Daming 1805

After Zhu Zhongliang stayed at Jinzhouwei Shipyard for three days, he boarded the battleship Intrepid which was finally ready.

The battleship Intrepid and the aircraft carrier Dinghai are both technical verification warships.

Separately verify the feasibility of this design direction for a capital ship with full main guns and a straight-through deck warship equipped with an aircraft carrier.

The initial design guiding ideology is to complete as soon as possible.

The hulls are adjusted from the original battleship and armored cruiser hulls.

The initial nominal design time was only one month, and it was impossible to complete all the detailed designs.

In fact, they all completed the final design as they were built.

The power system attached to the prototype ship is a coal-fired and fuel-fired large water tube boiler that is standard on Ming Navy ships, and it is equipped with a three-expansion steam engine.

Half a year after the construction of the hull started, the design team officially decided to cancel the coal-fired boiler and replace it with a pure fuel oil small water tube boiler, which is equipped with a steam turbine to drive the battleship.

The two ships Intrepid and Dinghai avoided the fate of becoming the last coal-burning warships of Ming Dynasty at the last moment.

Dinghai thus avoided the fate of becoming the only coal-burning aircraft carrier...

However, the hulls of the two ships were built at that time, and it was impossible to go back and make major modifications.

Therefore, the line shape of the hull is still the original shape, but a bulbous bow is installed at the front of the hull.

Even if the Intrepid is replaced with a pure oil-fired boiler and a steam turbine, the maximum speed can only reach 23 knots at most.

And the fuel consumption rate at 23 knots is not very good.

However, at the original design speed, which is about [-] knots, the turbine efficiency is very high.

According to the power consumption results of the test, if Intrepid maintains a speed of 1 knots, it should be able to cruise continuously for [-] kilometers.

If the speed is reduced to [-] knots, it can continue to sail for more than [-] kilometers.

In addition, the hull is still the template of an old-fashioned battleship, and the hull itself is very large, so the sailing is very smooth.

After replacing the oil-fired boiler, there is no soot flying everywhere, and the hull is much cleaner.

Judging from the current overall results, this ship seems to be very suitable for medium-speed ocean-going special vehicles.

Under the guidance of a group of guards, Zhu Zhongliang looked around several key cabins of the Intrepid, and finally came to the conference room.

Zhu Zhongliang sat on the main seat of the meeting room, looked at the spacious space and elegant decoration around him, nodded with great satisfaction and said:

"I thought it was outrageous at the time, but now it seems that the ship is very good, and I don't think it will be commercially available after retirement.

"Go directly as an official of the Ming Dynasty, or even use the car of the Emperor of the Ming Dynasty and the Supreme Emperor to travel."

Sitting beside Zhu Zhongliang, the Empress Dowager also nodded with a smile and said:

"It's really good. Ordinary warships are not suitable for travel at all. This design of warships is much better. Compared with the normal passenger ship room, it still feels a bit cold..."

Zhu Zhongliang directly pointed to the surroundings:

"It's right to be cool, although this ship is decorated like a hotel, but the engineering standard is obviously still like a warship.

"You can see that the seats are mainly made of metal, and there is no wood or silk decoration on the corners.

"Because those things burn at one point, if they are shot on the battlefield, they will increase the damage control pressure.

"If someone really designed a warship into a passenger ship, the designer should also throw it to the Xianbei wasteland to dig potatoes."

The surrounding officers and craftsmen in charge of testing and recording all laughed out loud when they heard this.

After Zhu Zhongliang paused, he looked at the surrounding officers and craftsmen and said:
"It's not that the soldiers cannot have a better living environment, but that the basic safety of a warship must be guaranteed.

"Without compromising safety, more living space can be added and more comfortable equipment can be used to live.

"For example, Jingyuan invented a kind of air temperature adjustment equipment, and the Ministry of Industry is continuing to optimize and debug it.

"When it matures in the future, it can be installed on warships, so that soldiers don't have to fight against tens of degrees of high temperature in summer."

Zhu Zhongliang sat in the cabin for a while, and after resting, he got up again and came to the deck.

Zhu Zhongliang looked at the turret of the Intrepid where he was, thinking about the current situation in his heart.

According to the latest information from Xichang, the British, French, and even Spain are also building similar warships.

The fastest one is now in the water, and the British even directly adopted the piggyback turret.

The design direction of these warships should be the result of summarizing the experience of naval battles in world wars.

This kind of result is also the reason why Zhu Zhongliang is willing to launch the Fearless.

There is no need for the Intrepid to keep secret and hide.

However, Zhu Zhongliang looked back at the two fearless hulls on the dock of the shipyard.

The gap between Dreadnought and Dreadnought is very obvious.

The difference in tonnage is 50 tons, and the difference in length is more than [-] meters. The difference in shape is even more obvious.

The warships designed and built by the Three Kingdoms of Thailand and the West are either similar in size to the Dreadnought or smaller than the Dreadnought.

Coupled with the advantages of the Dreadnought in artillery shells and power systems, the Dreadnought is also the strongest among these new ships.

But Dreadnought, the title of the world's strongest warship, obviously has less than a year left.

The future is a mass-produced [-]-ton Dreadnought warship and a Zhenhai-type [-]-ton aircraft carrier.

When Zhu Zhongliang was thinking about it, the fleet he was in had already set sail.

Including the Dinghai aircraft carrier, a large-scale main fleet escorted Zhu Zhongliang's Fearless to the south.

The fleet maintained a speed of [-] knots, sailed at sea for a day and a night, and arrived at Jiangnan Shipyard at noon the next day.

Zhu Zhongliang took his wife ashore and participated in the launching ceremony of two new aircraft carriers.

Two [-]-ton target aircraft carriers, the first ship was originally named Zhenhai, so they are now collectively referred to as the Zhenhai type.

The same batch built two ships, and the second aircraft carrier was not named at first.

Zhu Zhongliang also chose the name of the "Jinghai" ship according to the previous name format of the two aircraft carriers Dinghai and Zhenhai.

The construction cycle of the World War II fleet aircraft carrier is usually shorter than that of the main battleship, because the aircraft carrier has a simpler hull structure.

From the main and auxiliary guns and mechanical structures, to the number of armor and equipment, the number required by an aircraft carrier is significantly less than that of a battleship.

But that is the situation after the shipyard is proficient in building aircraft carriers, and now Daming's shipyard has very little experience in building aircraft carriers.

Before the two [-]-ton aircraft carriers in Zhenhai and Jinghai, Ming had only built a crude aircraft carrier called Dinghai.

In addition, the Zhenhai-type aircraft carrier designed by Zhu Jingyuan is not a purely all-through-deck fleet aircraft carrier of World War II.

Apart from the lack of angled decks and large catapults, she is structurally not much different from modern aircraft carriers.

The elevators are all outside the freeboard on the left side of the deck, and the flight deck in the middle is a complete piece.

The construction indicators proposed by Zhu Jingyuan are also based on capital ships, not the historical cruiser standards.

Therefore, the Zhenhai and Jinghai ships were basically launched at the same time as the two battleships.

However, after the aircraft carrier is launched, the amount of "renovation" work in the later period will be smaller than that of the battleship, and the two aircraft carriers should enter service earlier.

In this way, at the end of October in the second year of Ankang, Daming launched four warships of [-] tons in succession.

And it can be expected that after the spring of next year, four [-]-ton warships will be started at the same time again.

After that, there will be four ships per year until the existing pre-dreadnought ships and armored cruisers are all replaced before considering future plans.

When Zhu Zhongliang was chatting with the shopkeeper of the Jiangnan Shipyard, he also leaked the news that there will be a new battleship order next year.

Let the other party reserve two [-]-ton ships in advance, so as not to be occupied by civilian ships at that time, and the cycle cannot be moved.

Then Zhu Zhongliang boarded the ship again, led the fleet to officially set sail, and headed for Mozhou.

Zhu Zhongliang, the Supreme Emperor, was going to visit Mozhou, so of course it was impossible to act in secret, so Zhu Jingyuan must be notified first.

When Zhu Jingyuan received the news, he felt question marks in his head.

What is this old man doing here at this time?
The Supreme Emperor basically doesn't care about things, did he come to Mozhou specifically to chat with himself?
But even though he was puzzled, Zhu Jingyuan still had to act immediately, leading Lin Zexu and Niu Jian to meet him.

First of all, we have to arrange a place for the old man.

Fortunately, during the construction process over the past year, Lin Zexu considered the possibility of special high-level visits.

While building workers' dormitories and workshops, a small but well-designed manor was specially planned.

It is located on a small peninsula in the middle of Mengxian Island, named Bishuiyuan.

Bishuiyuan is separated from the surrounding houses and is a relatively independent area, even with its own small dock.

Therefore, like Xiyi Fort, it can be independently fortified with high strength.

The construction work was basically finished this summer, and now the renovation work is just coming to an end.

The original plan was to activate it before Zhu Jingyuan left.

Now we can only speed up the progress, finish it before the Supreme Emperor arrives, and let the Supreme Emperor use it first.

One month later, on December [-]rd of the second year of Ankang in the Ming Dynasty, the fleet of the Supreme Emperor Zhu Zhongliang arrived in Meng County.

The large fleet docked at the Meng County Wharf, and Zhu Zhongliang's Fearless sailed directly to the Bishuiyuan Wharf.

Zhu Jingyuan's family, Meng County officials headed by Lin Zexu and Niu Jian all greeted them at the pier.

Zhu Zhongliang came out of the cabin, glanced down on the gangway, and saw Zhu Jingyuan in the front row.

"It looks a little taller..."

Zhu Zhongliang muttered with some emotion in his heart, and then noticed the two women beside Zhu Jingyuan.

Wearing the crown dress of a worldly woman, she now has a big belly, and there is a maid holding two children beside her.

"This is because the two concubines are pregnant again, this kid is really capable..."

Zhu Zhongliang realized that he had two more great-grandchildren or granddaughters, and he was very happy immediately.

He walked down the gangway with a smile, waved to the people saluting to him and said:

"You don't need to be too polite, I came to Mozhou just to look around, I have no business.

"Just let Jingyuan chat with me, you don't need to stay here, go and do your work."

Although the Supreme Emperor doesn't care about things, he is also the Supreme Emperor after all, theoretically the person with the highest status in the entire country.

Zhu Zhongliang said that they didn't have to guard him, but these officials didn't dare to leave directly.

Although everyone knew in their hearts that the Supreme Emperor came to see his grandson, and he didn't need outsiders like himself as the background.

But in terms of the most basic etiquette, you have to wait for the Supreme Emperor and Zhu Jingyuan to leave the scene before you can retreat.

Zhu Zhongliang was also an old man, so after finishing speaking, he took Zhu Jingyuan's hand, and the grandfather and grandson got into the car directly.

Liu Muyun and Yu Muxue also immediately took their children, got in a car and left the pier, and drove into the gate of Bishui Garden one after another.

The royal family members all left, and the surrounding officials breathed a sigh of relief, leaving the scene one after another to go about their own affairs.