Late Ming sea owl

Chapter 247 Changping and Champion

The ship is designed to have a displacement of more than 600 tons, a gun deck with a length-to-width ratio of nearly 4:1, 32 guns on both sides, and dense ribs arranged on the circular stern. It looks like a cruiser of two hundred years later.

"Director Pan, I plan to build two ships. What do you think?" Lin Hai excitedly called Old Pan and planned to ask for his opinion first.

"Absolutely not! Boss, this is absolutely not possible! This must be my brat. The drawing he showed me was clearly not like this..."

Director Pan was horrified after seeing the blueprint. He was always good at guessing his superiors' intentions and actually began to threaten Lin Hai: "Boss, if you insist on building this boat, then I will have no choice but to resign..."

After Lao Pan made his harsh words, he went on to list many reasons why the ship was not feasible, as if he had said everything that had not been said at the meeting ten days ago.

The light in Lin Hai's eyes gradually dimmed, and finally he interrupted Lao Pan with a wave of his hand in annoyance: "Alright, stop talking..."

The two of them fell silent. After a while, Lin Hai slowly said, "I know what you mean. Let's gather all the masters to vote and decide!"

The voting was done by secret ballot. First, everyone publicly explained their design plan. The master craftsman who submitted the design drawings could not vote for himself. The final result was handed to Lin Hai. The master craftsman Song received the most votes, with only two votes not voting for him.

"Now I will announce the voting results. Master Song's design won first place with 4 votes. Since it received more than half of the votes, I decided to buy two cruisers..."

As Lin Hai spoke, he looked around at the crowd. Almost all the masters present were over 40 years old, with only one young face who was not even 20 years old...

"I decided to build two cruisers..." Lin Hai repeated this sentence, and finally said after a pause, "One will adopt the design of Master Craftsman Song, and the other will adopt the design of Master Craftsman Pan. The two ships will be built in parallel!"

The whole place was silent. Even Pan Xuezhong himself stood there in a daze. His father, Director Pan, seemed to want to say something but stopped himself several times.

"Boss, I don't agree. How many votes did Pan Xuezhong get?" After a while, Master Song stood up and shouted loudly.

"0 votes, but I like this boat. If anything goes wrong, it's my fault." Lin Hai replied calmly. Since the establishment of Huiyou Company, he remembered that he had never been so willful.

"Boss, Old Song begs you to reconsider. That boat is really too radical!" Master Song hesitated for a while, gritted his teeth and continued, "How about we use Master Hu's design for both boats, and I, Old Song, will also withdraw like Director Pan, how about that?"

Master Hu also got a vote, which was cast by Pan Xuezhong. It seems that Master Song also knows what kind of ship Lin Hai likes.

Hu Dajiang's design took Lin Hai's opinions into consideration more, but compared with Pan Xuezhong's boat, it is still more similar to Song Dajiang's boat - the latter's galleon was designed with a displacement of 800 tons and did not take Lin Hai's opinions into consideration at all. It was completely based on personal experience and it was even very likely a copy of a boat he had built before.

"Old Song..." Lin Hai was really moved after hearing this. Although Master Craftsman Song was conservative, he was responsible for the company after all. This old wanderer who had been wandering overseas for half his life really regarded Jinhe Country as his home.

Otherwise, if another sinister person thought that Pan Xuezhong's ship was unreliable, he would be very happy. The first two types of cruisers, one successful and one failed, wouldn't that make Master Craftsman Song even more awesome? With such a comparison, how could he, the first chief designer of cruisers, maintain his position in the Ship Bureau in the future?

"I've made up my mind. It's settled! Two cruisers, one radical and one conservative. We can at least make one. This is also a great breakthrough for the Ship Bureau..."

Lin Hai said as he walked up to Master Craftsman Song and said, "Old Song, I plan to name your 800-ton cruiser Changping. Can you guarantee that it will be built?"

"Please rest assured, sir!" Old Song stood straight with a proud look on his face.

"I feel at ease with you backing me up." Lin Hai nodded solemnly to Lao Song.

He then came to Pan Xuezhong and patted him on the shoulder: "Xuezhong, no, it should be General Pan, the chief designer of Champion. Work hard, I will name your flush-deck battleship Champion."

"Boss..." Pan Xuezhong seemed a little lacking in confidence at this time.

"Don't worry. This is the first time the company has built a cruise ship, so it is experimental in nature. Don't forget that you have 0 votes. It was me who decided to build that ship. I said that if anything goes wrong, it will be my fault..."

Lin Hai said so, but the cost of building a cruiser is not low. With this material and effort, several frigates can be built. This is not the most fatal thing. The most fatal thing is that if something goes wrong, it is likely to cost the lives of hundreds of naval officers and soldiers!
Besides being overwhelmed by excitement at the beginning, Lin Hai actually had no confidence in Pan Xuezhong's boat after he calmed down. Although he knew the general direction was correct and all the improvements were verified by history, the devil is always in the details, and problems with the details can ruin everything.

But he still decided to do so, and changed his mind at the last minute:

——Look at the masters other than Pan Xuezhong. Is there any one of them who is not old enough to have grandchildren?

——Look at the voting results. The most conservative Song Dajiang received all the votes except himself and Pan Xuezhong. Even Hu Dajiang voted for him!
Shipbuilding technology in this era is more like metaphysics than science. It is too much based on feelings and experience. Even the top players can't explain it! Because of this, the industry's seniority and stubbornness are outrageous. Anyone who knows the history of sailing warships will agree with this.

It took more than a hundred years for the longitudinal sail on the battleship's mizzen mast to evolve from the Latin sail to the upper edge gaff sail with a bottom boom. Even though many changes have actually taken place, the Western European navy still refuses to admit that they have been changed.

Therefore, Lin Hai demanded innovation and change. The gap between the East and the West in warship design was already huge! He wanted to make the Eastern warship design technology advance rapidly during his lifetime and completely reverse this unfavorable situation. He was willing to pay a price for this.

And all of this is possible. Throughout the sailing era, there has not been any single hard technology in the field of shipbuilding that is difficult to overcome - just try!
During this period, Lin Hai has been busy preparing for the decisive battle with Zheng Zhilong, but he feels that the most meaningful work is still today.

On the day he decided to build a flat-deck warship, Zhu Yifeng, the governor of Fujian Province, who was far away in Fuzhou, also made a difficult decision:

——Without waiting for the wind in the court to settle down, he immediately secretly recruited Lin Hai, the court criminal who destroyed the ancestral temple of Jiuqiansui, even though Wei Zhongxian was still the chief eunuch of Silijian and the commander of Dongchang at that time.

(End of this chapter)