep is related to training and assessment.

Nowadays, there is a saying within the Bei Navy that "you only shed three layers of skin when you join the Army, but you shed your skin every month after joining the Navy."

Having said that, the treatment in the Navy is very harsh. Compared with the pitiful salaries of European navies, every sailor in the Northern Navy is allocated fifty acres of land, and the monthly salary starts at 60 North Sea dollars, equivalent to 12 taels of silver. In addition, the food and living rations are far superior to those of the European navy. They wear two sets of clothes, shoes and hats every year. The canned braised pork that makes the army salivate is distributed every week, so much so that many veterans now feel nauseated when they see the white fat.

When Lin Daosheng walked out of the market, what he saw was a long and narrow open field covering an area of ​​eight acres, slightly larger than half a football field in later generations. At this end of the empty field is the wooden gate checkpoint set up by the Ryukyu government. Several soldiers armed with swords and guns are patrolling the entrance. When they see North Navy officers and soldiers passing by, they will smile from time to time.

At the other end of the empty field, there is a six-meter-high wall with a wide gate. The walls on both sides of the gate are painted sky blue, with coconut trees, the sea and seabirds painted on it, which is very tropical. breath. However, the dense razor wire fence on the wall and the gun-carrying checkpoint at the gate are always a reminder to "keep strangers away."

The entire wall is 600 meters long. The two-meter-high base is made of reinforced concrete, and the upper four meters are made of red bricks. Both ends of the wall extend to a narrow seaport guarded by forts, and the civilian port with masts not far away seems to be divided into two worlds. Behind the wall, there is a surveillance post every 100 meters higher than the top of the wall. The sentry on duty above looks around with a telescope from morning to night.

Just like the military port in another time and space, Beihai Town spared no expense in building high walls in order to prevent outsiders from snooping on the military facilities and troop movements in the port. Such walls are not only found in Naha Port, Dolphin Bay and Bacheng. In the future, Wendeng and Lushun will also have to enclose and build walls.

You must know that in another time and space, some military ports had walls built to a height of 22 meters to prevent peeping, but even this could not prevent peeping from those high-rise buildings.

When the wall project was launched in the autumn of the previous year, Beihai Town specially sent an envoy to the Shuri Palace to give a detailed explanation to Ryukyu King Naowa and the Third Secretary Cai Shichang to seek the other party's consent. The biggest benefit of this matter to the Ryukyu Kingdom is that after the fleet base is moved in a few years, this military port and ancillary facilities will be left to the Ryukyu Kingdom, and two ships will be given away for free.

It's too late for Ryukyu to be happy about this pie-in-the-sky thing. Besides, Beihai Town is a great benefactor of the Ryukyu royal family. So Cai Shichang was very generous and set up an open space outside the gate of the military port and set up an isolation fence. At the same time, he posted a notice in the name of King Sang-on, warning Ryukyu people not to cross the wooden fence, and violators would be severely punished.

Lin Daosheng quickly passed the inspection post outside the gate. When he walked into the gate, he looked up and saw three modified Western-style warships and five large Guangdong ships docked in a blue bay, like ships. Towering castle. At the highest points of these "castles" hung huge and bright red military flags, fluttering in the sea breeze.

Eight years ago, Lin Daosheng, who was still known as "Shrimp Ball Boy" at that time, followed the ignorant Zheng Wenxian and a dozen followers to climb aboard the "Thunder God" at night, hoping to do something big, but the whole army was wiped out as soon as they boarded the ship. . Then, Zhao Xin negotiated with Zheng Wenxian's father, Zheng Lianchang, and used force to force him to bow his head and surrender, and returned to Beihai Town with more than a hundred Dan family shipbuilders, boatmen and family members, including Lin Daosheng's family.

After arriving in Beihai Town, he was selected by Deng Fei to enter the navigation school. With his smart mind and hard work, he started as a trainee petty officer and became the deputy captain until this year.

Nowadays, in Beihai Town Navy, there are many captains and deputy captains under the age of 30. Many of them are sailors who were naturalized island nations on the early "Thunder God", and there are also young Dan family boatmen who followed Zheng Wenxian to join Zhao Xin.

No, before Lin Daosheng, who had just returned to the base dormitory, had time to change into his military uniform, Captain Zhu Yiqun came over.

"Hey, Xiao Lin, have you heard? The fleet has a mission and is going to Wusongkou!"

Captain Zhu was a naturalized citizen of the island country. He used to be an engineer on the Thor and worked as an apprentice with Deng Fei for two years. This man was short in stature and had a round face. Ding Guofeng always called him "Little Pig" on the boat. As a result, when he was naturalized and changed his name, he decided to have a surname of Zhu, and even named him "Zhu Yiqun", which he was quite proud of. After Deng Fei found out, he felt that he was his apprentice after all. He couldn't afford to disgrace this person, so he changed his name to his current name.

"Ah! Are you going to attack Jiangnan? Are you all going?" Lin Daosheng was a little surprised that there was no news of such an important military operation in advance.

"That's right? Otherwise, we wouldn't all be recalled."

"Jiangnan, I have long heard that it is a good place." Lin Daosheng said with a hint of fascination on his face.

"Haha, what good things are you thinking of? We are the navy, even if we fight, it won't be our turn to go ashore."

"Hey, it would be nice to take some time to go ashore after the fight."

While talking, the door of the house was knocked from outside. Zhu Yiqun called out, and then a young sailor walked in. The visitor was the messenger from the fleet headquarters. After entering, he saluted and said, "Captain Zhu, Captain Lin, Commander Guo wants you to report to the headquarters immediately."

Haha, it’s really what I’m talking about. Lin Daosheng and Zhu Yiqun looked at each other with smiles on their faces. Ten minutes later, in the East China Sea Fleet headquarters, the young commander Guo Xuexian held a telegraph newspaper and read out the order of the North Navy Staff Headquarters to six officers, including Zhu and Lin, in a serious tone, and then said to the six: "The commander of this operation is Zhu Yiqun, the captain of the Hunchun, and the deputy commander is Xu Zhiqing, the captain of the Hulunbuer. You must keep the purpose of this mission in mind and explain it clearly to your subordinates when you return. , it’s a deterrent, not a fight! Sooner or later, Jiangnan belongs to us, and if it’s broken, we have to clean it up ourselves! Do you understand?”

"Understood." When the six captains and deputy captains heard that they were not going to attack Jiangnan, but were just going to frighten the Qing navy, their interest suddenly lost.

Guo Xuexian's face was serious and he shouted: "You didn't even have lunch? I didn't hear you clearly!"

"understand!"

"Time is tight and the task is urgent, so I won't tell you more. Go back and seize the time to replenish supplies and set off early tomorrow morning!"

Guo Xuexian's prestige was not bragging, but was earned through battle after battle. No one in the East China Sea Fleet dissatisfied. He was promoted as the acting captain from the Battle of Changxing Island, and then followed Deng Fei to fight against the Xishan pirates, and then led the Second Squadron to attack the Riau Islands and recapture the city of Malacca. Finally, they crossed Malacca and ran to the Bay of Bengal to fight the British.

Zhao Xin was right at first. This leader of the "South China Pirates" in another time and space was not only eager to learn, but also ruthless in fighting. He has thoroughly read through various abridged versions of the textbooks used by the North Korean Navy for naval training - such as "On Sea Power", "Fleet Tactics", "Navigation", "Overall Ship Technology", and "Weapon System Engineering" . It's nonsense to say that he knows everything by heart. Anyway, he can answer the questions accurately even if he turns to a page and asks questions.

At dawn the next day, a fleet consisting of two frigates "Hunchun" and "Hulunbuyuer" and the "Xingkai Lake" supply ship set off. Their target was Wusong, 380 nautical miles away from Naha Port. mouth. Estimated arrival time, two days.

The predecessor of Lin Daosheng's "Hunchun" was the "Gertrude". It was originally a frigate affiliated with the VOC Navy Department. It has a total length of 47.22 meters, a width of 13.11 meters, a displacement of 1253 tons, and is equipped with 40 artillery pieces. Built in 1788 at the Ceylon Shipyards.

It is said that the reason why the "Thousand Islands Battle" was won so quickly last year, in addition to the weapon power of the Northern Navy, is that the Dutch's large ships are really ineffective, and the 75mm cannon can penetrate the hull with one shot.

The Dutch sailing ship is a direct type of Galen ship. In order to make the cargo hold as large as possible and retain maneuverability, the hull is lightweight, the number of weapons and sailors is reduced, and the cargo hold below the waterline is expanded as much as possible to form an O-shape. wide hull. It is said that this shipbuilding route was due to the fact that in the early days, countries such as Spain and Denmark levied navigation taxes based on the width of merchant ships, so the designers of Chicken Thief came up with this method.

Through extreme design, it took the Dutch less than two years to build a merchant ship, and it was only half the cost of a Spanish merchant ship. This caused the number of Dutch ships to expand as quickly as a balloon, and in just half a century it became He founded the "Sea Coachman" empire that dominated the ocean.

But the Dutch ship's strengths were also its fatal flaws. In the four Anglo-Dutch wars, the Dutch drove armed merchant ships that were flexible but lacked protection capabilities and rushed to the sea barriers composed of British battleships time and time again. They were hit by ship-borne cannons and suffered heavy losses. Later, the Navy Department of the United Provinces Republic learned its lesson and built a number of small, heavily armed frigates in the mainland and Ceylon to protect maritime trade routes.

In fact, the real protagonist of sailing naval battles in the Age of Discovery has never been the giant battleship with hundreds of guns, but the small and fast frigate.

Therefore, although the "Gertrude" in the "Battle of the Thousand Islands" was riddled with holes and two of its three masts were broken, it was still alive and unsinkable. After learning about this situation from the prisoners, the navy repaired and refitted all eight captured frigates and upgraded them to replace those thousand-ton ships built in Siam.

After Zhao Xin and the others captured two Russian merchant ships on Kuye Island and modified them, the military-industrial complex in charge of Zhao Liang spent five years figuring out a standardized modification method for European sailing ships.

The first step is to apply a layer of fluororesin anti-corrosion paint on the wooden hull shell, and the previously used copper plate tile covering method is completely abandoned. The second step is to install a 1000-2200 horsepower marine diesel engine according to the tonnage of different ship types, and install a stern shaft and a liftable stainless steel propeller at the same time; install a curved neck exhaust chimney, intercom, electric winch and sail lift on the main deck. An antenna for the radio station is installed on the top of the mast.

在武器配备上，根据不同吨位安装10~20门北海镇自产的75毫米海军型速射炮，6~10挺北海镇自制的仿加特林点50口径十管机炮。

After the above modifications, these sail frigates not only significantly improved their speed, but also reduced the number of sailors on board by nearly half. For example, the "Hunchun" originally had a capacity of about 270 people, but now it only has more than 150 people.

Due to the limited capacity of Bacheng Shipyard, ship repair was no problem but modification was not possible, so a team of 30 technicians was specially dispatched from Beihai Town. But even so, more than a year has passed, and only four frigates have been refitted, two of which have been assigned to the East China Sea Fleet.

The overall performance of the modified sailboat has been improved a lot, and the ship's speed has also been increased to a maximum of 13 knots, but neither Deng Fei nor Zhao Liang are very satisfied. But there is nothing we can do about it. The sailing ships of the 4th century were all fat and had a length-to-width ratio of less than 1:5. If you want to increase the speed of the ship, you must make major changes to the hull and lengthen it to 1:6 or even 1:[-] will do.

Although the current Beihai navy is powerful, it is still quite awkward in the eyes of the people in Beihai Town. To put it bluntly, there is not even a warship that meets their expectations!

In addition to the three modern ships "Thor", "Thunder" and "Nanhua [-]", the others are either Guangzhou ships bought by Siam or captured Galen ships. The only self-built "Jaguar" [-] and the newly launched Number [-] is actually two cargo ships.

For time-travelers, the warship in their minds must be like that of another time and space. At the very least, it must be a World War II minesweeper level, with a weight of more than 800 tons.

Come on, even if you have a complete set of blueprints, it won't work. The hot-rolled steel production line in Khabarovsk can currently only roll ordinary steel plates. It is no problem to build a few river ships, but building warships requires high-precision alloy extra-thick steel plates, which must be corrosion-resistant and have good low temperature. Toughness and good welding performance, otherwise it will be broken by the strong impact force in minutes when encountering huge waves.

Therefore, if the Navy wants to achieve real rapid progress and crush Europe in all aspects - especially the British Navy, the fastest way is to use doctrine and wait for Boss Zhao to perform the "Great Shift of the Universe".