The steamship fleet that the Portuguese saw was the test fleet of the Tang Imperial Navy, which was undergoing ocean trials, and they set off from Hong Kong, passed through the Dayuan Strait, and after docking at Dayuan Island, they sailed towards Shanghai.

According to the original plan, they will continue to sail north after resupplying and simple refurbishment at the Wusong Port Naval Base, and will return south again after reaching the port of Busan.

This time the test voyage, so far did not have much trouble, at most the steam engine occasional failure, but this is also inevitable, these test ships loaded with steam engines, are the first batch of trial production of steam units, early products will naturally have this or that problem, plus this time they are on a long-distance ocean voyage.

Although they were all in the coastal waters of the empire, they were not renovated in the middle of the way, and in the entire sailing plan, they would only be simply renovated twice at the Wusonggang Naval Base.

After all, this navigation test was originally to test the stability of the steam unit in long-distance voyages and complex sea conditions in the ocean.

Although there were a lot of steam engine failures on the road, there were many engineers in the fleet, and they were barely able to carry out simple repairs while sailing, and at the same time, many problems were recorded and improved in the subsequent development and production of steam engines.

After the Portuguese watched the fleet emit black smoke all the way and then went straight to the Wusonggang Naval Base, many people were amazed and panicked.

In recent years, the Portuguese in the South China Sea and the Bay of Bengal in the Indian Ocean have been facing great pressure from the Tang Empire, but if the previous pressure, the Portuguese can still withstand it, then after this kind of steam ship is born, how can they resist?

Even an ordinary sailor can instantly imagine an extremely terrifying scene in his mind when he sees such a ship that can sail without relying on sails.

That is, the opponent can ignore the direction of the wind, and then seize the T-shaped head at will, and attack the enemy's bow with a large number of side guns!

In this way, the traditional sail warship will be completely left behind almost instantly.

Not to mention, the Tang Empire's navy originally had a big killing weapon, that is, howitzer shells!

This kind of howitzer shell can be extremely lethal to a wooden battleship, a shell down, directly exploded on the ship, causing casualties, broken masts, sails burned, and even this kind of explosion, will cause huge damage to the hull itself.

In the past, although the Portuguese felt that the grenades of the Datang Navy were already difficult to deal with, it was not impossible, because of the limited accuracy of the shelling, even if the Datang Navy used grenades, it had to be close to a distance of about 300 meters to obtain a large hit rate, and at this distance, the solid bullets, grape bullets, chain bullets and other bullets fired by the smoothbore gun were not weak.

Therefore, although the grenade is very useful for naval warfare in this era, it has not yet reached the point of one-sidedness.

However, today's steam warships, which are free from the dependence on the direction of the wind, will play a greater role than a simple grenade.

Could it be that the kingdom is really unable to protect its interests in the South Seas region, and will eventually be forced to withdraw from this sea area?

A possibility began to emerge in the minds of many Portuguese, that is, once the two sides went to war, the steam warships of the Tang Empire could easily use steam engines and grenades to slaughter their sail warships. Under such circumstances, how could the Portuguese still be able to keep Malacca and safeguard their interests in the South Seas?

The pessimism instantly enveloped the hearts of many Portuguese.

As for building a steam engine themselves, or buying a steam engine, they didn't think about it at all, because they knew it was impossible.

The purchase of steam engines, this kind of thing is basically not expected, the Tang Empire has always been very strict with all kinds of machinery and equipment, especially steam engines, and it is strictly forbidden to export, not to mention, and it will not be shipped to overseas territories and colonies.

On the Banten side, they had long wanted to get some machinery and equipment for the port to improve the efficiency of the port, but the imperial officials directly rejected the application of Banten.

And pure exports, not to mention steam engines or something, don't count on even a screw.

As for making your own, it's harder than buying!

Because if you buy it, although the Tang Empire officially strictly prohibits the export of steam engines, it does not mean that there are no purchase channels, after all, there is still such a group of smugglers in this world.

Some guys who want money and don't want to die dare to secretly ship these machinery and equipment out, and then make huge profits.

Although the Tang Empire cracked down on smuggling very severely, it was still impossible to completely block such a long border and coastline, which would always allow some smugglers to find loopholes.

Over the years, the Portuguese have secretly purchased many sets of steam engines from the Tang Empire for production through smuggling.

They also tried to prevent these steam engines, after all, the principle of the steam engine is actually very simple, but once you know the principle, you have the real thing on hand, but it is impossible to imitate it.

Because the production of this thing has too high requirements for machinery and equipment, and too high requirements for raw materials.

Even if the Portuguese used highly skilled craftsmen to create parts one by one by hand and then assemble them, in practice they could not operate reliably.

Why?

The material is not good!

Many parts in the steam engine are not ordinary pig iron, wrought iron, but steel, more precisely, alloy steel, and the requirements for machining accuracy are very high.

In fact, not only the steam engine, but also many of the machinery and equipment used in the Tang Empire, in fact, many key parts and components are made of special materials.

The shape can be prevented, but the material they can't do anything.

This is also the reason why the Tang Empire has been industrialized for so many years, but the technology leakage is basically equal to zero.

To put it bluntly, the Tang Empire is not afraid of those natives imitating at all!

Without a large and mature industrial system, it is almost impossible to imitate the various industrial products of the Tang Empire, let alone the top industrial products such as the steam engine.

What the Portuguese think, the Empire naturally does not think about it, the Empire is still implementing many plans at its own pace, and the naval steam fleet trials are still continuing.

In addition to the Yangtze River Shipping Company and Feng's Aerospace Company, other shipping companies have also begun to enter the field of steamships to a greater or lesser extent.

After entering the summer of Xuanping 20 years, several major inland rivers and busy coastal waters in Datang can see the figure of steamships, and there are also many civilian steam ships, after seeing that the navy has completely abandoned the paddle wheel, they also began to follow up, planning to build propeller-propelled civilian steam engine ships.

Especially in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River, which is the busiest shipping industry, that is, the Yangtze River Basin, this section of the river basin has always been a key competition area for several major shipping companies in China.

When the major shipping companies come up with any good ships, they are basically put on the route from Jinling City to Shanghai for operation as soon as possible.

This was the case with the first practical steamship in China, the Lady, and the first Yuanfang, the first to be put into commercial use, but these two pioneering steamships have now been relegated to the second line and are only in normal commercial operation.

And now on the Yangtze River route, it is the Crescent Palace series of passenger ships of the Yangtze River Shipping Company and its competitor, the Fengshi Shipping Company, that are in the limelight.

Since these two companies put the steamship into commercial operation in the spring of the nineteenth year of Xuanping, in order to compete for the throne of the first shipping company in China, in order to build their own corporate brand, these two companies can be said to have broken their heads in the field of steamship.

In front of the Lady and the Yuanfang, several first-generation test ships were quickly converted or built many other steamships, the most eye-catching of which should be the Xinyuegong series of passenger ships of the Yangtze River Shipping Company, which was put into operation one after another this spring.

The Crescent Palace of the Yangtze River Shipping Company is the successor to their company's last passenger flagship, the Yuegong, and the first truly large passenger ship they have built, ready to be used as the flagship of the new generation.

This kind of passenger ferry, needless to say, is luxuriously decorated, which is the biggest selling point of the high-end shipping of the Yangtze River Shipping Company, in addition, they also use sails and power, and use paddle wheel propulsion.

Although the steam unit on the Crescent Palace is not very powerful, it has the characteristics of low vibration and low noise to meet the needs of high-end passenger transportation.

Two of the passenger ships of this Crescent Palace series have been officially put into operation, and as before, the route from Guangzhou to Jinling is carried out!

Its displacement of nearly 1,000 tons, higher sailing speed than sailing ships, luxurious decoration, and smooth ride comfort make the Crescent Palace series of passenger ships continue to be sought after by the powerful, and many people even run a special trip to take this kind of passenger ship.

And Feng's shipping company is not far behind, but their main market is not high-end passenger transport, but high-end commercial passenger transport, under the premise of maintaining a certain degree of comfort, the largest and most sought speed!

For this reason, their Qianchen, with its displacement of only more than 600 tons, but the use of two steam engines in parallel, so that it has a full 400 horsepower, coupled with sail power, enough for the Qiancheng to ride the wind and waves, at a very fast speed between Shanghai, Guangzhou and Jinling, its excellent speed, once launched, is deeply loved by the business personnel who travel between the above three places.

It can be said that by this time, the Yangtze River Shipping Company and Feng's Shipping Company have carried out differentiated competition in the field of passenger ferries, one focuses on luxury and comfort, pays attention to the enjoyment on the road, and the other pursues the ultimate speed, and strives to send passengers to their destinations in the shortest possible time.

And this kind of differentiated competition is also the real way for Feng Shipping Company to gain a foothold in the field of long-distance passenger transportation for the first time!

1 second to remember Aishang:. m.