I want to be emperor

The area on the north bank of the Suzhou River in Songjiang Prefecture is the Hongkou Industrial Zone under Shanghai County.

This place is not simple. Although the place is small, it is the most powerful and the largest important industrial area in Songjiang Prefecture. It gathers the headquarters or offices and factories of many famous and large enterprises in the empire.

A series of important factories such as Songjiang Naval Shipyard, Shanghai Arsenal, Songjiang Iron and Steel Works, Jiangnan Machinery Company, Lee's Machine Tool Company under Lee's Steel Manufacturing, and Suqin Textile Company's Shanghai production base are all established here.

In addition to many large enterprises, the most important thing is that there are a large number of small and medium-sized enterprises gathered here.

Unlike many large-scale industrial zones in China, which only have large-scale enterprise factories, several industrial zones under Songjiang Prefecture, such as Hongkou Industrial Zone, Huangpu Industrial Zone, and Huating Industrial Zone, not only have a large number of large enterprises, but also have a large number of small and medium-sized enterprises.

With convenient water transportation, various industrial raw materials and financial funds from all over the country can be gathered here, and at the same time, various goods produced can be transported and sold by river transportation.

Such convenient transportation conditions gave Songjiang Prefecture a geographical advantage in the early development of the Great Chu Empire. Not only official capital established a large number of enterprises here, but private capital also invested extensively in construction projects here.

These investments have further attracted a large number of migrant workers and various professional and technical personnel, thus promoting various tertiary industries.

Today, in the 27th year of Chengshun, Songjiang Mansion has become the state capital with the strongest economic strength in the Great Chu Empire, ranking first in all aspects of data.

Here produced the largest tonnage of ships in the Great Chu Empire, and produced more than half of the tonnage of warships in the Great Chu Empire.

It also produced a quarter of the cloth products in the Great Chu Empire, and a third of the raw silk in the Great Chu Empire. There are also countless industries.

In terms of economic aggregate, it is larger than Yingtianfu and Hantianfu combined... The population is also very large. It seems that the place is small, but this place has a population of more than 300 million people, which is larger than that of Europe such as Portugal and the Netherlands. The total population of the colonial powers was even greater.

And the income of the people is also the top one. According to the statistical survey of Songjiang Prefecture in Chengshun 26 years ago, the average annual income of local ordinary workers can reach 75 Chu yuan, and the income of skilled workers is even higher, such as skilled workers in steel factories and shipbuilding industries. , Their annual income can reach hundreds or even two hundred Chu Yuan.

The income level of the local people, um, mainly low-income groups, is significantly ahead of other state capitals in the Great Chu Empire.

These are all benefited from the extremely developed local industrial and commercial economic system.

The excellent local industrial and commercial conditions are also an important reason why the Navy and the Ministry of Industry also established the Navy Steam Engine Factory in the local Hongkou Industrial Zone.

If it is established locally, it is easier to recruit various high-tech talents. At the same time, the most important supplier of the navy is next to it, that is, the Songjiang Naval Shipyard. After assembling the steam engine, it can be directly transported and installed nearby, without having to travel far toss.

At the same time, because Songjiang Prefecture is just located in the middle node of the three major steam engine manufacturers, it can more conveniently accept parts produced by Tianjin Machinery Company, Guangzhou Machinery Company, and Dangtu Machinery Company, reducing transportation costs.

With many conditions, the Ministry of the Navy and the Ministry of Industry established the assembly factory of the Navy Steam Engine Factory in Songjiang Prefecture.

Of course, whether it is the Ministry of Industry or the Navy, it is impossible to build a steam engine factory from scratch, even if the steam engine factory is just an assembly factory and has no production capacity for parts, but this is still not so easy. It also requires a large number of various large-scale mechanical equipment,

Don't think that assembling a steam engine is easy, in fact it is very difficult... Especially the steam engines needed by the navy are all large shipboard steam engines with power ranging from thousands or even tens of thousands of horsepower. It's not easy to assemble.

Therefore, the newly established Navy Steam Engine Factory is actually the predecessor of the United Steam Engine Factory.

This joint steam engine factory is actually a factory established by Chengshun in 21 years, jointly invested and established by Guangzhou Machinery Company and major shipyards.

At that time, because Guangzhou Shipyard relied on the priority supply contract, it directly monopolized the shipboard high-pressure steam engine production capacity of Guangzhou Machinery Company for three years, and Tianjin Machinery Company and Dangtu Machinery Company at that time could not produce high-pressure steam engines for a while.

In order to obtain high-pressure steam engines for other shipyards to produce their ships, Guangzhou Machinery Company’s own production capacity was not high at the time, and it also wanted to occupy as much market as possible. The two parties hit it off and immediately established this joint steam engine factory.

However, when it was established that year, although this union had production capacity, its technical source was Guangzhou Machinery Company. To some extent, this joint steam engine factory was actually a very simple processing plant, without its own technology research and development capabilities.

In the first few years of its establishment, it was not bad, and it made a lot of money for various investors.

However, as Tianjin Machinery Company and Dangtu Machinery Company successively solved the technical problems of high-pressure steam engines and bypassed the patent barriers of Guangzhou Machinery Company, the high-pressure steam engine market suddenly turned into fierce competition among the three major steam engine manufacturers.

At the same time, the more important point is that the Guangzhou Machinery Company's own production capacity has already increased, and the priority contract with the Guangzhou Shipyard has also ended. Under such circumstances, it is naturally impossible for the Guangzhou Machinery Company to distribute the profits of the steam engine to those shipyards. one serving.

Due to internal discord among various investors, fierce external competition, and Guangzhou Machinery Company's suspension of technical support, the United Steam Engine Factory could no longer produce more advanced high-pressure steam engines, so it fell down.

The ambitious Lee's Iron and Steel Company took the opportunity to acquire the factory at a low price, trying to use the chicken to lay eggs, thus entering the high-pressure steam engine market.

Lee's Iron and Steel Company had previously announced its entry into the field of high-pressure steam engines, established a research and development team for research and development, and subsequently acquired the United Steam Engine Factory.

According to this point of view, there is a research and development team and a production base, but in fact there are no eggs...

After entering this market, Lee's Steel found that the technical barriers in the high-pressure steam engine industry were too high... Lee's Steel recruited and organized more than 500 R&D personnel to tackle technical problems.

At the beginning, they were very confident, thinking that they were rich and rich, so they invested a lot of money. A research and development team composed of more than 500 top-notch scientific researchers was able to make a high-pressure steam engine no matter what.

However, as the research and development plans were launched one after another, the senior officials of Lee's Iron and Steel Company looked at one technology after another that needed to be developed, and the massive amount of research and development experience that was increasing every month made their scalps feel numb...

They found that if they wanted to build a high-pressure steam engine, everything from the cylinder to the boiler, to the transmission system, and even the connecting pipes had to be re-developed to avoid infringement, because now almost every part and every process in the high-pressure steam engine is The patents of the three major steam engine manufacturers... There are thousands of technical patents that need to be bypassed.

This is still the most basic high-pressure steam engine, not counting the latest core technologies developed by the three major steam engine manufacturers, such as multi-expansion technology, water tube boilers, etc., which means that the patent barriers that need to be overcome are still increasing.

If one wants to produce a high-pressure steam engine with market competitiveness, the required research and development experience will be astronomical, and the time required will be very long.

Because what they want to do is not to develop high-pressure steam engines, but to bypass the patent barriers of other companies.

As for the simple high-pressure steam engine, this thing was produced by Guangzhou Machinery Company many years ago. Everyone knows the principle. Machinery factories with stronger technical capabilities can directly process and produce a relatively primitive high-pressure steam engine for you.

But this is useless, because it will violate the patent and cannot be put into the market for commercial use.

Lee's Iron and Steel Company wants to enter the high-pressure steam engine market. What it needs to do is to bypass the patent barriers of the three major steam engine manufacturers and find a new set of technical routes.

To put it simply, if people use plan A to build steam engines, you can’t use plan A, you can only find other ways... And what needs to be bypassed is not one set, but three sets of technical solutions... The three major steam engine manufacturers each have their own Their respective technical solutions and patent barriers.

The most disgusting thing is that the three major steam engine manufacturers sometimes come up with some other new solutions. Some of these new solutions will be used by themselves, but some of them will not be used by themselves, but they will still apply for technical patents... for It is to block the way of latecomers.

This is disgusting...

As a latecomer, Lee's Iron and Steel Company, what needs to be bypassed is not one set of technical solutions, but a dozen sets, and dozens of technical solutions that need to be bypassed in individual details... The three major steam engine manufacturers The roads are blocked.

Facing such strict patent barriers, although Lee's Iron & Steel Co., Ltd. has invested heavily in the field of high-pressure steam engines, it has not been able to achieve major technological breakthroughs for a long time.
When Guangzhou Machinery Company's patent authorization for high-pressure steam engines expired, although they had a factory, they couldn't even produce and sell backward high-pressure steam engines...

After self-research was not going well, and it was also difficult to find the three major steam engine manufacturers to obtain patent authorization, Lee's Iron and Steel Company completely lost confidence in entering the field of high-pressure steam engines...

The field of high-pressure steam engines is an industry with the highest technical threshold and the most serious patent barriers in the Great Chu Empire. Li's Iron and Steel Company wants to step in, and this is not even something that money can handle.

Lee's Iron & Steel Co. began to sell this factory half a year ago. Although it has no technology, it has a factory building, a large number of mechanical equipment, and a large number of skilled workers, so it is worth some money.

In the end, this factory was valued by the Ministry of Industry and the Ministry of the Navy...acquired as a steam engine assembly factory dedicated to the Navy.

Anyway, the Navy Steam Engine Factory has technical authorization, and does not intend to develop it by itself. It only needs the production and assembly capacity of large-scale steam engines. Therefore, the United Steam Engine Factory is useless for Lee's Iron and Steel. However, as a factory that mainly produced civilian shipboard steam engines in the past , but it is enough for the navy.

When the acquisition case was finalized and the senior personnel of Lee's Iron and Steel Company withdrew from the United Steam Engine Factory, their faces were full of unwillingness and helplessness.

In the past 20 years, Lee's Iron & Steel Co., Ltd., which has developed smoothly, stumbled for the first time, and it was a huge stumble.

In the past six or seven years, more than one million dollars have been invested in the field of high-pressure steam engines, but none of them have been caught.

Although such a major investment loss would not cause serious damage to the Lee's Iron and Steel Company, which has a large business, it will have to wait for several years.

After calming down and thinking about the pain, Li's Iron and Steel Co., Ltd. made up its mind that it would not play behind other people's buttocks in the future, and play in its own advantageous field if it wanted to play.

For example, shipbuilding, machine tools, and general mechanical equipment are still their forte. They plan to continue to grow bigger and stronger in these fields, especially the shipbuilding industry, which is currently very prosperous, plans to invest heavily in building the first domestic [-]-ton dry dock.

The retreat of Lee's Steel in the field of high-pressure steam engines did not affect the development of the domestic high-pressure steam engine field. After all, the fierce competition among the three major domestic steam engine manufacturers itself is the best driving force for the development of high-pressure steam engines.

In order to seize the market, each of them has invested heavily in research and development and production.

And these research and development results can eventually be transferred to the Navy Steam Engine Factory.

According to the agreement between the navy and the three major steam engine manufacturers, the navy can order their latest patented products, and then assemble them into shipboard steam engines for use by naval warships.

After the naval steam engine factory was established, the first project was to integrate the existing exclusive patented products of the three major steam engines to create a large-scale military shipboard steam engine, which was planned to be used on the second ship of the Hantian-class battleship under construction. That is, on Yingtian.

However, Yingtian, whose design has been changed, is completely different from Hantian in terms of guns, power and hull design. Therefore, it is not appropriate to continue to classify it as a Hantian-class battleship. It is already a new type of battleship. .

In addition to providing power for subsequent new battleships, it is also planned to provide power for other new warships, such as the follow-up ship of the Fengzhou-class cruiser, to be precise, the improved Jinzhou-class cruiser of the Busan cruiser.

The Jinzhou-class cruiser was improved based on the Busan cruiser. Although the Busan cruiser was also equipped with front-loading rifled guns, when this battleship was designed before, it was only planned to be equipped with smoothbore guns.

Rifled guns are quite different from smoothbore guns in terms of specific use and combat.

Therefore, based on changes in this situation, coupled with advances in power and other hull technologies, the Navy improved and designed the Jinzhou-class cruiser.

Its tonnage has been further expanded to 150 tons, and it is planned to be equipped with multiple 75mm front-loading rifled guns as the main gun and multiple [-]mm naval guns as secondary guns.

In terms of power, it will use the brand-new assembly products in the navy steam engine factory, so the speed will be greatly improved, allowing this class of ships to reach a speed of [-] knots.

Because the steam engine technology is more advanced, the volume and weight space occupied are relatively small. At the same time, because the Navy pays more attention to battery life and seaworthiness, it does not hesitate to reduce firepower for this purpose. This also allows this class of ships to obtain more space for coal and fresh water. .

Under pure steam power, this class of ships travels at a speed of eight knots, and its endurance can reach [-] nautical miles.

This will be the first warship in the Chu Empire's navy that can truly rely on steam engines for ocean-going voyages, which is of great significance.

Without adding coal, starting from the Wusong Naval Base, it can cover the entire northern coastal waters, namely the Sea of ​​Okhotsk, and even reach the Bering Sea.

Starting from the northern part of Fusang and taking the North Pacific route, you only need to add coal and fresh water at the supply port in the Aleutian Islands, then you can cross the Pacific Ocean to Seattle in North America.

Taking the Central Pacific route, you only need to resupply at Midway Island and the Sandalwood Islands in the middle, and then you can also cross the Pacific Ocean to reach San Francisco Port in North America.

Starting from the local Hong Kong naval base, it can cover the entire South China Sea to the south.

Departing from Singapore, a large naval base in the South China Sea, it can directly cross the Indian Ocean and arrive at the Port of Colombo on Ceylon Island. Using Colombo as a logistics base, it can cover the entire Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Gulf, and at the same time cover most of the southern Indian Ocean.

To the west, it can reach North Africa, or even Madagascar, and to the east, it can reach Singapore or Australia.

Such a huge cruising distance of pure steam engine power is enough for this Jinzhou-class cruiser to ignore monsoons and ocean currents, greatly expanding the scope and time of activities.

This is the basis for the Great Chu Empire's navy to truly dominate the oceans. Otherwise, it would have to sail along the coasts of the coasts as before, and even cross the Atlantic Ocean with fear, for fear of entering the calm zone...

In order to ensure sufficient endurance, this is because although the tonnage of the Jinzhou-class cruiser has expanded, the number of naval guns equipped is not as strong as that of the Busan cruiser.

For a battleship, all aspects such as fire protection and power need to occupy weight and space. On the one hand, if it is strong, on the other hand, it will naturally be weak.

In addition to the new Jinzhou-class cruisers, new steam engines will also be used on new frigates.

This new frigate is actually an enlarged version of the Longchuan-class frigate!

Although the Longchuan-class frigate has a full-load displacement of more than 800 tons, in the actual combat process, especially during the Indian campaign, the Navy found that the tonnage of this frigate was still too small when sailing and fighting in the ocean, so that it was very bumpy Not to mention, and the roll is so strong that the artillery hit rate is very low.

At the same time, a steam engine needs to be installed in the tonnage of more than 800 tons, but coal and fresh water cannot be carried too much, so that the cruising distance of the steam engine is really poor, only a few hundred kilometers.

For this reason, the Navy quickly suspended the follow-up production of this class of ships and directly improved the design!
The goal of improvement is very clear, that is to increase the ocean-going seaworthiness and cruising distance, for which speed and firepower can be sacrificed.

The improved frigate is called the Changshu-class frigate...It is said to be a frigate, but the actual tonnage has exceeded 1000 tons, reaching [-] to [-] tons...In Europe at the same time, they were all battleships tonnage.

The expansion of tonnage has really enabled frigates, such ships, to have excellent ocean-going navigation and combat capabilities, so as to meet the needs of the Great Chu Empire Navy in the new era.

What are the needs of the new era?
That is ocean voyage and combat.

In the early days of the establishment of the Great Chu Empire Navy, the combat waters were basically on the coast, and later expanded to the South China Sea. However, for a long time, the navy of the Great Chu Empire was actually operating along the coast, and there were many naval bases around it.

Before the Indian strategy, in fact, the Great Chu Empire's navy did not have too high a demand for ocean-going navigation and combat capabilities, which also affected the later ship design.

In the early design of steam ships in the Great Chu Empire, the cruising distance of pure steam engines was basically not considered, and the speed was basically increased.

However, after the implementation of the Indian strategy, the navy of the Great Chu Empire will cross the Indian Ocean at every turn, and the maneuvering distance will be several thousand kilometers at every turn. In this way, those frigates of hundreds of tons will be unusable, and as large warships become larger, their sails will not be enough. used.

So starting this year, when the navy designs warships, it has to pay attention to the cruising distance of the pure steam engine power of the warships.

In order to meet this requirement, it is inevitable to increase the tonnage of the hull and increase the amount of coal and fresh water.

The improved design of the Changshu-class frigate will become the standard frigate for mass production by the Great Chu Empire Navy in the next few years, and will allow the frigates in the Great Chu Empire Navy to truly have the ability to sail and fight in the ocean for the first time.

With the enlargement of warships and the substantial increase in the construction cost of large-tonnage warships, the main battleships of the Great Chu Empire Navy in the future will still be composed of cruisers and frigates. As for battleships... the cost is high, and the most important thing is excess combat power , the Great Chu Empire Navy has already slowed down the pace of building large-tonnage battleships.

After all, when you can use a frigate of about [-] tons to hit the sailing warship of the natives on the opposite side, you don't need a steel battleship of [-], [-] tons or even tens of thousands of tons.

Therefore, the navy's focus of shipbuilding in the next few years is not actually battleships with a displacement of [-]-[-] tons, but cruisers of [-]-[-] tons and frigates of [-] tons.

At the same time, the number of small warships of hundreds of tons will be reduced, mainly because these small warships are not suitable for ocean-going operations, and it is useless to have too many of them.

In the future, only some small warships will be kept in the offshore and inland river fleets, but they will not be frigates, but offshore patrol ships and inland river gunboats.

Looking at the shipbuilding direction of the Great Chu Empire Navy, especially focusing on ocean-going seaworthiness and endurance, it can basically be seen that the overall strategy of the Great Chu Empire Navy has changed. From the previous regional defensive navy Going towards the global ocean-going offensive navy.

It also means that the Great Chu Empire is no longer limited to the colonial expansion of the short-distance Southeast Asia region, but has set the targets of colonial expansion on India, West Asia, Africa, and the Americas, and can even be said to be the global region.

The day when the Great Chu Empire launched a global colonial expansion is approaching.

Against such a background, an expedition fleet of the Great Chu Empire Navy from Mumbai, India, also crossed the North African waters and headed towards the south of the east coast of Africa!

They want to explore the waters in the south and east of Africa, and make preliminary preparations for the subsequent establishment of colonial strongholds in Africa and the eventual occupation of South Africa.