After twelve weeks of long voyage, the German battleship "Brandenburg" finally arrived at the anchorage of the Beiyang Fleet of the Qing Empire, Weihaiwei Port, Shandong.

It was early morning, and the mist was everywhere on the Bohai Sea, the sky was high and the clouds were light. A few snow-white sea birds spread their wings and cried, passing light and graceful curves in the sky. The blue waves in the sea were gently shaking, and sparkling light was shining under the morning light.

Qingying stood at the bow of the boat, her clothes drifted over, looking at the ancient and vicissitudes of the earth not far away, and her heart was surging. Three years have passed since his past and present, and he has never set foot on this homeland that gave birth to him again, except in the illusion that he was dreaming about. At this moment, the suffering and torture that had been suffered in the sea for nearly three months have turned into a cool and moist spring, flowing in his heart.

"In another half an hour, you will enter the base of the Qing Navy. Your Highness, please prepare to get off the ship." Captain Claude, wearing a dark blue naval costume, walked out of the commander's tower, and the black eagle emblem on the top of the hat was about to spread its wings and fly high. Seeing the old sailor walking onto the front deck, all the young sailors around showed envy and longing.

Qingying nodded and turned around, just about to say a few polite words to the old-fashioned middle-aged man in front of him, a deafening roar of wind and thunder suddenly sounded in his ears; he hurriedly covered his ears and looked in the sound, and saw that the whistle of the large battleship with a full load displacement of more than 12,000 tons had begun to break through the wind and whistle, and the blazing steam rushed out nearly 10 meters away, like a blue rainbow slanting frame, and the rain was shining!

About half a minute later, the scorching wind gushed out of the whistle finally eased. Qingying put down her hands with lingering fear, staring at Claude, with a blank expression on her face and a bright look. Claude shrugged and smiled and said, "The circular boiler is this virtue. It will accumulate a lot of exhaust gas under long-term use. We have never recharged it after we set off from India to add coal. It is a voyage of more than 2,000 nautical miles."

"Fortunately, all the next-class main ships of the Imperial Navy will be equipped with water pipe boilers!" Qingying muttered in his heart and gave Claude a blank look. As the first-class main ship of the German Navy toward the ocean, the Brandenburg class is actually not very successful: although there were three double-mounted 283mm main turrets arranged on the central axis of the hull, the main gun in the middle was only 35 times the diameter, which was shorter than the 40-diameter main gun at the beginning and the tail, and the unified ballistic joint shooting was not considered during the design. Since the main guns in the entire part occupy a large amount of weight and space, the Brandenburg class only had 8 105mm secondary guns and 8 88mm rapid-fire guns, which were still acceptable to deal with torpedo boats and were weak in attacking cruisers.

"No matter what, Brandenburg can definitely be called a first-class war weapon in the Far East!" Claude seemed to see Qingying's complaints, and couldn't help but add, "The two largest iron-clad ships in the Qing Dynasty were built for them 11 years ago by the Volkeng Shipyard. The maximum displacement is only 8,000 tons, the speed is only 15 knots, and the range of 25-diameter short-barrel guns is not far..." His eyes lit up, as if he had seen something, pointed his right halberd behind Qingying and said, "Ye, your highness, you see, it's those two!"

When Qingying heard this, he suddenly rushed to the bow railing. At the corner several miles away, a majestic gray-white giant ship slowly crossed the waves; the black and gold cannon pointed to the sky, shining with a cold light under the morning light. On the mast more than ten meters high, a red and yellow dragon flag danced in the wind, flirting with its two simple and heavy regular characters on the side of the ship, showing the world her unique identity among the Beiyang Navy!

"Dingyuan!"

On the front deck of the Brandenburg battleship, Qingying involuntarily blurted out the name of the Beiyang Navy flagship, not only because this heroic and tragic name has been deeply engraved in my mind, but also because he finally saw the real thing in this time and space! At a distance of 1,000 meters, large equipment such as main turret, lifeboat, air intake cylinder are clearly visible. If you look closely, you can even identify the figures walking on the ship. In the Dadonggou naval battle in history, this warship suffered a large amount of damage from shells; the reason why the Beiyang Navy did not collapse under the rapid-fire cannon guns of the Japanese fleet was entirely due to the extremely high combat qualities shown by the officers and soldiers of the Beiyang Navy, Dingyuan's 305mm giant cannon hit Japanese ships many times. If it weren't for the flowering bullets of low-quality, at least 3 Japanese warships could be left!

After Dingyuan, another iron-clad ship with almost the same appearance as it came to welcome him. Compared with Dingyuan, it lacked a little strange command flag and had a little more agility. Since it was launched one year later than Dingyuan, Zhenyuan used more advanced power, and its maximum speed during trial sailing reached 15.4 knots, which was a full knot faster than Dingyuan. Although Zhenyuan's performance was better, for political reasons, Dingyuan was still the general flagship of the Beiyang Fleet.

Colonel Claude obviously knew these two giant pillars of the Mi Qing Navy. He nodded with satisfaction and said, "The Qing people were still polite and did not just treat me the German Empire casually. I passed my order, and the speed was reduced to 5 knots, and the cannon was fired, and the banner was raised!"

With the order from Captain Claude, the battleship Brandenburg began to slow down slowly, and the splash of water on the bow finally showed signs of decrease. The cabin door opened and closed, rubbed harshly, and several small-caliber copper cannons were pushed onto the deck and were tightly locked in a long-established place. Looking at the land of the motherland, Qingying couldn't help but spread his arms and whispered in a somewhat awkward Chinese: "Let me change the history of Dadonggou!"

"Bang!" A salute shell rose into the sea, splashing a wave of several feet high. Looking down from a high altitude, three iron-armored warships of the same clan and common origins slowly approached at a speed that was visible, and soon they were approaching in front of them. The ships were connected, cheering loudly. The sailors of the two countries looked at each other curiously with the railings. Occasionally, they found strange things, which would cause a burst of smiles.

Compared with the image on TV, the physical objects of the Dingzhen Second Ship were obviously thicker and more grand. However, Qingying had been riding on the more powerful Brandenburg for nearly three months and was already immune to large ships. These two 7,000-ton ironclad ships did not give him a shock. When the second ship was just completed, they were almost the world's first-class war weapons at that time. However, as time passed, they had already slipped from the position of the main ironclad ship and could only play their remaining energy in the naval battles of second-rate naval countries. If they fought with the latest British monarch-class battleships, it would probably be difficult to last an hour.

Qingying stretched out her index finger and poked Claude's waist. The Navy Colonel turned around in confusion and said, "Is there anything wrong with your highness?"

Qingying thrust at the Dingyuan, which was dozens of feet away, and said, "These two mites of the Central Milk-Qing Central Fortress were built by the German Shipyard?"

"Of course!" Claude nodded, and a hint of pride appeared in his eyes. "From 305mm main gun to 5mm rivets, all of which are the crystallization of the sweat of German workers! In order to get this order, Volkeng Shipyard spent a lot of money. The price of a single ship was only 370,000 pounds, less than 1.5 times the normal price of a dome cruiser!"

Regarding the Volkeng Shipyard rather than making money, it would rather get orders from the Qing court to learn shipbuilding technology and open up the history of the German warships' external sales market. Qing Ying also learned about the online forums of later generations, and there was no need to listen to people of this era talked about it again. He raised his right hand and pointed his index finger straight at the huge main turret on the side of the Dingyuan, and said, "As early as 1882, the German Navy entered the club of 305mm main guns. Why did the Brandenburg-class, which started construction in 1890, have a caliber of only 283mm?"

Claude looked at him with a little surprised, as if he didn't understand why a child who had just turned 11 years old had some knowledge of the history of the change of the naval main gun; while surprised, he immediately looked at the very eye in front of him. He explained: "To be honest, the 305mm naval gun produced by Krupp was not as good as expected. The thick gun wall and slow fire rate were indelible. The muzzle kinetic energy of our 40x 283mm new gun is twice that of their 305mm 25x old guns, and the armor-piercing ability is at least four or five levels higher. As for the power, although our 283mm gun is important and light, it contains more explosives, so the power of the explosion is also our advantage!" After speaking, he was afraid that Qingying would not understand these naval terms, so Cloud made a few simple metaphors.

"In other words, these two central turrets are test items of Volkeng Shipyard and Krupp's military industry?" Qingying couldn't help but widen his eyes.

"From a certain perspective, Your Highness's statement is not wrong." The Navy Colonel replied to his serious expression again, and turned around, his eyes like a knife; wherever he looked, the sailors who stopped working and secretly looked at the bow were immediately frightened and stumbled and stumbled. He could only hear a dense sound of footsteps passing by on the deck, and disappeared without a trace in less than 10 seconds. Claude snorted and continued: "But it was proved that the performance of these two test ships was very good. If the Iron-blooded Prime Minister at that time had not intended to limit the size of the navy, Germany might have purchased two."

Qingying nodded without asking any more questions. He lay quietly on the railing, staring at Dingyuan, his eyes calm, as if he wanted to engrave the appearance of this warship carrying the glory and sadness of China in his heart forever.
Chapter completed!