Daming Yuanfu

Chapter 1478 Beiyang Expedition ([-])
In the 16th year of Wanli, that is, 1588 AD, Spain in this year seems to be doomed to be unlucky.At the same time that the Armada suffered a major blow in England, the largest private maritime armed force in Ming Dynasty was also planning to use the Spanish Philippines.

The Beiyang Maritime Trade Alliance has organized the Southern Expedition Fleet with the main force of the Jinghua Beiyang Fleet as the core.The fleet is composed of a three-tier sail battleship of the Jinghua Beiyang Fleet and two four-tier sail cruisers as the core force, supplemented by the armed transport ships of the nobles and the armed transport ships of the Jinghua Beiyang Fleet.

Among them, the three major princes each provided five armed transport ships, the princes provided three ships, and the uncles provided two ships.

The nobles who stayed in the capital in the Ming Dynasty included the Dukes of the Three Kingdoms, the Thirteen Marquis (including the Marquis of foreign relatives), and the 21st Uncle (including foreign relatives, but not including Li Chengliang). Therefore, this time the nobles contributed a total of 96 armed transport ships. There are more than 2600 artillery pieces, including 768 heavy artillery pieces of the second commander.

In addition to five professional warships, Jinghua dispatched another 49 armed transport ships as planned, and additionally dispatched two experimental high-speed reconnaissance ships that were newly launched and served soon-the reason why they were named "high-speed" was mainly because of this Two new designs were used for the two ships: the Atlantic bow and the "sail propeller twin power".

The so-called Atlantic bow is actually the name of the Germans later, and its form originated from the flying scissor bow of the clipper sailboat.Originally, this flying scissor sailboat was a high-speed sailboat designed by Americans in the 19th century. Because of its excellent sailing performance, it attracted many countries to imitate.

During the period from that time until World War II, German naval ships usually needed to operate for a long time in the harsh sea conditions and frequent stormy Atlantic Ocean, so they favored this kind of bow very much, and named it "Atlantic bow". ", implying that it is very suitable for sailing in the storms and huge waves of the Atlantic Ocean.

As the name implies, the bow of the clipper ship will narrow the waterline of the bow to almost a blade shape, so as to achieve the so-called "long and sharp curve scissors-shaped stem, which is suitable for racing, and can cut waves on the sea ( Shearing waves) advance to reduce wave resistance, so it is called "flying shear" performance.

This design is very similar to the concept of small waterline and low-resistance hull line in later generations. With the bow and freeboard floating outward, the ship will not have serious waves when sailing at high speed, ensuring the strength of the ship. Power can be converted to high speed to the greatest extent.

Since it is so good, why is Gao Pragmatism still only used as a test ship here?The reason is that it is very difficult to build.Ships of the same style in later generations required large-scale equipment such as a [-]-ton hydraulic press to cold-forge the bow column, but Gao Yushi did not have such equipment, so he had to let the craftsmen of Jinghua study how to transform "his design concept" into a real thing.

It was so troublesome to make a wooden sailing warship into a clipper ship that the first two experimental ships were built eight years after the design was proposed.Moreover, the successful construction is also thanks to the fact that Jinghua now has the supply of high-quality giant wood from various countries in southern Xinjiang, and it can be built only by selecting the best materials.

Of course, there is another reason why the two high-speed reconnaissance ships have been delayed for so long. That is, Gao Pragmatic insisted on testing the propellers used in ships.

At this time, the marine propellers obviously could not be powered by steam. The propellers used by these two ships were still the original artificial power, and the propellers needed to be driven to rotate through a very complicated bearing transmission system in this era.

In essence, this is a thankless design, complicated to manufacture, high in cost, and mediocre in efficiency.

This design encountered great difficulties during the construction process, and to Gao Yushi's surprise, this difficulty was not the problem of the drive shaft that he initially expected, but the hull seal of the protruding part of the propeller.

For things like propellers, one end is in the cabin and the other end is outside the ship.In this way, there must be a gap at the joint of the propeller, and this gap is at the bottom of the water, so how waterproof the joint of the propeller is is very important.

The connection between the propeller and the hull of modern ships in later generations is made of professional sealing materials, such as rubber or Teflon and other materials with good waterproof performance, which can achieve very good waterproof performance.But now Gao Wushi doesn’t have Teflon, even if he doesn’t have any place to get rubber—it’s still in America.

To say that the propeller is waterproof, first of all, there is a main component, which is the bearing connected to the propeller, which is called the tail shaft. The sealing ability of the tail shaft is an important manifestation of the technical level of a country's shipbuilding industry in future generations.

Gao Wushi will definitely not be able to come up with technologies such as air pressure waterproofing of bearings in later generations, so he can only accept water seepage to a certain extent, and protect mechanical parts with waterproof grease in advance.This leads to a problem that the part needs to be disassembled for overhaul every certain time, and this time is not too long.

As for the connection between the drive shaft and the ship, we can only rely on primitive means, such as embedding veneer and then applying tung oil to it, etc. The final result is only barely usable—it will still seep water, so special design is required to store water at the seepage part Pool, and then manually cleaned, that is, picked away with a bucket.

All in all, these two test ships are typical of high cost and mediocre efficiency. If they hadn't been pragmatic and insisted on "cutting through the waves in the right direction", they would definitely be killed by the shipyard.

However, high cost is an absolute concept, while efficiency is generally a relative concept. In contrast, these two ships have more than 60 "rowers" to drive the propellers, but the speed is actually only when the propellers are used. improve.What is absolutely true is that when the propellers are turned on, the speed of this class of ships is more than a quarter faster than that of ordinary pure sail warships.

Due to the fact that more than 60 people are equipped, the carrying capacity of this type of ship is greatly limited, so in the end, Gao Pragmatism can only agree with the shipyard's opinion and use it only as a reconnaissance ship.

If it hadn’t been for Gao Yushi’s clear understanding that technological progress cannot be achieved overnight, otherwise even he might have to retreat.

An expeditionary fleet composed of more than 150 armed ships was formed, with 27828 sailors and more than [-] infantry and artillery armed servants.

Among them, there are 5600 armed servants from various honorable families, roughly 300 from each family of the three major princes, 200 from each family of princes, and 100 from each family of uncles.

Jinghua temporarily mobilized part of the Marine Corps of the Nanyang Fleet, and together with the Marine Corps of the Beiyang Fleet, it was temporarily organized into two associations, with about 8000 people.Gao Yimin was temporarily recruited from the Liaodong side to serve as the chief general of the Lu division, and to lead the post of the first town control of the Nanzheng temporary organization (the chief official of the first town is called the control system). Gao Yimin is restrained.

The commander of the Southern Expedition Fleet was directly served by Gao Zhenxin, the commander of the Jinghua Beiyang Fleet, and the flagship was the only sailing battleship "Liu Rengui" of the Beiyang Fleet.

The expeditionary fleet set off from Tianjin Port on the third day of June, stopped at Quanzhou for supplies, and officially entered a wartime state.The Nanyang Fleet immediately sent more than [-] navigators to join the expedition fleet, under the restraint of Gao Zhenxin.

On June 22, the reconnaissance ship "Left Wing Hussar" of the expeditionary fleet discovered six Spanish treasure ships off the northern coast of the Philippines. The expeditionary fleet had disputes over how to deal with these six unexpected Spanish treasure ships.

The leaders of the honorable family thought that these six big treasure ships should be encircled and suppressed at sea. There are three reasons for them:

One is that a large amount of gold and silver that "must exist" can be seized, so as to prevent the Spaniards in Manila from using these gold and silver to buy locals to help defend the city;
Second, it can be used to boost morale, so that the entire fleet can launch an attack on Manila with the most high-spirited posture;
The third is that destroying or capturing these six big treasure ships can also prevent the Spanish fleet from greatly increasing in Manila—it is estimated that the Spaniards have about 12 warships in Manila before dispatching troops. half.

However, the captains of several warships in Jinghua disagreed. They believed that although it was not difficult to defeat the Spanish fleet at sea, the other side, as a warship sailing around the world, had an advantage in terms of speed.

The vast majority of our warships are armed transport ships, and their speed is not superior. If we want to encircle and suppress, we need to predict the opponent's route in advance and set up an ambush in advance to get what we want.The current situation is that the opponent is in front of our fleet. Once our large fleet catches up, the opponent will definitely speed up and flee, and will not be able to catch up at all.

In addition, if you are encircling and suppressing at sea, the opponent has a certain chance that the ship may scuttle itself (there is no sea valve at this time).It is generally not easy for wooden warships to scuttle a ship, but since the opponent is a large Spanish treasure ship, which carries a large amount of heavy gold and silver, its success rate is expected to be very high.

If it really sank, wouldn't the original windfall be that the cooked duck actually flew away?

Therefore, the captains of several warships in Jinghua put forward two suggestions:
First, send two reconnaissance ships and two second-class cruisers to provoke the Spaniards and lead the Spaniards to actively chase our ship.At the same time, the large fleet centered on the pre-determined ambush location and carried out dispersal and encircling maneuvers.The purpose of the entire tactic is to strive to enter our encirclement when the Spaniards discover our main force.

Second, regardless of the Spaniard's large treasure ship fleet, let them enter Manila Port, our large fleet will go directly to Manila, blocking the Spaniards in the port and unable to get out.

They believed that although this tactic seemed passive and seemed to do nothing, in fact, due to the huge numerical advantage of our fleet, although the Spanish warships had strong single-ship combat effectiveness, most of them would not dare to go out to fight.

In this way, as long as our army lands ashore at a little distance—for example, from the north bank of the Pasig River—then cross the river and surround Manila City from a long distance (meaning that it is outside the range of the city defense artillery and Spanish fleet artillery), and at the same time carry out the Pasig River de-flow storage. Water operation, preparing to flood Manila, once Manila is captured by our side, the Spanish fleet in Manila Port will become a turtle in the urn, and we can do whatever we want.

According to Gao Zhenxin's original intention, he actually doesn't like the second plan very much, because although the plan seems to be very feasible, if the battle is carried out according to this plan, then the contribution of the expeditionary fleet itself in this battle may be lacklustre— ——Except for blocking the sea off Manila Port, there is almost no need for the fleet to do anything from the beginning to the end. What credit can there be?

His current name is Gao Zhenxin, according to Jinghua's rules, it means that he has never made any great achievements.As the commander of the Jinghua Beiyang Fleet, he hasn't had any chances in the past few years. The team is cowardly, so what's the point of making great achievements?

So Gao Zhenxin originally wanted to fight a big battle at sea and win a big victory. Only in this way can he have the opportunity to change his name to "a single name next to the character Wang".

While hesitating, Gao Zhenxin sighed inwardly, then turned to Gao Yimin and asked, "Brother Yimin, what do you think of these two suggestions?"

Of course, Gao Yimin could also see the difference between these two suggestions. To be honest, he was quite satisfied with these captains, because none of them concealed the second tactic because they wanted to make meritorious service.I have to say that the master has been emphasizing team spirit and overall victory before, which is really prescient.

However, in this way, Gao Yimin was forced not to only care about the interests of the army, because since the navy could do so fairly, he couldn't lose the army's dignity because of it.

After a little deliberation on his words, Gao Yimin replied: "I personally think that these two plans are quite reasonable. However, given my shallow understanding of naval warfare tactics, I cannot accurately judge whether the first proposal is more feasible...

Besides, he is still at sea, according to the master's order, the battle and actions at this time are all decided by Commander Zhen Xin.Brother Zhenxin, you don't need to worry about anything, just fight as you want. "

Gao Zhenxin first expressed his gratitude, and then asked the representatives of the nobles, which one would they prefer if they were to choose from these two plans.

After all, it is the "United Fleet". Since they rejected their own proposal, they should be consulted for the other two proposals put forward by Jinghua, otherwise it would appear too domineering.

When asked this question, the representatives of the nobles were extremely unified, and they all said that they should choose the first option: lure the enemy to set up an ambush, encircle and suppress at sea.

Gao Zhenxin was a little surprised at first, but he immediately came to his senses: the situation of the nobles sending troops this time is different from that of Jinghua.

Gao Yimin's status in Jinghua is relatively high, and he is a person who is valued by the master, and the army has dispatched 8000 people and two associations, and its strength is relatively strong, so Gao Zhenxin had to consult Gao Yimin's opinion.

But the nobles are different. They dispatched 96 armed transport ships at sea, but the land division only sent 5600 people, and even the three major princes only sent 300 people each.From such a comparison, it is obvious that the sea power is stronger than the land power, so this reflects another level: the honorable representatives who come to discuss matters on the "Liu Rengui" are all from their respective fleets.

With the support of the honorable forces, Gao Zhenxin finally made up his mind and ordered: "In this case, the four ships 'Dengzhou', 'Jinzhou', together with the 'Left Wing Hussar' and 'Right Wing Hussar' will come forward to provoke you." To lure the enemy, use the 'Dengzhou' as the formation command ship.

Our Grand Fleet is preparing to implement the scattered encirclement plan, and the scheduled encirclement location is 120 miles south of here, and now all military staff members are requested to step up planning and arrange the formation of scattered formations..."
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Thanks to book friends "Cao Mianzi" and "Single Riding Photo Bixin" for their support, thank you!
Thanks to book friends "Cao Mianzi", "The Source of Terror w", "July [-]th, [-]", "Single Riding Zhao Bixin" for their monthly support, thank you!
(End of this chapter)