Li Ming slowly took out a blank piece of paper, and then said to a group of Dutch sailors: "We asked the captain of your squad for advice, and they reported to us all the good people, so the first batch of candidates has been decided, and the gentleman whose name I read please come out." ”

He glanced at the Dutch sailors, and then slowly read out the list. First were the captains of ten sailing ships, then some of the more honest Dutch sailors, and the rest were the ones who had recently been in good shape.

When all the names were pronounced, the Dutch sailors were ecstatic and drew crosses on their chests to thank God for His providence. And those whose names were not read were pale one by one. But they immediately recovered, because they had heard Li Ming say just now that this was the first batch, which meant that there was a second batch and a third batch.

So a bunch of foreign devils are holding back their energy, and they must be selected into the second batch, even if it is the third batch. They don't want to be in this hellish place anymore. By the way, there is also learning Chinese, although it is difficult, but if you learn it, you will definitely be given priority.

Li Ming looked at a group of Dutch sailors with excited faces, and said with a smile: "You are welcome to join the Far East Company, but you are only on probation now, and once any gentleman is not good, we will send him back here." ”

After he finished speaking, he asked the twenty Dutch sailors to be taken away, and a group of foreign devils who were not selected looked at the twenty people who had gone away with envy and jealousy, and their eyes were red.

Van Pitt and the others were taken to the Vladivostok hospital and underwent a tedious medical examination. Then it was a shower and haircut, and a lot of clothes and daily necessities were given to them. A full set of Russian-style military shoes and hats, including the late MABUTA training uniform of the Airborne Troops, Soviet paratrooper leather boots on his feet, and a blue beret on his head, which is the most typical and unusual of the Soviet army.

The others were the same as the other laborers, with an armed belt around their waists, a green military satchel on the left, and a military kettle on the right. Behind him was a Soviet military backpack, which contained various clothes and household items.

Mainly because of the large number of 85-style clothing that the company entered. There are very few clothes and shoes in large sizes. These Dutch sailors were relatively tall, and they couldn't even fit into a big guy like Van Pitt.

Several Admiralty officers and men led the Dutch sailors to a tent and told them about the rules and regulations and precautions. And their main work during the probationary period. That is as a Navy instructor. Teach the company's recruits to be proficient in sailing. In the end, he solemnly told them. Those who were unable to speak Mandarin for three months were not allowed to pass the probationary period and had to return to the concentration camps. And there will be no chance of coming back in the future.

Li Ming and Qiao Haipeng left the concentration camp and went to the shipyard in the western part of the Golden Horn, where they wanted to see the ten sailboats. The ten sailboats are undergoing major maintenance, and the ten sailboats have not only been refurbished, but also undergone a series of improvements.

Since the arrival of these ten sailboats in Vladivostok, several sail enthusiasts in the company's shipyard have begun to stay in the cabin every day, eager to learn about the structure of sailboats in this era. Several of them in modern society have learned about sailboats from books and online materials, and the most intuitive understanding is the ship model from modern society.

However, most of the most authoritative sail models are from the 18th century onwards, and the earliest ones are from the mid to late 17th century. It was the first time they had seen it on a real sailboat. They took a bunch of models of ships from various countries after the 18th century, and spent several days in ten sailboats, and finally worked out a series of improvement plans after the research of many experts and technicians in the shipyard.

First of all, the ten sailboats are covered with a layer of copper skin below the draft position to prevent the bottom of the ship from being soaked in seawater for a long time, and there are various marine animals in the seawater, some of which like oysters and anemones, like to attach to the surface of various objects under the water to grow, which affects the speed and service life of the ship, and may even cause the ship to disintegrate at sea.

Although this thing is small, it is a very troublesome thing, that is, the bottom of the freighter in modern society has to be treated to a certain extent at the bottom of the steel ship, if it is not dealt with regularly, it will increase the amount of self-esteem of the ship, affect the smoothness of the bottom shell, and increase the resistance when sailing. According to some sources, vegetation on the bottom of the ship will cause a loss of power of 5%-10% on the ship, and this figure may be higher when it is strict.

In this era, the best way to solve this problem was to soak the boat into the freshwater river for some days, but it was troublesome to do so, and after a long time at sea, there was no time and conditions to enter the freshwater river.

The copper coating is still a method that the British came up with, they covered all the warships with a layer of copper at the bottom of the ship, which solved the problem of maggots eroding the ship's board, but the cost was too high, after all, copper was a precious metal in this era, and it was not something that ordinary people could afford to use so much copper to cover the bottom of the entire ship.

However, the Far Eastern Company did not have this problem, and they plundered a large amount of copper in Japan, and ten sailing ships, although they cost a lot, were only a drop in the bucket. The technicians of the company's machinery factory used a modern rolling mill to roll the refined copper billet into a whole thin copper sheet, which met the needs of ten sailing ships in a light way.

They also applied a layer of boiling asphalt to the entire hull, so that the hull was impermeable and rigid, the upper part of the hull was painted, the side walls were tarred, and the bottom of the ship was painted over the cover to protect the hull from maggots.

Finally, a thin layer of copper is covered below the waterline, and a layer of primer is brushed on the copper skin, and some toxic compounds are added. As these toxins slowly exud, marine life does not grow in these areas, allowing the bottom of the boat to remain clean for longer.

The next step is to replace and improve the rigging used to fix the mast, lift and control the crossbeam, and open the sail on a large scale without changing the complete set of sails.

With the increasing size of the sailboat, its winding operation is also facing difficulties, because the bottom of the sail area is very large, the width exceeds the hull side width much more, for example, the hull width is 15 meters, the mainsail truss can reach nearly 30 meters, so the width of the mainsail can also reach more than 25 meters.

The rigging of these sails is also very simple: one end is attached to the foot of the sail, or the side edge of the sail, or the bottom of the sail, and the other end is led to the deck like a halyard near the top of the guò mast. In this way, these riggings are continuously tightened from the deck, and the legs, side edges, and bottom edges of the sail can be pulled near the crossbar, making it easier for seafarers working on the crossbar to retract the sails.

But the rigging of this era is still very primitive, and the materials are very simple. It is very hard for sailors to put away the rigging, and it takes a lot of manpower to lift and control the crossbow and sail, and this kind of work has to be done in a bad sea environment many times, which is not only dangerous but also consumes a lot of manpower.

Therefore, the sailors of this era had a very large workload, and they had to have the courage to withstand the storm. It is still necessary to improve some small accessories such as ropes, unloaders, cable-stayed pullers, pulleys and other small accessories on these sailboats, as well as the device for retracting and releasing rigging.

The shipyard's expert technicians, using modern materials and the rigging system on modern sailboats, carried out a large-scale improvement of ten sailboats. The work was very tedious and heavy, but after more than a month of hard work, the rigging of the ten sailboats was finally completed.

A large number of rigging augers used in modern sailboats are adopted, and a lot of modern technologies such as bearings, alloy material pulley sets, and wheels are used for some small accessories such as unloading, cable-stayed devices, pulleys and so on in the rigging system. Not to mention that the efficiency of these sailboats has increased several times when retracting and releasing rigging, and a lot of manpower has been saved.

Fortunately, the technical team of the shipping company ordered a large number of customized rigging accessories of modern materials when producing sailboat components in modern society, and now they are directly used for use. The two sailboats that the company is assembling in the dockyard use a lot of modern sailboat technology, and compared with these ten sailboats, they are not a little stronger, they are completely the product of two eras.

But Qiao Haipeng's requirements for these ten sailboats are not high, it is enough to provide logistics support for the navy, transport supplies, and provide shipping capacity for the company, after all, these sailboats are obviously backward in their eyes, and the large-scale transformation is worth the loss.

The only major improvement was the installation of the rudder and tiller cord that only appeared in the eighteenth century on these sailboats, but this rudder disc and tiller cable system is already a product of modern sailboats, equipped with modern alloy material gearing units and pulley blocks, and is a complete set of complex mechanisms. Of course, this is also customized by the company in modern society, and there are quite a few of them.

With a rudder and tiller cable system, these ten sailboats have the ability to control their course at will. Originally, before the 18th century, the helmsman operated the transverse tiller attached to the rudder, and in bad weather, it sometimes took several people to withstand the pressure of the rudder. And when the helmsman observes the sails, the view is obscured by the aft deck above, making it difficult to steer effectively.

Although this defect has been overcome by a vertical tiller that is attached to the rudder and can rotate the rudder at a certain distance, the mechanism of the vertical tiller can only make the rudder rotate no more than about 5°, which is far from being able to meet the needs of the maneuvering of sailing ships at sea. (To be continued......)

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