Daming Yuanfu

Chapter 1479 Beiyang Expedition ([-])
The Jinghua Beiyang Fleet "Dengzhou" is a first-class cruiser built by Jinghua North Shipyard.This class of battleship has a large body of 2400 materials (1200 tons of displacement), and is a standard warship with two deck guns.

The whole ship is equipped with 52 guns of various types, among which the two main guns located at the bow and stern are the largest No. 14 heavy guns in Jinghua at that time, 36 No. people.In this expedition, the four cruisers and two high-speed scout ships were the only warships in the entire fleet that did not carry the army division.

Since the first ship of this class of warships was the "Laizhou" assigned to the Nanyang Fleet, Jinghua also called the warships of the same class "Laizhou-class cruisers".

Specifically, in the Beiyang Fleet, the two "Laizhou-class" first-class cruisers "Dengzhou" and "Jinzhou" are the strongest battleships second only to the flagship "Liu Rengui", which is a third-class battleship.

Gao Zhenxin used two Laizhou-class cruisers, which can be called the absolute main force, to provoke the Spanish fleet of large treasure ships. In terms of the tonnage of both parties, there is still a certain risk, because the tonnage of the large treasure ships of the Spanish fleet is not comparable to that of the two Laizhou ships. Class cruisers are small.

However, Gao Zhenxin is very confident in the strength of the two warships. This class of warships was built using the design concept of "combining Chinese and Western styles" that Gao Pragmatically called. It is a typical three-masted sailing warship.The so-called three-masted sailing ship is to set three masts, the bow mast, the main mast and the tail mast.The fore and main masts carry square sails, while the stern masts carry a diagonal spinnaker.

The square sail is a simple and ancient sailing gear, the sail is tied to the beam, and then hung on the mast with its center, and its shape is rectangular.Furthermore, although the spar can be swiveled considerably around the mast, only the same side is exposed to the wind.

The triangular sail is the prototype of the longitudinal sail that appeared later. A long stringer is hung obliquely on the top of the mast.

The biggest advantage of this design is that it is both fast and flexible; the square sail is easy to manufacture and has a large wind area, while the diagonally hung spinnaker helps to adapt to the wind direction, and it is not necessary to wait for the most suitable breeze to appear before sailing as before. , increasing the flexibility of the ship.

The expansion of the sail area means that the size of the hull can be increased accordingly, and the speed and loading capacity increase, which makes the range and performance of the ship rise sharply after the appearance of this sail type (this design has already appeared in Europe).

However, if the Laizhou class just did this, it would certainly not make Gao Zhenxin so confident. In fact, the full sails used by the Europeans at this time are soft sails, while Jinghua has always used Chinese-style hard sails.

The advantage of soft sails is that they can eat more wind, so the area can be larger. When the wind is strong and the wind direction is suitable, the speed and load have great advantages.Even the soft sail of the same mast is part of another part, and the sail can be adjusted to a large extent, which is conducive to avoiding rocks on the reef. In addition, because the soft sail can be fully retracted, it is relatively safe in the face of storms.

However, soft sails also have many disadvantages, such as complicated operation, large personnel, and long sailing time.At this time, the sails of Western large ships were composed of square sails, Latin sails and gaff sails.

This leads to many modular and very complicated procedures in the operation. For example, the pulley can only be used to adjust the rope, and cannot directly raise the sail and so on.

In some sailing or naval warfare films of later ages, the main reason why there are so many crew members on Western ships is that more than [-]% of them are purely for sailing services rather than fighting, so the staffing has to be increased to avoid the need to fight Sometimes there are not enough fighters.

The main advantage of Chinese hard sails is their high efficiency in receiving wind. They can rotate around the mast, so they can achieve the so-called "eight sides facing the wind", which is very flexible and adaptable.

Another point that is often overlooked or misunderstood is that hard sails are actually lighter than soft sails, and because of the support bones, the quality requirements for the sail itself are very low.

In the actual voyage, even if there are many holes, it doesn’t matter too much. The boat can still go. It is not like soft sails, which are often severely damaged because a hole is blown by the wind. It must be replaced quickly to keep moving. .

From such a comparison, we know that for sails of the same weight and area, hard sails have greater advantages and much lower cost.But please note that soft sail boats generally have a very large sail area and a high mast, so this advantage can also be offset.

However, the advantage of large sails and high masts brings troubles such as easy breakage of the mast. Therefore, the masts of Western-style sailboats are equipped with reinforcing cables to stabilize the masts.But this made the sails unable to rotate around the mast, so the efficiency of Xiyang horizontal sails in crosswinds was very low, so they used yan sails to solve this problem.

In fact, Western-style sailboats later developed wing sails to further speed up the speed, but this thing has not yet appeared, so Gao Pragmatism does not need to pay attention to it for the time being.

Generally speaking, in history, the total area of ​​sails used by Western sailing ships has surpassed the unit area efficiency of Chinese sailing ships. The total sail area of ​​​​a Western sailing ship of about 850 tons can reach the size of 6 basketball courts, while the sails of battleships The area can exceed 10 acres.

Gao Pragmatism remembers that the average speed of the winners of the last sailing blue ribbon has reached about 16 knots, and the coal-burning steam warships during World War I were only at this level.

Before Jinghua, there was still a problem with Chinese sailing ships, which was the problem of gun positions and defense. However, the cause of these two problems was the same reason, which was the design of water-proof tanks that many Chinese people were proud of in later generations.

This problem is actually like this: If the whole ship does not have a watertight cabin, you only need one opening to hoist the cargo into the cabin, and then move the position of the cargo to fill the cabin.

But if there are watertight compartments, you need to open each compartment to fill the whole ship, so you will have several openings on the deck, the lower main deck, and the lower deck, so you will A considerable number of emplacements were lost.

Since Chinese sailboats have bulkheads to support the structure, they either do not use ribs or use very little ribs when they are built.Western sailing ships have no compartments to support the structure, so a lot of ribs are used, especially for warships, which are almost connected one by one.

These ribs provide a very good defensive effect. For example, the solid shells of the 18-pound naval guns of the Napoleon era cannot even cause decisive damage to the 300-inch thick ribs at a distance of 46 yards, and close-range shots cannot penetrate.

You must know that at that time, each British battleship had a rib on the left and right sides of the gun position, so the ratio of warships sunk in real naval battles was very small, and most of them were captured.

After the War of Independence, the United States took advantage of the rich and high-quality timber resources of the North American continent to carefully build a group of oak warships. These warships played an important role in the subsequent war with Britain's attempt to retake the North American colonies.

In the naval battles of this war, the shells fired by British warships at medium and long distances were often bounced off by the hulls of American ships, which prevented the bombardment technology that the Royal Navy was proud of from giving full play to its advantages. The British crew exclaimed "" Iron Ship".

The U.S. warships relied on their strong hulls and were equipped with a large number of short-range artillery, and fought close-range artillery battles with the British army. As a result, the British army was hit by the powerful short-range firepower of the U.S. Army and suffered heavy casualties, which enabled the young U.S. Navy to win the victory at sea. .

[Note: Of course, the U.S. Army was not so lucky. It was beaten by the British army from Canada and even lost the capital Washington. As a result, the British burned the presidential palace.Fortunately, the Presidential Palace is a stone building, but it was burnt black. Later, the Americans had to paint the Presidential Palace white... This is the origin of the White House in the United States. ]
However, Chinese sailing ships are relatively easy to be pierced because they use less ribs, and the damage caused by shells will be much greater than that of Western sailing ships. [Note: The Japanese ship was even worse. There was a case where 8 main ships besieged a Dutch merchant ship and were all sunk. ]
At the same time, the strengthening of the hull structure of Western-style ships also helps to equip a large number of artillery on board without worrying about being shaken apart by the recoil of intensively fired artillery.

The hull structure of the original Chinese-style ships could not withstand such a force, which is why Chinese ships in the original history could only be equipped with no more than 30 artillery pieces-not that they would not, but they really couldn't.

Therefore, if we take the original historical situation as an example, Chinese sailboats are an excellent type of commercial ship.Due to the use of hard sails, the operation is convenient, and the number of sailors required is much less than that of soft sails, and it is more flexible in complex sea conditions.And due to the use of the compartment design, the sinking resistance and cost are also better than those of Western sailing ships.

However, due to the reasons of speed, gun position and defense, this kind of Chinese sailboat is not suitable to be used as a warship in the era of hot weapons, especially in the era of solid bullets as the main weapon.

Here is a doubtful point: since Chinese sailing ships cannot carry more than 30 cannons, how to explain the 52 cannons equipped with Laizhou-class cruisers?As a third-tier battleship, the "Liu Rengui" is equipped with 72 cannons. Isn't it even more inexplicable?
There is nothing that can’t be explained. In one sentence: the hull of the Jinghua warship actually adopts a western-style design with compact ribs. Although the water-proof compartment design is retained, the number of water-proof compartments is much smaller than that of the original Chinese-style sailboat. The water tanks are all made larger.

In other words, Jinghua is actually using the decline in sinking resistance under normal circumstances in exchange for the improvement of sinking resistance in battle.But one thing that needs to be emphasized is: Jinghua only warship-class ships do this, and armed transport ships are not built according to this idea.

This also explains why the cost of an armed transport ship of 1600 materials is only 5.5 taels of silver, while the cost of a Laizhou-class cruiser of 2400 materials is as high as 16 taels of silver.

The Western-style hull plus the weakened Chinese-style waterproof tank, the Western-style full sail design plus the improved Chinese-style hard sail (the improvement method seems to have been written in the previous article, so I won’t repeat it here), this is what Gao Pragmatism calls “the combination of Chinese and Western”.

This design not only greatly improves the anti-sinkability of Chinese sailboats, but also greatly increases the number of artillery pieces that can be equipped - with the same hull size, European warships at this time can carry about 60-70 guns, while the Laizhou-class cruisers are still Less than that, but also loaded with 52 doors.

Relying on the high-level practical design ideas and Jinghua's gun-making level of small plug-ins, these 52 guns should not be weaker than the artillery combat capabilities of European warships of the same size at this time.

If there is any disadvantage of the Laizhou class compared with the Spanish giant treasure ship (they are about the same size), it is probably that the speed of the Laizhou class is not as good as that of the opponent when the sail is full and the wind is in a strong wind.As for sea conditions such as headwinds and light winds, the Laizhou class has an advantage.

The navigators temporarily assigned by the Nanyang Fleet to the expedition fleet in Quanzhou were not free. Gao Zhenxin just listened to their judgment, so he dared to bet that there would be no strong winds in the next few days!
Of course, he also thought about what to do in case of a windy day - well, there is no other way, if it doesn't work, he will run against the wind.It's just that in this way, the plan to lure the enemy to encircle and annihilate is over, because it is the season of southerly winds (mostly southeast winds), and if the wind blows, the "Dengzhou" and the others will have to run to Manila to meet the ambush location. reverse.

The reason why "Dengzhou" was selected as the command ship of the enemy formation is that the captain of the ship has experience in this field.

The captain was an "old acquaintance" named Gao Musan.Before he became the captain of the cruiser "Tengzhou", he was the captain of the armed transport ship "Trichogramma" of the Nanyang Fleet.

Because this person had a brief confrontation with the Spanish fleet during Huang Zhiting's expedition to Burma and commanded it well, he was promoted to the captain of the cruiser [Note: See Chapter 246 of the Frontier Battle in Guangxi Volume].And because there is a system requirement for job rotation within Jinghua, it was transferred from the Nanyang Fleet to the Beiyang Fleet.This time, the five main warships of the Beiyang Fleet came out in full force, and of course he went out with them.

Standing in the captain's cabin, Gao Musan was listening to the first officer's report on the inspection just now, including whether the rigging was clean (the sea environment determines that they are prone to moss and slippery), whether the sail surface is complete and tough, whether the gunpowder in the gunpowder compartment is damp, Whether the shells in the shell compartment are rusty, etc.

At this time, the watchman on the watchtower suddenly yelled and reported something, the first officer saluted Gao Musan, and ran out to find out the details.

When he came in again, he immediately reported to Takagi Sanhui: "Captain, the semaphore report of the left light cavalry: The Spanish fleet spotted their tailing and escort, but did not make any response, and still headed towards Manila."

Gao Musan frowned slightly, and said mockingly: "Why did the Spaniard lose his spirit this time, didn't he still have a tiger's butt that he couldn't touch last time?" After a pause, he said again: "Does the Left Hussar have any plans or requests?" ?”

The first mate said: "Yes, they suggested getting closer and opening the gun doors to show combat readiness. If the Spaniards are still indifferent, they should simply order the Spaniards to stop the ship and wait for inspection."

Gao Musan laughed: "This kid is so brave. A scout ship asked six large Galen ships to stop for inspection? If I were the commander of the Spanish fleet, I would have to order to kill this dead sea mosquito on the spot."

It's a pity that the first officer of the "Dengzhou" seemed to be a very serious person, and instead of joking, he asked seriously, "Captain, do you approve their plan?"

Gao Musan thought for a while, and immediately said decisively: "Why not approve it? Approve it and let them implement it immediately. But once the Spaniards really turn around and hit him, let them shoot a few shells from a long distance to make it easier. You must fight and retreat." , Mainly to retreat, you can’t really fight with the Spaniards here.”
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(End of this chapter)