Of course, Xiao Tianjian will not forget the Western shipbuilders brought by the missionaries, now for the West, there is no awareness of technical protection, shipbuilders can also move freely, Xiao Tianjian fooled Robert and them, saying that they can provide shipbuilders and skilled sailors with generous salaries, which is undoubtedly quite tempting for these people.

At this time in Europe, it is also rumored that there is an extremely rich country in the East, full of gold, for some restless guys, this is undoubtedly quite tempting, in order to find the wealth of their dreams, many Westerners set foot on the ships to the East, and the various European maritime powers, at this time, have their eyes on the rich land of the East.

It is rich in wonderful teas, gorgeous silks, and fine porcelain, which is too attractive for Europeans.

Now when I heard from a group of missionaries that the king of the great eastern country was willing to hire them with a good salary, there were quite a lot of recruits, and they were all brought back to China by Robert and the others.

Xiao Tianjian offered each of these sailors and shipbuilders from various European countries a price of fifty taels of silver per month as promised, and then took time out of his busy schedule to personally meet with these sailors and craftsmen from Europe.

Through the communication with these craftsmen, Xiao Tianjian learned some knowledge about European sailing ships, and now Chinese have a general name for Western ships, that is, plywood ships, but such a name is not accurate, because this cannot distinguish the various types of Western-style sailing ships, just literally, it is believed that Western-style sailing ships can have two decks, so they are called plywood ships.

But in fact, for the current Europeans, since the Dutch got rid of the Spanish rule, vigorously developed industry and commerce, Dutch merchants came and went to all over the world to do business, quickly amassed huge wealth, and also vigorously developed the shipbuilding industry, so that they have more than 15,000 sea ships, known as the sea coachman.

There are many kinds of ships in Europe, including the early Caravel clipper, and the Clark sailing ship that is now popular on the sea, and the Gallien galleon developed from the Clark sailing ship, as well as the Galen ship that has risen in recent decades, these ships can be used as both cargo and war ships, with a displacement ranging from 100 tons to more than 1,000 tons, constituting the main force of prosperous European maritime transportation.

After Zheng He went to the West during the Yongle period of China, China's shipbuilding industry fell into stagnation and even regression, but the Europeans used this more than 100 years of time, the shipbuilding industry caters to the needs of various European countries, began to develop at a high speed, and developed many types of ships suitable for ocean trade and naval warfare.

The biggest difference between European sailing ships and Chinese sailing ships lies in the hull structure and the application of sails, whether the Chinese sailing ship is a Guangzhou ship or a Fu ship, or a sand boat, the ribs are mostly used to replace the ribs of the ship, and at the same time constitute a watertight compartment, so that the sinking resistance is better, but the hull structure is limited, so that the Chinese sailing ship can not create more than two decks like Western sailing ships.

Although the European sailing ship did not use the watertight compartment technology, but a large number of dense ribs, and at the same time thickened the thickness of the ship's board, although the sinking resistance was affected, but through the dense and thick ribs, the structural strength of the hull was strengthened, forming a long deck in the hull, making the Western-style sailing ship load a larger amount of cargo, and at the same time convenient to place more guns on the ship, and it can also withstand the huge recoil force when the guns fire, which makes the European sailing ships able to cross the sea, often only a few European sailing ships, It can withstand the siege of hundreds of Chinese sailing ships, and it can also be invincible.

Although Zheng Zhilong has ruled the South China Sea for many years, the reason why the Zheng family sailors were able to defeat the Dutch or the Spanish and Portuguese fleets was not to rely on the quality advantage, but to rely on the absolute superiority in quantity, so that they were able to control the South Sea, but even so, the Dutch or the Spanish sailing ships could still travel freely to and from the South Sea.

This time Robert and they traveled to and from Europe, that is, on the sailing ship of the Dutch East India Company, even if the Zheng family was now an enemy of Dazhong, North Korea, they still came directly to Ningbo Mansion to disembark, which also shows that Western sailing ships are more powerful.

In addition, there is a big difference between Chinese and Western sailboats, that is, the application of sails, Chinese sailing ships without exception have adopted hard sails, the advantages of such rigid sails are that the sails are easy to adjust, easy to raise and drop the sails, the sails are easy to use the wind direction, and the efficiency is high, and a lot of manpower can be saved, with fewer crews, you can operate the sails, which can be said to be full of Chinese ingenuity, but this also causes the Chinese sails, which must rely on higher masts, and the sails can not be too wide, so that This affects the use of larger sails, and the high mast will affect the stability of the ship.

Western-style sailing ships are all soft sails, although the use of wind direction is not as convenient as Chinese-style sailing ships, the efficiency is not high, and it is very inconvenient to raise and drop the sails, and it is more dangerous to use a large number of sailors to operate.

However, Western-style sailing ships used spinnakers to solve the problem, and at the same time, they could make the mast higher, and the sail area could also be made larger, so that the Western-style sailing ship could greatly surpass the possibility of Chinese sailing ships in speed.

Coupled with the unique deck structure of Western-style sailing ships, their ships can be loaded with a large number of cannons, and they have extremely strong combat effectiveness, even if they are only armed merchant ships, they are now far more powerful than the Fu ships used by the navy of China, China and North Korea, and the Chinese now have to rely on absolute numerical superiority to win naval battles.

And Xiao Tianjian knows better than anyone that the mode of development of naval warfare in the future, before the invention of the steam engine, Western-style sail warships will rule the sea of the earth for nearly 300 years, and for a long time in the future, the sea will still see whose ships are larger and the number of cannons is more, so if you do not learn Western shipbuilding technology now, then it will not be long before the Chinese will be left far behind.

Of course, because of the emergence of Xiao Tianjian, the future may greatly promote the development of machinery manufacturing, if possible, in Xiao Tianjian's lifetime, it is entirely possible for the Chinese to build a steam engine, so that China can enter the era of steam engines earlier than any country, replacing sail power with steam power, but after all, it will take a long time, in a short time, in order to obtain a usable strong navy, it is necessary to learn Western shipbuilding technology.

Therefore, Xiao Tianjian also attached great importance to these shipbuilders and sailors that Robert collected for him from Europe, and under his will, these Western shipbuilders first made several ship models of various Western-style sailing ships for him, so that Xiao Tianjian more intuitively understood the advantages and disadvantages of these Western-style sailing ships, and at the same time, through the craftsmanship of these European shipbuilders to make ship models, tested whether they were genuine.

Fortunately, these shipbuilders are also screened by missionaries, and most of the craftsmanship is really not bad, but it is obvious that there are also superior and inferior, some craftsmen belong to the design experience, but most of the craftsmen belong to the lower level, limited to individual work, can not independently build the entire ship, so these people were quickly divided into three groups, Xiao Tianjian personally selected three masters who can independently design and supervise the construction of ships as the chief engineer, The rest of the craftsmen were assigned to the three chief engineers and obeyed their orders.

As for the treatment of these craftsmen, Xiao Tianjian not only gave the three chief engineers a very satisfactory salary, but also gave them a very generous salary for the rest of the craftsmen who belonged to them, and also arranged for them to work in China in the future, which made these European shipbuilders who were fooled by the missionaries into trying to pan for gold in the giant country of the East very satisfied.

However, shipbuilding is a systematic project, not only as long as there are timber and shipbuilding craftsmen, you can build a good ship, but also need a variety of supporting industries to support it, such as shipbuilding is indispensable to need a variety of steel products, in addition to cables and sails and other things must also be matched with it, these things are easy to say, but on the issue of sails, the big China and North Korea obviously have shortcomings.

In this era, Chinese sailing ships mostly use hard sails, these hard sails are mostly made of bamboo strips, speaking of China's era is a country that is good at weaving, can produce a variety of textiles, especially the silk woven is extremely beautiful, but Western ships are basically using soft sails, sails are used sturdy, wear-resistant and tight and thick canvas, this era China because there is no such demand, so there is no good canvas for sails.

But this did not stop Xiao Tianjian, so with a stroke of his pen, he ordered the Ministry of Industry to immediately recruit textile craftsmen in the Hangzhou area to develop canvas for sails, for the Chinese, since exquisite silk can be spun, then this woolen canvas, there must not be much problem in the process.

In addition, at the end of the Ming Dynasty, cotton has already begun to be popularized in China, and some varieties of long-staple cotton have been bred, cotton cloth has gradually replaced linen, becoming a necessity for the people's life, now after the north has been pacified, a large area of land has been restored, and the cotton planting area will be larger and larger in the future, so the raw materials are not a problem, if this matter is changed to a few years ago, he is really not easy to solve, but now he has ascended the throne and called the emperor, after controlling the huge territorial resources, This kind of thing can be solved with a single sentence.

(Today, I would like to thank Feng Mu Chunjiang and General Mao Mao again for their rewards!) ）