Outside Kaiyuan City, Li Xingzhou and many lieutenant generals boarded the first ship.

This ship is the prototype ship of Iron Niu, Guan Zhong. Just from the size, it is only half of the ship in the royal palace that laughs, and the water is even smaller.

However, its length is astonishingly comparable to that of the royal ship.

The draft is much shallow and the length has not decreased, which makes the hull of this new ship particularly slender.

This is a design to maximize the firepower advantage. The higher the hull, the more guns can be installed on both sides, and finally a balance point is drawn between firepower and maneuver.

The power is still powered by the pedaling power of the royal ship, retaining sails as an auxiliary, which is the same as before.

The ship has two decks. Because the hull is narrow and long, twelve new guns can be placed on each side of the upper and lower floors. Two floors are twenty. The two sides add up, so a ship can always have forty-eight guns.

If necessary, twenty can be installed on the upper deck to achieve the terrifying sixty-eight cannons!

For the first time, Li Xingzhou felt that there was an extremely fierce beast of steel and gunpowder under his feet.

Many new army generals were also blushing. One gunboat with sixty-eight cannons was also a new type 04 gun. The firepower intensity was terrible just thinking about it.

Li Xingzhou was not that surprised. In the sailing era, some maritime powers had hundreds of cannons.

However, their cannon is incomparable to the new cannon of the Royal Mansion, and it is purely made up for precision and firepower by using quantity.

"Sixty-eight cannons! If you attack the city, there are only two such cannon ships, and within five miles, no city can hold on for a long time!" Shen Lin excitedly stroked the railings of the bow.

"The main thing is shallow draft, small hull, and can walk through the large river waterway. This will be of great use to march towards the Hetao!" Di Zhi was also very surprised.

Yelu Dashi sighed, "Chinese craftsmen are the best in the world, no one can match them."

Guan Zhong and Tie Niu were very proud, and many generals had even begun to discuss how to conquer the Xia Kingdom along the Yellow River waterway.

It can be seen that they are very satisfied with the ship.

Everyone took a new boat to spend a round in the river outside Kaiyuan City, carefully checking the structure of the hull, and the boatmen showed the mobility and operation of the new boat. It was not until the afternoon that everyone disembarked.

I was originally going to see Qiu'er that day, but Zhao Si's plan could only wait until the next day to watch.

Zhao Si, Qiu'er and other groups of ships were parked in the port. In fact, I saw them today, but I couldn't understand them.

Although the generals in the army are not shipbuilders, they still know how to build guns. They are like not able to build guns, but everyone can use guns.

Another new ship docking at the ferry has a strange shape. First of all, it is not as slender as another new ship, which means it can carry fewer artillery.

Secondly, the hull is made of wood, but metal and some iron-edged wooden boards are used in the middle. Logically speaking, shouldn’t the hull be protected on the outer layer? When fighting Liaodong, Di Zhi and others did similar things. In Chenzhou, in order to protect the large ferry ship, iron sheets were nailed outside the wooden boards in important places.

The new ship also has sails, but it is not as tall as before, and it looks a bit bulky overall.

.........

The next day, everyone gathered at the ferry again and prepared to observe the sample ship to experience the second solution.

Everyone gathered at the ferry, led by Li Xingzhou, Zhao Si, Qiuer and other dozen craftsmen.

After approaching the ferry, everyone finally saw the strange ship more clearly.

Apart from what I saw in the distance yesterday, it seems even more strange now. First of all, there is a large water wheel more than three people tall on both sides of its hull, just like two water trucks.

Everyone muttered in their hearts, would they have to turn these two huge water wheels to drive the ship forward? But how can this be driven? Can't it be pulled with a horse?

Then there were large chimneys on both sides of the mast of the ship!

Everyone looked at each other. Even if the crew members had to eat on the boat, they didn't have to be that big. This was a warship.

Before the ship started, the sails were not raised. The boatman said that he would also need a furnace to let everyone visit the structure on the ship first. Everyone was confused. Is there such troubles in driving the ship?

After visiting, the generals were indeed much disappointed with the ship.

Compared to yesterday's ship, the hull is not that long and there is a "striving machine" to be placed in the central section. It sounds like a big guy, running through the upper and lower decks, resulting in the large central area being unable to carry firepower.

In this way, the ship can only carry fourteen cannons on each side, a total of twenty-eight.

The center of the upper deck is protruding due to the chimney and central steam engine structure, and it cannot carry all firepower normally. Therefore, even if it is full, the ship can only carry a total of forty guns.

It's far from the sixty-eight gates of yesterday.

Zhao Si was sweating on his forehead, and he could tell that everyone was disappointed with the ship. However, Zhao Si was obviously a typical scientific and technological man thinking, and explained repeatedly: "Because there is no longer bearings and the transmission distance is limited, it cannot be built longer. However, it can save manpower and last long sailing. With the assistance of sailing, there is no place to go on the sea. This will definitely change the mode of sailing backwards..."

Li Xingzhou shook his head. As a craftsman, Zhao Si explained the difficulties in engineering construction, but these generals cared about the fewer cannons, so they didn't understand the problems in engineering, so it would be strange if they could understand.

Sure enough, the generals were confused and were indifferent. They were afraid that they would like the gunboat yesterday even more. No matter how Zhao Si explained, he did not change the status quo.

Li Xingzhou understood Zhao Si and Qiuer's design very well. Since the steam engine is insufficient, it will be supplemented by sails, and at the same time, it will reduce the size of the boat as much as possible and widen the boat to increase stability.

This design sacrifices load, volume and even partial maneuverability.

So what can you get after so much sacrifice?

The answer is steam power.

After nearly half an hour of preheating, with a call, huge water wheels on both sides slowly rotated with the fog they were sucking, causing the water to slowly leave the port.

At this time, everyone finally discovered the extraordinary thing about the ship.

Although it is smaller than yesterday's boat, fewer cannons than yesterday's boat, and bulkier than yesterday's boat, it neither opens sails nor moves, nor has it sets up oars, and it just moves by itself!

Most of the generals were even more frightened, and they grabbed the railings and hugged the masts and did not dare to let go, and they were full of ugly things.

Qiu'er explained the principle to them, and she didn't understand it carefully, but after listening to it, she could use the example of boiling water to make everyone understand most of it.

As time goes by, the ship is moving faster and faster. After the ferry crosses into the river basin, it makes everyone even more shocked when the river surface is one or two miles wide without the wind or people speeding.

Come back from the shock, everyone started to talk, almost quarrel. Some people still said that yesterday's ship was good. After all, there were twenty-eight more cannons, and the load was more than that. It didn't take half an hour to prepare for preheating before starting the ship.

Some people say that today's ship is good, some people think it's novel, while others think it's long-term.

The biggest reaction was the two senior naval generals, Shen Lin and Di Zhi.

Di Zhi said excitedly: "In the past, it was fine if the large army sailed along the river. Even if they were on the back current, the boatman would be very tired and would have to change people and rest. He would have to go hundreds of miles a day while the back current would have very limited travel every day.

Therefore, since ancient times, soldiers have always been easy to guerrilla upstream and downstream, and it is difficult to attack the upstream and upstream. But if there is such a ship, it will not be a problem!

This time we attack Xia Kingdom, we must go upstream. If we use this ship, the people of Xia Kingdom will never imagine our speed of advancement, nor will we come day and night."

Shen Lin thought further: "It's not just that, sailing in rivers and lakes is mainly manpower and wind power is supplemented.

You can sail to the sea with wind power as the main force and manpower as the auxiliary force.

Therefore, you must have a skilled boatman when traveling. He knows the direction of the wind and the changes in the direction of the envoys. He dare not stay too far away from the land because if you are not careful, you will get lost on the sea and cannot borrow the wind. If you are not familiar with the wind, you can only follow the flow and leave it to fate. You are often trapped on the sea.

Now that there is such a boat, we don’t have to look at God’s face anymore. We rely on the direction of the wind. We can go wherever we want, and we will no longer be afraid of losing our way and trapping the dead sea!”

Chanlin said excitedly: "Your Highness, in my opinion, today's ship is indeed not as many as yesterday's ships, with small ships and few cannons, and few supplies.

But choosing the ship of yesterday is only short-term profit, but not long-term profit. Choosing the ship of today is to pass on this technique and continue to temper it continuously, there will be long-term benefits!"

After hearing them, Li Xingzhou listened to some oppositions, mainly the conservatives in the army, and the opinions were that the attack on Xia should be given priority at the moment. The ship was selected to attack Xia, not to sail for a long voyage, so it was still Guan Zhong, Tienniu and others who were on the safe side.

After the audience finished speaking, Li Xingzhou asked them to go back. Each of them wrote their opinions and reasons and sent them to the Privy Council within three days. They used a voting method to decide which ship would be mass-produced and biography of the new army.
Chapter completed!