Xinshun 1730

Chapter 181 Prison Ship

"Vladivostok, it's far away, and it's near. You are a navy, and you will go to sea in the future. There will always be a chance to see you again."

"Don't worry, although there are more tigers and wolves there, and it's colder, it's unlikely to starve to death. I also fired a gun, and the tigers will be shot first in the wasteland. That place can be farmed , there are also cattle and horses, and the days will not be bad."

Only then did Zhang Erbiao feel relieved. Tigers and wolves, as long as they have guns, are nothing to be afraid of.

I got a wife again, and I have a lot of wasteland, and there are cattle and horses to use. No matter how I think about it, this day will not be bad.

He still trusted Liu Yu.

The reason why he was worried was that he had seen that scene when the elder brother boarded the ship and left.

It's almost the same as transporting livestock.

The boat is packed to the brim, and if you want to shit on the bow, you have to move it a little bit. If you have diarrhea, I'm afraid there won't be enough time.

Now there are only four of them left in the living family. Since the living family can continue to live, he doesn't have too much worry.

In the months after this conversation, Zhang Erbiao spent almost no end in training.

Until the sixth month of the lunar calendar, when it was the hottest time, several large Western ships appeared on the sea near Weihai.

There are many Western ghosts on Liugong Island, and Zhang Erbiao has seen many of them, so he didn't feel anything unusual.

He could tell which ones were Rakshasa people and which ones were French people.

Because Zhang Erbiao felt that French people's mouths were very cheap.

When you meet, you will be "stupid pig" and "silly donkey".

But I finally knew that these Frenchmen were here to deliver the ship, and unloaded a lot of muskets and cannons.

As soon as those Westerners came, the army in the small station camp next door began to practice ping-pong-pong.

Zhang Erbiao didn't know what the army drills produced, but he knew that when the French left, they left behind two large ships, some cannons and guns, and more than 400 craftsmen.

Afterwards, the two large ships were named Weihai and Penglai. Because of his hard training, Zhang Erbiao was selected as the first batch of sailors to board the ship and was assigned to Weihai.

The day of boarding the ship was July [-]th, the Qiqiao Festival. This day is easy to remember.

Weihai and Penglai are both big ships, at least in Zhang Erbiao's view, they are very, very big ships.

Before boarding the ship, Zhang Erbiao, like the rest of the sailors, was transported to the river near Weihai and took a bath in a large wooden barrel.

Some lice powder was sprinkled on his body, and his skin was burning hot and painful.

After being tortured like being burned all over the body, everyone was issued a set of military uniforms.

A cotton shirt and a pair of trousers.

The trainee officers who boarded the ship wore woolen military uniforms that made Zhang Erbiao covetous.

Envy is envy, but Zhang Erbiao knows that he will never become an officer.

Because he is illiterate and does not know other crafts, he can be mixed up as a first-class sailor at most.

The ranks on the ship are distinct, trainee officers are trainee officers, and sailors are sailors, which cannot be surpassed.

The Weihai ship he was assigned had a quota of 160 people, but the first batch of people boarded the ship was full of 320 people, fully doubled.

There are 140 sailors like him, and the rest are all cadets.

Meeting is an official, there are more officials than soldiers, and there are people everywhere.

There are four trainee captains alone.

The intern captain Zhang Erbiao recognized that it was Mr. Mi who took him in back then, and he was a good man.The remaining three are all deputy trainee captains, and he doesn't recognize them.

The real captain was the Rakshasa man named Bering, and there were twelve Frenchmen on board who called stupid pigs and donkeys when they met.

Their boat spirit is a raccoon tomcat who roams around the boat all day long.

And now she is only a third-class sailor, with a salary of one and a half a month.

If you can mention first-class sailors, there will be three or two halves.

On the day of boarding the ship on July [-]th, all the sailors on board had a meal of dumplings.

To Zhang Erbiao's surprise, this dumpling was not filled with fish and meat. It can be called the most memorable day in Taixing in 13 years.

After eating the dumplings, they were dispatched to the boat.

It was the first time Zhang Erbiao saw the scene on this big ship, the densely packed cables, he didn't even know what these cables were for.

There are more than a dozen small swivel cannons on the deck. It is said that they are used to straf the enemy on the opposite deck after the naval battle is approaching.

Only after the deck of the enemy ship has been cleaned with a portable swivel gun can board the ship and seize the ship.If a ship is captured, dividends will be distributed according to the price of the ship and the goods on board.

Below the open-air deck, there is a fully accessible artillery storehouse, and nearly thirty cannons are tied with ropes.

That's his job, Zuo Xian's trainee gunner.

However, I heard that Mr. Liu is very dissatisfied with these nine-pound cannons, and is hoarding copper materials, preparing for the craftsmen who disembarked to cast some larger ones.

When he was sleeping at night, he was arranged in a hammock. Nearly 300 people were stuffed in the small cabin, which can be imagined.

Smelly farts, smelly feet, snoring...they have long been used to these, and they have tried to sleep like this when they were on the shore.

Only the cabins of the trainee captains are a bit more spacious, but not much.

The toilet is at the bow, pulled directly into the sea.Because the boats sail with the wind, there is no need to be afraid of the "aroma" floating all over the boat.

On the prow of the French ship, there is a woman carved in wood, holding a spear in her hand, and I don't know where the woman is.

Of course, this is the only woman on board.

Many people gathered around and looked at the chest of this wood-carved woman, giggling, pointing, or saying something like a steamed bun, big.

Since there were no women on board, Zhang Erbiao knew that his salary would be paid on a monthly basis when he docked, and if he was sailing outside, he would pay as long as he docked.It is tacitly allowed to do whatever you want after landing.

After sleeping in such a narrow cabin for the first night, the Dang Dang bell rang at dawn the next morning.

At the second sound of the bell, everyone in the cabin must get up.

Zhang Erbiao is only a third-class sailor, and the hammock he sleeps in is extra special.The moment the wake-up bell rang, he had earned his first lesson in life on board.

The old French sailor gestured and muttered, and Zhang Erbiao, along with the alternate officers, tied up his spare hammock according to the rules, and then carried it to the deck.

These bundled spare hammocks are tied into a large ball according to a special knotting method and tied to the side of the boat.

I heard from the alternate officers that this is to protect against the swivel guns on the opposite side when it is close to the naval battle, and it can be used as a bunker.

In addition, if this thing falls into the sea, it can also float on the sea. People who fall into the water can hug this thing and may survive.

In the first three days, he was basically learning this thing.

It was not until the fourth day that I fully learned how to tie the knots and how to tie them. After passing the assessments one by one, I went to the next lesson.

Get up, tie a hammock, and squat down on the deck in the first row.

One person handed out a brick-sized millstone, buckets of sand were poured on the deck, and the deck began to be ground with the millstone and sand.

It is said that when fighting, sand should be spread on the deck.Because war will kill people, and dead people will bleed, and blood will make the soles of your feet slippery, so you need to spread sand.

There is a lot of sand on the French ship.It is said that if a Frenchman dies at sea, he will bury him in the sand at the bottom of the ship, and bury him after returning to land, so that he can be buried safely.

Zhang Erbiao thinks this is very good.

However, Mr. Liu refused to allow it, and even had a fight with the French officer for this.

The French officers couldn't win the quarrel, so they had to change the rules on the Weihai: If a person died, he would put it in a bag, attach a shell, and throw it directly to the bottom of the sea. It is not allowed to bury people in the sand in the cabin.

The sailors, including Zhang Erbiao, were very unhappy about this matter, and in the end they could only use a compromise.

There are several barrels of glutinous rice and dates on board, no matter how hungry you are, you are not allowed to eat them.

After a person dies, put them in a bag, imitating what Dr. Qu did when he threw himself into the river, and put some glutinous rice and dates in the bag, so that the fish and shrimp will not eat the dead body and keep a whole body.

While Zhang Erbiao was kneeling on the ground to wipe the deck, a large group of candidate officers squatted at the bow, looking at the sun with their sextants.

When he finished wiping the deck, another group of people looked at it.

At noon every day, it was the busiest time for officers to look at the sun. Twenty or thirty people learned how to judge the moment of noon together.

After cleaning the decks for five days and making sure that everyone can clean the decks, Zhang Erbiao realized that the things he had learned were just things to do during the time between waking up in the morning and having breakfast.

It's been a long day and this is just the beginning.

From the day you board the boat, breakfast becomes very simple.

Five dates, a large bowl of camellia batter, and a dry salted fish.

After breakfast, I started to learn to check those cannons.

It weighs several thousand kilograms, and the boat is so bumpy. If the ropes are not tied properly, and the crowd is so dense, it is normal to kill ten or eight people.

A big guy with a few thousand catties will be injured if rubbed, and will die if touched. Zhang Erbiao knows that this is related to whether he can survive, and he has learned it very carefully.

After checking the rope of the cannon, it is necessary to reload the gunpowder with the members of the gun crew.

The gunpowder will not be placed next to the cannon, but in a special gunpowder magazine. After being packed, it will be passed back and forth by special short soldiers.

These short sailors were nicknamed "Gunpowder Monkeys".When a war broke out, they had to run back and forth carrying gunpowder amidst the smoke and the shaking of the distance.

On the gate of the gunpowder store, there is a thick cotton felt, and there is a large bucket next to it.The first thing to do is to splash water on the cotton felt.

As the gunner of Zuoxian, Zhang Erbiao not only needs to learn how to fire a cannon, but also how to use a musket and a grenade.

Once the opponent's mast or rudder is damaged, a group of sailors on the left or right string will be dispatched to organize a commando to board the ship and seize the ship.

As for how to operate the cannon, you just need to learn to listen to the officer's orders, know what kind of wedge to add, and how to aim roughly.

From getting on the ship on the seventh day of July to getting off the ship for the first time in early October, in just three months, Zhang Erbiao learned several things.

In the words of the trainee captains, he finally looked like a sailor.

include:

When I learned to speak, I shouted loudly.Because the guns are always fired, the sound is too low to be heard clearly.The voice is low, and he is not qualified to be on a warship.

When you learn to shit, you can skillfully hold the cable with one hand, with your butt facing the sea, no matter how the boat swings, you won’t fall off.Because there are too few toilets, everyone must learn to grab the cable and stick their butt outside when others occupy the toilet.

Learned to drink and was able to walk around the wobbly deck after drinking.Because the water will turn green after being stored for a period of time, if you want to avoid diarrhea, you have to mix it with white wine to drink.And the life on the ship is really boring. Only a glass of wine every day is the happiest moment for the sailors. After drinking, this kind of prison-like boring life always has a kind of dizzy pleasure.

Learned to pull the cable, and slapped the wooden girl on the bow.Because if you don’t do this, in the small cabin, you will always think about those handsome sailors, especially when they are rubbing the deck with their backs pouted, they will be impulsive and inexplicable.

I learned to use stinky fish or meat to lure out the weevils and maggots in some dry cakes or camellia noodles before eating.The maggots tasted okay, but the weevils were bitter and unpalatable.Things like stinky fish can also attract those bugs to it well, and they can also be used as bait for fishing.

I learned to lie in a hammock, and it only takes me a quarter of an hour to fall asleep, even though the snoring of the person next to me is louder than a cannon.But as soon as the drums for preparation and the bell for getting up sound, you can jump up and tie the hammock quickly.

As for firing guns and jumping ship to kill people, in the words of the trainee captains, they are still far behind.At least another half a year or so of training is required.

When he went ashore this time in October, Zhang Erbiao heard that he was going to reissue his military uniform, take a bath on the shore, and take a three-day vacation to go to the city to have a good time.

Three months of prison-like life made Zhang Erbiao feel for the first time that life on shore is so beautiful.Even if you just stand on the beach, there are no people crowded to death, and there is no smelly smell.

He is illiterate and has no culture. Looking at the blue sea and white waves, he feels poetic.

The sea is so beautiful, but it can only be seen from the shore.

After receiving the new military uniform, took a bath, and paid another three months' salary, he went to Weihai in a small boat.

Instead of going shopping with the rest of the sailors, he found his younger brother Sanbiao and his younger sister, who were also on vacation, and had a meal at a restaurant in Weihai.

On the day of rest, the restaurant is crowded with people.In just a few years, there have been many restaurants, brothels and grocery stores around Weihai.

Military salaries were continuously sent from the capital, distributed to soldiers, and slipped into the pockets of merchants.

After waiting for a long time, I finally got a seat. The three brothers and sisters sat down, ordered three meat dishes, and a large jug full of wine.

After watching his sister write a few recently learned characters with chopsticks, Zhang Erbiao took a big sip of wine and felt very happy.

The younger brother Sanbiao brought a piece of news that he didn't know. This time, the reason for Xiumu was that someone from the capital was coming.

Master Liu is going to prepare a drill for the adults in the capital to watch.

As for who came, my brother didn't know, and didn't need to know.

Zhang Erbiao thought to himself, it doesn't matter who he is, he can do whatever the officer tells him to do.

(End of this chapter)