Lin Shuo hurried back to Shanghai from Tianjin because the Beiyang Navy's largest cruiser "Haitian" ran aground on the rocks off Dingxing Island in the sea off Shengsi. The Beiyang Navy admiral in Shanghai telegraphed that Yuan Shikai had contacted the foreign merchant Yesong Shipyard.
He and Lin Shuo's Hudong Shipyard helped with the rescue, so Yuan Shikai ordered Lin Shuo to return to Shanghai quickly to assist the Beiyang Navy commander Sa Zhenbing in organizing the rescue.
After he arrived in Shanghai, he immediately organized more than 20 technicians, led by Chen Changling, the shipbuilding director of the shipyard, to rush to Dingxing Island on the shipyard's tugboat.
It turned out that because of the Russo-Japanese War, in late April, the imperial court ordered the cruiser "Haitian" stationed in Yantai to go to Jiangyin to transport arms to meet the needs of "neutrality" in western Liaoning. The "Haitian" set sail under the command of the commander Liu Guanxiong.
After crossing the Shandong Peninsula and entering the Yellow Sea, we encountered heavy fog. Perhaps because of an emergency, Liu Guanxiong urged the "Haitian" to drive quickly in the thick fog at a speed of more than 20 knots.
Due to the heavy fog on the sea, the "Haitian" could not determine the position of the warship with reference to the coast and the star map in the sky. It could only calculate the approximate position of the warship based on its speed. Due to deviations in the calculation of the warship's position, the "Haitian" crossed
After entering the Nankou Channel of the Yangtze River, it entered the Shengsi waters with dense reefs. At about 5:30 in the morning, with a loud noise and a violent vibration, the high-speed "Haitian" hit the buoy 21.5 miles south-southeast of the buoy.
On the rocks outside Dingxing Island.
"Haitian" is the same as other protected cruisers. The bottom part of the ship below the waterline has no more protective facilities except the double hull. Due to the high speed, half of the warship has already ridden on the reef, and the hull and the reef are
The violent collisions and scrapes coupled with the weight of the warship were obviously unbearable by the double hull. Sea water quickly poured into the ship through the breach in the hull, and the damage control measures were not effective. By that day
At night, except for the bow of the ship, which rested high on the rocks and emerged from the water, the rest of the ship's hull had sunk into water at a depth of about 11 tons.
Shortly after the defeat in the Sino-Japanese War, the Qing government decided to rebuild the Beiyang Fleet. As part of the reconstruction plan, under the auspices of Beiyang Minister Wang Wenshao, it ordered two steel-armored cruisers from the British Armstrong Shipyard in 1896, named "Haitian" and "Haitian" respectively.
"Haiti" and "Haiti" were officially named "Haiqi" after they were completed. "Haitian" and "Haiqi" are the same type of ship, with a length of 129 meters, a width of 14.2 meters, a draft of 6.1 meters, and a standard displacement of 4300
tons, with a power of 17,000 horsepower and a maximum design speed of 24 knots. The warship is equipped with 2 Armstrong 200 mm main guns, 10 143 mm secondary guns, 12 47 mm guns, 4 37 mm guns, and 6 7 mm Maxim machine guns
It has 5 torpedo tubes, 445 officers and men on board, and the cost of each ship is 328,242 pounds.
When the "Haitian" ship returned to China, the incident of Italy forcibly leasing my country's Sanmen Bay occurred.
In 1897, the British, French, German and Russian powers set off a frenzy to carve up China. Excellent coastal ports such as Weihai, Jiaozhou Bay and Luda were forcibly leased by them. In 1899, Italy also sent 6 warships to China.
Submitted an ultimatum to the Qing government, demanding the forcible lease of Sanmen Bay. The Qing government did not know the details and was very nervous, so it sought the opinion of the navy. Ye Zugui, commander of the Beiyang Navy, advised the court: "Italian warships come from the ocean, and they work hard and I can rest.
The situation is favorable to us. And now the navy has five "Hai Tian" class and "Hai Rong" class cruisers, which can definitely fight against Italian ships." The Qing government felt confident and flatly rejected Italy's ultimatum. Italy was originally
He was bluffing, and after seeing China's tough attitude and not willing to go to war, he knew that intimidation was ineffective, so he had to give up.
This was the only impressive performance of the Qing Navy.
In 1901, the Eight-Power Allied Forces forced the Qing government to sign the "Xin Chou Treaty" with the great powers. Subsequently, some ministers proposed that in order to show China's "peace sincerity" and ensure that it would never engage in war in the future, the navy should be abolished, and the "Haitian" and "Hai Tian" should be abolished.
The two ships "Haiqi" and the three 2950-ton cruisers "Haichou", "Hairong" and "Haichen" purchased from Germany were returned to Britain and Germany respectively, in order to offset the Gengzi indemnity. The Qing government
intend to agree with this assertion.
After naval generals such as Ye Zugui and Sa Zhenbing learned the news, they argued hard and the Qing government finally agreed to retain the "Haitian" and other five ships.
After the incident, Yuan Shikai, Governor of Zhili and Minister of Beiyang, urgently ordered the naval admiral Sa Zhenbing in Shanghai to rush to the site of the accident overnight to direct the rescue and investigate the cause of the accident. After Sa Zhenbing arrived, he organized the rescue and quickly reported to Yuan Shikai
Details of the accident.
After the "Haitian" ship ran aground, except for three sailors who fell into the water and disappeared, more than 400 officers and soldiers on the ship were rescued. 348 of them were sent to Wusong shore by China Merchants Steamship, and 60 people were left on the ship, commanded by Liu Guanxiong, to guard the machines and dismantle them.
At the gun position, Sa Zhenbing borrowed six high-power water pumps from the Yesong Shipyard and the Hudong Shipyard to drain the water, hoping to reduce the weight of the warship and make it float. Unfortunately, the crack in the "Haitian" was too large, and seawater was pumped and poured, with no effect.
When Lin Shuo and others arrived, Sa Zhenbing was already on the "Haitian". He saw half of the "Haitian" riding on a rock, the bow of the ship raised high, pointing to the blue sky, and then half of the ship's hull.
But it sank into the water. The remaining sailors fixed the warship to Dingxing Island with ropes and chains to prevent the ship from sinking, but the actual effect was not great.
The group landed on Dingxing Island, and then followed the rope ladder to the "Haitian".
After seeing the ice in Sa Zhen, the shipyard chief engineer Chen Changling led the shipyard technicians and went down to the cabin with Chen Zhaoqiang, the deputy manager of the "Haitian", to inspect the damage to the hull. Lin Shuo, a layman, went up to the control tower to accompany him, looking depressed and heartbroken.
Liu Guanxiong, who was as desperate as ever, said words of comfort from time to time.
He was really a little afraid that Liu Guanxiong would suddenly think of committing suicide by jumping into the sea.
Sa Zhenbing asked the remaining personnel on the ship the details of the accident in the captain's room.
About an hour later, Chen Changling and others returned from the cabin to the deck, and Lin Shuo and Liu Guanxiong walked over.
"How is it?" Lin Shuo asked.
"The damage to the hull is so serious that it is basically impossible to salvage it as a whole without borrowing external force. We have just discussed it and try our best to dismantle the weapons, machines, boilers, etc. first and rescue them. The hull is seriously damaged. Even if it can be salvaged, it will not be able to salvage it from the water."
The cost of re-dock repairing is also very high, and it is no longer cost-effective." Chen Changling said that he was once ordered to participate in the supervision of the construction of two "Haitian" class ships in the United Kingdom, and he was very clear about the structure of the ship.
Lin Shuo nodded. How to rescue him would ultimately be decided by the court, so he went with a few others to find Sa Zhenbing, who would then work out a detailed plan and report it to Yuan Shikai.
As soon as I arrived at the door of the captain's room along the gangway, I heard a "pop" inside, and then Sa Zhenbing shouted loudly inside: "Don't you have any responsibility? Bastard Liu Guanxiong, you are also following the bastard, it's such a heavy fog,
What did you learn there to drive the ship at a speed of more than ten knots? As the first mate, you have no responsibility to remind Liu Guanxiong? Get lost, I won't say anything nice to excuse you!" Sa Zhenbing was obviously very angry, and then he saw
"Haitian" gang leader Liu Chuanshou exited from inside with his head lowered, with a bright red palm print on his face.
Several people looked at each other, not expecting that the gentle-looking Sa Zhenbing would get so angry. After waiting for a while, they walked in together.
Lin Shuo took the lead in reporting the damage to the warship to Sa Zhenbing. He was silent for a long time, and finally sighed: "It is a pity to abandon this huge warship. Let's try our best to find a solution."
He glared hard at Liu Guanxiong, who was bowing his head and saying nothing.
Back in Shanghai, Sa Zhenbing sent a telegram to Yuan Shikai to report the damage to the warships. Yuan Shikai quickly responded with a telegram: "The existence of warships is of great importance to all countries, but they can try to find ways, but if they fail to do anything, their troops will be trapped and unable to do anything."
We are not trying our best to rescue. Now we are trying to fish them up. Not only do we hope to find something, but also everyone from all over the world knows that we do not treat warships as insignificant things and throw them without much care. Their reputation in China is also
It has something to do with it." Yuan Shikai had more political considerations and demanded that the "Haitian" be salvaged and repaired as much as possible, without considering whether the cost was economical.
The technicians at the shipyard have little experience in salvage. On the contrary, Lin Shuo, a layman, has rich knowledge in salvaging sunken ships because he studied underwater archeology in his previous life. However, the level of technology a hundred years later cannot be used today. He can only
Able to think hard about simple and easy solutions in his mind.
In the end, Lin Shuo decided to use the float salvage method, which is the simplest and most convenient construction method.
But where can such floats be produced now?
Just outside the window, on the pier, an American cargo ship was unloading kerosene from above. Lin Shuo's eyes lit up and he immediately found Chen Changling and expressed his thoughts.
Chen Changling lowered his head and calculated for a long time. The method mentioned by Lin Shuo was to fill the empty kerosene barrels with seawater and sink them to the bottom of the water. Then, they would use steel cables and chains to fix the barrels to the hull of the ship underwater.
, and then use an air compressor to drain the water in the barrel, so that the buoyancy of the empty barrel can be used to float the warship on the water.
The method is feasible, but the question is how much buoyancy does the warship need now, and how many oil barrels are needed?
Chen Changling estimated that the warship's water intake was about 700 tons. To make the warship float on the water, it would require about 1,200 tons of additional buoyancy. Each oil barrel can have about 150 kilograms of buoyancy, which would require 8,000.
The empty oil drums above. He picked up the paper and carefully calculated the arrangement of these oil drums. If they were too large, they would lose their practical value.
After more than half an hour, he raised his head and said, "You can give it a try, although it is somewhat difficult to operate."
Lin Shuo smiled and said: "Don't be so serious. Anyway, it's best to fish out a dead horse. If it doesn't work, it's just to spend more effort, or to find a way to sell the collected old barrels. Maybe then
The price of the used oil barrels we collected has also increased.”
Chen Changling's expression suddenly became more relaxed, and then he organized his staff to start designing a salvage plan, and finally decided to weld some brackets to fix the oil barrels first, and then use iron chains to connect the brackets.
Sa Zhenbing agreed to implement the salvage plan proposed by Lin Shuo. Of course, the warship has already removed as much things as possible in advance to reduce the weight of the ship.
The preliminary production and preparation took more than a month, and then the underwater construction began. Due to the lack of diving equipment, the construction progress was not going smoothly. By mid-July, all the more than 8,000 simple pontoons were completed.
Only then the installation and fixation is completed.
Lin Shuo mobilized more than a dozen air compressors to start draining water at the same time, but there was no response from the warship in the first two days. On the morning of the third day, when everyone felt a little discouraged, a sailor suddenly pointed at the back of the warship.
The Ministry said: "Look, look, the warship has moved!"
Everyone immediately became excited and looked at the place pointed by the sailor. Sure enough, it turned out that the old water mark was about two or three centimeters away from the water surface. Everyone's confidence rose again.
Sa Zhenbing simply used a telescope not far away to keep staring at the changes in the ship's hull and the water surface, and gradually a smile appeared on his face.
On the fifth day, the submerged rear deck of the "Haitian" finally surfaced, and the hull began to be towed backwards away from the reef little by little under the tugboats. It was not until seven days later that the "Haitian" finally
With the support of nearly 10,000 simple pontoons, it floated on the sea surface again.
Pulled by four tugboats, the "Haitian" was slowly towed to Shanghai. More than ten hours later, the dilapidated warship was finally dragged to the 8,000-ton No. 2 dock of the Hudong Shipyard.
It was finally towed into the dock under the towing of its own tractor and bridge crane.
Two days later, the water in the No. 2 dock was drained and preparations were made to start the maintenance of the "Haitian".
Sa Zhenbing had just a smile on his face, but Chen Changling came out from the bottom of the boat and said to him seriously: "The main keel of the warship has been somewhat deformed. Even if it is repaired, it can only move offshore and cannot be used for combat!" I saw Lao Sa.
His expression immediately became like that of a rich man who had confiscated his rent.
Lin Shuo's mood was as if a ladle of cold water had been poured on him, and he suddenly became "cold and cool". Unexpectedly, after struggling for a long time, he found a pile of scrap metal.