The Jinghua Beiyang Fleet "Dengzhou" is a first-class cruiser built by Jinghua Northern Shipyard. This class of battleship has a large body of 2,400 tons (1,200 tons of displacement) and is a standard two-deck gun battleship.
The entire ship is equipped with 52 artillery pieces of various types. Among them, the two main guns located at the bow and stern were the largest No. 1 heavy guns in Jinghua at that time. There are also 14 No. 2 heavy guns and 36 No. 3 medium guns. The total ship capacity is 346
In this expedition, the four cruisers and two high-speed reconnaissance ships are the only warships in the entire fleet that do not carry marine division troops.
Since the number one ship of this class of battleships is the "Laizhou" assigned to the Nanyang Fleet, Jinghua internally calls the same class of battleships "Laizhou-class cruisers".
Specifically, among the Beiyang Fleet, the two "Laizhou-class" first-class cruisers "Dengzhou" and "Jinzhou" are the most powerful battleships after the flagship "Liu Rengui", which is a third-class battleship.
Gao Zhenxin used two Laizhou-class cruisers, which can be regarded as the absolute main force, to provoke the Spanish treasure ship fleet. In terms of the tonnage of both parties, there is still a certain risk, because the Spanish fleet's large treasure ship tonnage is not as large as the two Laizhou ships.
Class cruiser small.
However, Gao Zhenxin is very confident in the strength of these two warships. This class of warships is built using what Gao Pingshi calls the "combination of Chinese and Western" design concepts. It is a typical three-masted warship. The so-called three-masted warship is a three-masted warship.
, foremast, mainmast and tailmast. The foremast and mainmast carry square sails, and the tailmast carries a diagonal sail.
A square sail is a simple and ancient sailing rig. The sail is tied to a beam and then suspended from the mast at its center. It is rectangular in shape. In addition, although the beam can rotate greatly around the mast, it still only has the same side.
By the wind.
The jib is the prototype of the longitudinal sail that later appeared. A long girder is hung diagonally from the masthead. The upper end is much higher than the masthead and the lower end is close to the deck. This allows the two sides of the sail tied to it to receive the wind.
The biggest advantage of this design is that it is both fast and flexible; the horizontal sail is easy to manufacture and has a large wind-receiving area, while the diagonal spinnaker helps adapt to the wind direction. It is no longer necessary to wait for the most suitable breeze to appear before sailing.
, increasing the flexibility of the ship.
The expansion of the sail area means that the hull size can be increased, the speed is increased, and the loading capacity is increased. The range and performance of the ship have increased sharply after the emergence of this sail type (this design has already appeared in Europe).
But if the Laizhou class only did this, Gao Zhenxin would not be so confident. In fact, the full sails used by the Europeans at this time were soft sails, while Jinghua always used Chinese hard sails.
The advantage of the soft sail is that it takes a lot of 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 is part of another part of the same mast and can be larger
Adjusting the sail to a greater extent will help avoid rocks and rocks. In addition, because the soft sail can be fully retracted, it is relatively safe when facing a storm.
However, soft sails also have many shortcomings, 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 results in 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, etc.
In some later sailing or naval battle films from the sailing era, the reason why there are so many crew members on Western ships is mainly because more than 80% of them are purely for navigation rather than fighting. Therefore, the manning has to be increased to avoid encounters that require fighting.
At that time, there were not enough combat personnel.
The main advantage of Chinese-style hard sails is that they are highly efficient in receiving wind. They can rotate around the mast, so they can achieve the so-called "eight sides of the wind" and are highly flexible and adaptable.
Another point that is often overlooked or misunderstood is that hard sails are actually lighter than soft sails, and because they have supporting ribs, the quality requirements for the sail surface itself are very low.
In actual sailing, it doesn't matter even if there are many holes. The ship can still move. It is not like a soft sail, which is often severely damaged because a hole is torn by the wind. It must be replaced quickly to keep moving.
.
From such a comparison, we can see that for sails with the same weight and the same area, hard sails have greater advantages and are much lower cost. However, 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 a large sail and a high mast also brings troubles such as the mast being easily broken. Therefore, the mast of a Western-style sailboat has reinforced cables to stabilize the mast. However, this makes it impossible for the sail to rotate around the mast, so the Western-style square sail is on the side.
The efficiency under the wind was very low, so they used a sail to solve this problem.
In fact, Western-style sailboats later developed wing sails, which further accelerated the speed, but this thing has not yet appeared, so Gao Pragmatic ignores it for the time being.
Generally speaking, in history, the total sail area of Western sailing ships has defeated 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 a battleship
Area can exceed 10 acres.
Gao pragmatically remembers that the average speed of the last winner of the sailing blue ribbon could reach about 16 knots, and the coal-burning steam warships during World War I were only at this level.
Before Jinghua, Chinese sailing ships still had problems with gun positions and defense. However, the cause of these two problems was the same reason, which was the watertight cabin design that many Chinese people were proud of in later generations.
The problem is actually this: If the entire ship does not have a watertight compartment, you only need an opening to hoist the cargo into the cabin, and then move the position of the cargo to fill the cabin.
But if there is a watertight tank, you need to open an opening in each tank to fill the entire ship, so you will have several openings on the deck, as well as the main deck below, and still below, so you will
Quite a few artillery positions were lost.
Because Chinese sailing ships have partitions to support the structure, they either do not use ribs or use very few ribs when building them. Western sailing ships, on the other hand, do not have partitions to support the structure, so they use a lot of ribs, especially warships.
Almost one after another.
These ribs provide a very good defensive effect. For example, the solid shells of the 18-pound naval guns of the Napoleonic era cannot even cause decisive damage to the 46-inch-thick ribs at a distance of 300 yards, and cannot penetrate even when fired at close range.
You must know that at that time, every British battleship had a rib on the left and right sides of its gun emplacement. Therefore, the proportion of warships sunk in real naval battles was very small, and most of them were captured.
After the Revolutionary War, the United States took advantage of the rich and high-quality timber resources in the North American continent to carefully build a number of oak battleships. These battleships played an important role in the subsequent war with Britain in its attempt to retake the North American colonies.
In the naval battles of this war, the artillery shells fired by British warships at medium and long distances were often bounced off the hulls of US warships, making it impossible for the British Royal Navy's proud artillery technology to take advantage. The British crew exclaimed, "
"Iron Ship".
The U.S. warships relied on their strong hulls and a large number of short and heavy guns to engage in short-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. military and suffered heavy casualties, thus allowing 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 troops from Canada and even lost the capital Washington. As a result, the British burned down the Presidential Palace. Fortunately, the Presidential Palace is a stone building, but it was
It burned so black that the Americans had no choice but to paint the presidential palace white... This is the origin of the White House in the United States.]
Since Chinese sailing ships use less ribs, they are relatively easy to be penetrated, and the damage caused by the shells will be much greater than that of Western sailing ships. [Note: The Japanese ships were even worse. They once used 8 main ships to besiege a Dutch merchant ship and were destroyed.
All cases of sinking.]
At the same time, the enhancement of the hull structure of Western-style ships also helps to equip a large number of artillery on the ship without having to worry about being shaken apart by the recoil of intensively fired artillery.
The hull structure of the original Chinese-style ships could not withstand such force. This is the reason why Chinese ships in the original history could only be equipped with no more than 30 artillery pieces at most - it was not that they were unwilling, but they simply could not.
Therefore, if we look at the original historical situation, the Chinese sailing ship is an excellent commercial ship type. Due to the use of hard sails, it is easy to operate, and the number of sailors required is much less than that of Western sailing ships with soft sails. Under complex sea conditions
It is also more flexible. And due to the use of bulkhead design, its sinking resistance and cost are also better than that of a Western sailboat.
However, due to speed, gun position and defense reasons, this Chinese-style sailing ship is not suitable for use as a warship in the era of hot weapons, especially in the era when solid bullets are the main weapon.
There is a question here: since a Chinese-style sailing ship cannot carry more than 30 guns, how do you explain the 52 cannons equipped by the Laizhou-class cruiser? And the "Liu Rengui", a third-class battleship, is equipped with 72 cannons, isn't it?
No way to explain it?
There is nothing that cannot be explained. In one sentence: the hull of the Jinghua battleship actually adopts a Western-style design with compact ribs. Although the water-tight compartment design is retained, the number of water-tight compartments is much smaller than that of the original Chinese sailboat. Each compartment is
The water tanks are all made larger.
In other words, Jinghua actually uses the reduction of sinking resistance under normal circumstances in exchange for the improvement of sinking resistance in combat. However, one thing that needs to be emphasized is that only warship-class ships of Jinghua do this, and the armed transport ships do not.
Build according to this idea.
This also explains why the cost of a 1,600-material armed transport ship is only 55,000 taels of silver, while the cost of a 2,400-material Laizhou-class cruiser is as high as 160,000 taels of silver. As mentioned before, the cost of such a compact hull is very high.
A Western-style hull plus a weakened Chinese-style watertight compartment, a Western-style full sail design plus an improved Chinese-style hard sail (the improvement method seems to have been written before, so I won't repeat it here). This is what Gao Pragmatic calls "Chinese and Western".
This design not only greatly improves the combat anti-sinkability of Chinese sailing ships, but also greatly increases the number of guns that can be equipped - with the same hull size, European warships at this time can carry about 60-70 guns, while the Laizhou-class cruiser is still
It is lower than this number, but also loaded with 52 doors.
Relying on the high pragmatic design ideas and the small plug-ins of Jinghua's gun manufacturing level, these 52 guns should not be weaker than the gun combat capabilities of European warships of the same size at this time.
If there is any disadvantage between the Laizhou class and the Spanish treasure ship (the two are about the same size), it is probably that the speed when the sails are full and the wind is strong is not as good as the other. As for the Laizhou class in headwinds, light winds and other sea conditions, the Laizhou class
On the contrary, it has advantages.
The navigators temporarily assigned to the expedition fleet by the Nanyang Fleet in Quanzhou were not given for 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 considered what to do if it was really windy - well, there is no other way. If it doesn't work, just run against the wind. But in this way, the plan of luring the enemy to encircle and annihilate is finished, because
This is the season when the south wind blows (mostly southeast wind). If the "Dengzhou" and the others escape against the wind, they will have no choice but to run towards Manila, in the opposite direction to the ambush location.
A very important reason why the "Dengzhou" was selected as the command ship of the enemy formation is that the captain of the ship has experience in this field.
This captain is an "old acquaintance" named Takagi San. Before he became the captain of the cruiser "Tengzhou", he was the captain of the Nanyang Fleet armed transport ship "Trichogramma".
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 cruiser captain [Note: See Chapter 246 of the Guangxi Volume: The Battle of the Forward]. And because there are rotation positions within Jinghua
According to the system requirements, he was transferred from the Nanyang Fleet to the Beiyang Fleet. This time the five main battleships of the Beiyang Fleet came out in full force, and of course he went to fight with them.
This chapter is not over yet, please click on the next page to continue reading! Standing in the captain's cabin, Takagi San is listening to the first mate's report on the inspection just now, including whether the rigging is clean (the maritime environment determines that they are easy to get mossed and slippery), the sails
Whether the surface is intact and tough, whether the gunpowder in the gunpowder compartment is damp, whether the shells in the cannonball compartment are rusty, etc.
At this time, the lookout on the watchtower suddenly shouted something and reported something. The first mate saluted Takagi with three fists and hurriedly ran out to learn more.
When he came in again, he immediately reported to Takagi Sanhui: "Captain, the signal signal of the left wing Hussars is reporting: The Spanish fleet discovered their following and accompanying ships, but did not make any reaction and continued to sail towards Manila."
Takagi San frowned slightly and said sarcastically: "Why did the Spaniards lose their spirit this time? Wasn't it the same as the tiger's butt that couldn't be touched last time?" After a pause, he said again: "Does the left-wing light cavalry have any plans or requests?
?”
The first mate said: "Yes, they suggest getting closer, opening the gun doors, and getting ready for battle. If the Spaniards are still indifferent, they can simply order the Spaniards to stop the ship and wait for inspection."
Takagi San 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 ordered the killing of this sea mosquito on the spot."
It's a pity that the first mate of the "Dengzhou" seemed to be a very serious person. He didn't follow the joke. Instead, he asked seriously: "Captain, do you approve their plan?"
Takagi San thought for a moment and immediately said decisively: "Why not approve it? Approve it and let them execute it immediately. But once the Spaniards really turn around and attack him, just let them fire a few long-range artillery shells for a while, but they must fight and retreat."
, the main thing is to retreat, we can’t really fight with the Spaniards here.”
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