Late Ming sea owl

Chapter 242: Current Battleship Classification of the Admiralty
In Keelung Port, where the naval department of Huiyou Company is located, dozens of warships of various shapes and sizes are anchored on the sea.

These warships can be roughly divided into four categories: full-sail galleons, old lock ships, western schooners, and Galleons.

The smallest number of them are the fully sailed galleons, of which only the flagship Dingyuan is currently undergoing regular maintenance in the recently repaired stone dry dock.

The largest number are the old lock ships. Except for the Bowang which was converted into a Western-style square-rigged sailing ship and the six ships sent to Jeju Island, the remaining fourteen old lock ships are currently in the port.

These fourteen ships will be removed from the Navy's combat sequence in the future, and will either be sent to Jeju Island to continue serving as warships or used as merchant ships. Since the Navy's current training focus is on Western soft-sail operations, the frequency of use of these old lock ships is currently low.

The Galleons were the second most numerous after the old lock ships. Not counting the two captured large ships, Princess Jieyou and Madam Feng, there were also eight light Galleons newly built by the Huiyou Company's Ship Bureau.

The smallest number of them were all Western-style schooners built by the Ship Bureau. Currently, there were only four of them in the port, one with two masts and three with single masts. It was not because the Ship Bureau had low production capacity, but mainly because these schooners were used very frequently, and more than half of them were not in the Navy's home port.

In fact, the Admiralty had as many Western-style schooners as Gallais, twelve each, two of which were 200-ton schooners and ten of which were 100-ton sloops, all built within the last eight months.

This speed was due on the one hand to the abundant timber reserves, and on the other hand to the fact that these schooners were not large in tonnage and could be built very quickly.

Take the smallest single-masted sloop for example. The displacement of the boats built by Huiyou Company is about 100 tons. They are roughly 6 feet long, feet wide, and feet deep. They can carry eight -jin (-pound) guns. The construction period used to take more than two months, but now it only takes one month.

This kind of hundred-ton boat doesn't even need to be built on a special slipway. Just cut down some trees to build simple poles and slides, and then make a few lifting machines and you can start construction.

A 200-ton schooner was more troublesome to build, as it had to use the only two slipways in the Ship Bureau, but it was still relatively quick to build.

The first two ships were started in parallel and took more than four months to build. The second two ships are currently under construction. The main structure is almost completed in two months and will be launched and outfitted soon.

Of course, the premise of all this is that the raw materials are complete and the personnel are sufficient. In the seventh year of the Apocalypse, the Ship Bureau ushered in great development. In less than a year, the size of the staff has more than increased tenfold, just like the Firearms Bureau in the second half of last year.

“First, you have played a big role in the current situation of the Ship Bureau.” Lin Hai was standing on a Sloop ship that had just entered Keelung Port, looking at the warships in the port and said with emotion.

"Thank you for the compliment, President. I dare not take credit for it." Lun Diyi took the words as if they were imperial orders, and there was a hint of pride in his humble tone.

Over the past six months, Lin Hai has devoted most of his energy to the shipbuilding business, and so has Lun Diyi, the director of the Construction Department.

However, Lin Hai was mainly involved in the design of the ship, while Lun Diyi was busy with various chores, recruiting ship workers, coordinating resources, managing logistics... All of these were managed in an orderly manner by him. In particular, the Ship Bureau currently has two sites, two large slipways and dry docks are in Keelung, but several simple shipbuilding facilities and mud docks are in Tamsui. Lun Diyi kept shuttling back and forth between the two places, and often slept on the boat that traveled between the two places at night.

"Don't be modest..." Lin Hai encouraged his eldest disciple with a smile, pointing to the two schooners being built on the slipway and said, "When will these two frigates be completed?"

The so-called frigate refers to a schooner. Half a year ago, Lin Hai formulated a preliminary classification of warships: a schooner with less than 12 guns is called a notification ship, a schooner with 12 to 20 guns is called a frigate, and a fully-rigged warship with more than 20 guns is called a cruiser.

This is a preliminary classification made by the Navy Department based on the situation in the next few years. Battleships are naturally not included, and old sluice ships that are about to be eliminated and galleys that are not suitable for long-distance sailing are also not included.

As was the common practice of Western European navies later on, only guns with a caliber of five pounds or above were counted, with the difference being that bow and stern guns were also included.

After all, it was not yet the era of battle lines, and the bow guns and stern guns were still frequently used in pursuit and melee. Later sailing battleships were generally not equipped with bow guns, and the stern guns only had gun ports and gun positions, and when needed, the last pair or two pairs of guns on the lower deck were moved over.

"Normally it will take another month, but if we concentrate our resources on one of the ships first, it should be ready for service in half a month." Lun Diyi knew what Lin Hai was concerned about. He hoped that more warships could catch up with the decisive battle with Zheng Zhilong.

"That's it, let's make a frigate first, and then make the Schooner for me in half a month." Lin Hai pointed to one of the slipways. The frigate being built there was estimated to have a displacement of about 250 tons, and the other one was about 200 tons.

Strictly speaking, this 250-ton frigate cannot be called a Schooner, because it is a two-masted sailing ship with a square sail fore and a fore-and-aft sail aft. The correct name for it in later generations should be Brigantine.

In order to save trouble, Lin Hai uniformly called all types of frigates "skuenas", just as the sloops of the Admiralty were actually cutters rather than sloops.

The fore-mast square sail Brigantine rig is more powerful and more suitable for slightly larger ships than the double-forward sail Schooner rig. The keel of this 250-ton frigate is 20 meters long, and the total length is 28 meters without the bowsprit. The draft is 3.5 meters. It can carry a total of 16 seven-pound guns on both sides, including the bow and stern, which is one pair more broadside guns than the other 200-ton frigate.

Neither the notification ships nor the frigates have gun decks, and all artillery is arranged in the open air. In order to avoid mistakes in the rush of transporting ammunition, these muzzle-loading heavy artillery are all of the same model, with the same charge and shell specifications.

Even better, the caliber of these guns does not exceed three inches, which means that the forging process can be used to make the guns, so the Navy Department’s current reporting ships and frigates are fully equipped with guns.

Several master craftsmen of the Cavite Shipyard were in place at the beginning of the year, but the Ship Bureau has been slow to start building fully-rigged warships, partly because of this - heavy naval guns with a caliber of more than three inches must be cast, but the casting capacity of the Firearms Bureau cannot keep up.

Nowadays, a breakthrough in iron mold casting cannon technology is just around the corner. Lin Hai feels that it is time to start building large ships. This is why he came to Keelung this time.

(End of this chapter)