The warm November sun shone on the Jingling Ze in the north of Yangshui, and the turquoise water rippled, if it were not for the cold north wind and the withered yellow reeds on the shore, it would not be an exaggeration to say that this was spring.

Xiong Jing stood on the deck of Wang Zhou, looking at the two new gunboats sailing on the Yangshui for a while, and then looking behind him, where Qi Xuan was changing his son's swaddling clothes in the lord's room. The ten-month-old child had just learned to climb, eat, sleep, sleep, eat, and be guarded by a circle of people, not to mention the wind and cold in the lord's room, so it was obviously a wrong decision to take Wang Zhou with him.

"Yu Dawang, the new gunboat is very heavy, and it can only be dragged by the warboat......" The spirit of the public loss of the boat-building field is there, as well as the public loss of Jian, Gong Yin Dao, Ou Chou, Nao Cunning, Jing Fei, Bu Liangju and others. This is a finalized test of a new type of gunboat, which is being dragged from Yangshui to Jinglingze by several large-wing warboats.

The others were a little excited to see the new gunboat turn into Jinglingze, and Xiong Jing narrowed his eyes when he looked at the gunboat. This is not a large-wing gunboat, this is a gunboat converted from a sea boat of the Junior Division. The bow and stern of the sea boat are not one gun, but three guns are mounted at different angles. Six guns were arranged on each side of the boat, making a total of 18 guns. This is not a fifteen-pound cannon, this is all a thirty-two-pound cannon.

"This," Xiong Jing didn't know how to organize his language, and it was really beyond his expectation that he would build such a gunboat.

It stands to reason that the tonnage of the Shao Si Ming class is not enough to carry so many artillery, especially thirty-two pound guns. If there are too many cannons, the fragile and thin keel of the young division will definitely be broken by the strong recoil of the artillery, but Xiong Jing knows that the building must have strengthened the keel and ribs, and it must have wrapped them with a thick iron plate more than a foot wide. In order to fix these huge iron plates that wrap the keel ribs at a certain angle, the boat yard will also drive several rows of rivets horizontally on the wrapped keel and ribs.

The dragons and ribs were so strong that even if the wood was actually broken, the huge iron plates wrapped in the shape of a square tube according to the dragons and ribs would still support the weight of the entire ship, keeping it strong in storms. The only downside is that because the dragon and ribs are wrapped in huge iron plates, the draft of the sea boat will be greatly deepened.

The waterline of the two new gunboats in front of them was close to full load, and the six large-wing warships dragged them from the water into Jinglingze with great difficulty, and sailed in front of the Wang Boat where Xiong Jing was. The gunboat's gun doors were all opened, but the guns were not pushed out, and Xiong Jing could only see the shallow shadow of the thirty-two pound guns.

"All thirty-two pounds!" Gong Yi Jian said. "The keel ribs have been reinforced, and they are not afraid of artillery recoil."

"Shock absorption with springs?" Speaking of spring shock absorption, Xiong Jing couldn't help but have some smiles on his face. Historically, the shock absorber of artillery was that the sea preceded the land, the boat was smaller than the land, and the fragility of the wooden structure made the shock absorber of the gunboat appear in advance. In this regard, because China is not equipped with Western-style smoothbore gun battleships, the artillery shock absorbers on Chinese warships appeared earlier than in the West.

In the middle of the Ming Dynasty, the guerrilla general Peng Xingu invented a set of cushioning recoil devices, mainly to place the artillery on the soft frame, the soft frame has a wood behind it, and a soft seat is set up in the wood, and these things are tied to the golden roof (bow) or shoulder beam (side side) in front of the muzzle with ropes. The artillery recoils, it is necessary to push the soft frame first, and then pass it to the golden roof and the beam through the rope.

Two hundred years later, Sir Charles Douglas of the Royal Navy invented a plumb spring buffer device that could return the gun to its firing position, greatly increasing the rate of fire of the gun. This man also invented a number of other things, such as goose feather tube cartridges, composite block devices, which increased the rate and quality of shelling in the Royal Navy.

The cushion recoil device of Zaofu is supposed to be a combination of the two, and the addition of Douglas's buffer spring to Peng Xingu's soft frame, the combination of the two has not changed except for increasing the height of the muzzle.

Where there are gunboats, there are target ships. The target ships were two winged warships, one ordinary and one elongated, and the hull showed no signs of damage. It can be seen that the Great Sima Mansion has put a lot of effort into the new gunboat.

"Please allow the king to test the cannon." Nao asked for instructions.

"Yes." When Xiong Jing answered, he looked at the room behind him again, and his son was probably still breastfeeding at this time after changing his diaper. The temple people on his side observed the words and immediately went to the knight's room to announce that they were about to test the gun.

"The enemy boat came with the wind, and our army attacked it against the wind." The test artillery is not only as simple as firing the artillery, but also the details of the encounter and exchange of troops between the two armies, which is mainly introduced by Bu Liangju. "I fired the bow guns first, and then the gunboats turned sideways and shelled them with the side ......"

The gunboat was towed by the battleboats, and the target ship was also towed by two gunboats, and in order to prevent accidental damage, the rope that towed the target ship was thirty paces away. The two sides met in the south and the north, just as Bu Liangju said, the three guns in the bow of the ship were fired in turn, and the cannons rumbled, and a few words were whispered in the knight's room, and Xiong Sheng's cry came.

Nao Cunning, Gong Yin Dao, Gong Yijian and others looked at it together, and Xiong Jing said with a straight face: "It's okay." ”

After the three guns in the bow of the 'Boom Boom Boom ......' were fired, the warship quickly turned sideways, and the six guns on the side of the ship began to fire in turn. The sound of artillery continued one after another, and the smoke of gunfire blew southward, and for a time everyone could not see the gunboats and the target ships further north.

The shelling continued, and Xiong Jing suddenly shouted: "Stop! ”

"The king has an order: stop!" The order was quickly passed on, and after the smoke cleared, the warship and the target ship stood still.

"The boat." Xiong Jing raised his hand again, he was going to the target ship to take a closer look.

When the cannon stopped, the crying in the knight's room was still continuous, and the ministers around Xiong Jing thought that the king's order to stop the shelling was to not disturb the king's eldest son, and the knight's room also thought so.

"The king is going too." She turned her head back into the room, her eyes blinking, and she bowed to Mi Xuan.

"The king is busy with military affairs, so let's go." The prince and princess are generally raised by the wife of the scholar, and others are not at ease with Mi Xuan, she is raised by herself. When Mi Ni prayed, she was holding the crying Xiong Sheng to her chest. The cannon outside suddenly stopped roaring, the child was stunned, his dark eyes were fixed, and although the tears were still hanging on his face, he actually stopped crying.

Seeing that the child was no longer crying, Mi Xuan looked at his stunned appearance, giggled, and said softly: "Father, father ordered, the artillery will stop firing, and Sheng'er will not cry." The father is there, the father is there......"

Through the porthole of the chamber, Mi Tease's fingers pointed to the boat that was getting farther and farther away, teasing the child. The child could not speak, and babbled a few times, and raised his arms happily.

The child couldn't see his father, but Mi Xuan stared at the figure closely. The boat rowed on the surface of the river, and the figure soon got onto a winged warship. When he walked on the deck, he was still there, and after a while the figure disappeared, and he should have gotten off the cabin.

To check the effect of the shelling, it was natural to get off the cabin, and the shelling was mainly concentrated in the cabin and not on the freeboard above deck. Xiong Jing, who went down to the cabin, saw that the waterline pierced by the shells was bubbling into the water, and although there was no one in the cabin to plug the leak, because not every shell hit the waterline, no one blocked the leak, and the warboat was still floating on the water, and the deepest part of the water in the cabin did not reach the ankle.

"Plug the breach quickly." Bu Liangju boarded the boat with Xiong Jing and others, and when Xiong Jing carefully looked at the damage caused by the shelling, he was worried that the target ship would sink prematurely, and he hurriedly ordered someone to plug the leak.

"It can't be sunk." Xiong Jing looked at the shell holes that crossed the two sides of the warboat and shook his head repeatedly, and he thought of the solid armor-piercing shells of the Beiyang Naval Division in the First Sino-Japanese Naval Battle. With such an artillery effect of a dozen or two holes, how could it sink the Qin army's warboats?

"Why was the battle of Zhifu sunk a lot of Qi people's warships? And the Sinhalese naval battle, which also sank a lot of Pandian warships? "There are not many examples of naval artillery battles, the most recent being these two naval battles. The detailed report of the battle said that the Qi people war boat and the Pan Diya war boat were all broken and sunk after being shot, and Xiong Jing couldn't help but be a little puzzled.

"My lord, during the battle of Weinan, the artillerymen attacked the Qin people's boat division from the shore, and the war boat also sank a lot." Nao Cunning mentioned an earlier battle column, and he didn't say that Xiong Jing might have forgotten it.

"Yes. Why was our artillery able to smash the Qin people's warships in the Battle of Weinan, and now ......" Xiong Jing asked, pointing to the holes in the gunwale.

"The king should know that the new style of big wings has keel ribs, and they fit with iron nails, the battle of Weinan and the Qin people are all old-style big wings, and the battle of Zhifu is also the old style of big wings, and the same is true of the Pandia war boat." Nao Wei did not answer in person, but asked Jing Fei to answer, these examples of surface artillery battles, he is like a treasure. "The old wing has no keel ribs, it is not strong, the cannonball passes through the boat, vibrates the gunwale, and the fit is loose and falls off, so there are many people who sink the warboat."

"The Qin people also use iron nails to build boats?" Xiong Jing asked strangely. The boat-building technique of the Chu State mainly came from him, and then there was the study of the Gongyi Jian and the boat-building master, and the boat-building technique of the Qin State came from the extreme west, and it was difficult for him to imagine that the Qin people also used iron nails.

"Yes." Gong loses the spiritual way. "After the first battle of Daze, the Qin people's broken war boat was sent to Yingdu, and the ministers dissected it, and it was also made of keel ribs, fixed with tenons, iron nails, and gold juice, but the technique of twisting and sewing was not as good as mine."

"It's a pity that it can't be sunk!" When the Mediterranean Sea developed to the scull war boat, there were keel ribs, and the ships with keel ribs had better vertical and horizontal stress and were not easy to be broken by wind and waves. This vertical and horizontal force capability in the face of artillery fire, the result is one shot and two holes.

"If you can strike vertically, many of the men in the cabin will die." Bu Liangju saw Xiong Jing's disappointment and raised the vertical attack. The longitudinal attack is the cannonball from the bow to the stern, which is extremely lethal, and the hit position can reimburse a whole row of men, and the chaos in the cabin will make the war boat quickly slow down and stop.

"Striking?" Xiong Jing remembered the word and asked again: "Can you sink the boat?" ”

"I can't." Bu Liangju replied, bowing his head.

"The can't sink the boat by shelling, so the Qin boat swarmed, hitting me with a collision angle, and hooking me with a hook and sickle......" Xiong Jing described a scene of the battle, and the people on the boat lowered their heads and stopped talking.

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