I want to be emperor

Chapter 699 The Era of Steam Battleships Has Arrived

Although the Dutch knew that the Great Chu Empire was very powerful, they also knew that once the Great Chu Empire became ambitious about their Spice Islands and launched a war, it would be difficult for them to resist.

However, as a sea coachman country, the reason why they have been able to develop to the present level and have a large number of overseas colonies is that they have an unyielding and adventurous spirit.

All the Europeans who come out to do overseas trade these days don't put their heads on their waistbands and die.

These people are all desperadoes in the true sense, the kind who want money but not life, well, they also include those from the Great Chu Empire who went to overseas indigenous countries to venture into business.

For such a person, relying on intimidation alone is useless.

Even if you know you won't be able to win in the end, you still won't admit defeat until the last moment.

These colonists of the Dutch were no exception!
The Spice Islands are the lifeblood of their East India Company. The Great Chu Empire wants to use a lame reason and military intimidation to make them give up their lifeblood. This is impossible.

As the saying goes, if you want money, you need a life!
Therefore, even though the Imperial Affairs Department of the Great Chu Empire had delivered an ultimatum, although the Dutch in Batavia panicked, they showed no sign of surrendering.

Instead, they are preparing to defend stubbornly, so that the Great Chu Empire will give up its plan to attack Batavia and control the Spice Islands after being unable to attack for a long time.

For this reason, they have already prepared themselves to stay in Batavia for a year or even longer.

For this reason, they quickly prepared for the battle, the gunners on the fort were ready for battle, and the fleet in the port had already set sail, preparing to intercept the possible attack of the Great Chu Empire Navy.

A large number of Dutch soldiers stationed in the city and the native servants recruited and armed were also assembled in an emergency, ready to resist to the death.

This kind of reaction from the Dutch was also expected by the Chu army.

If only an ultimatum can make the Dutch East India Company surrender obediently, then the Great Chu Empire would have conquered the world long ago.

But it doesn't matter, anyway, the Great Chu Empire didn't think that the other party would submit obediently, otherwise they wouldn't have dispatched a large number of army troops to cross the sea and land from Wandan.

Therefore, the Nanyang Fleet outside Batavia City is still floating outside, and has no plans to approach Batavia Port for bombardment or direct landing.

It's not necessary!

Although the strength of the Nanyang Fleet at this time far exceeds that of the Dutch East India Company fleet, it is still unnecessary.

In this battle of the Nanyang Fleet, their mission is very simple. One is to blockade the Batavia Harbor and block a large number of Dutch sailing warships in the harbor.

The second is to send escort fleets to maintain the rear maritime transportation and supply lines, escort various transport ships, and avoid the threat of sporadic Dutch warships or armed merchant ships.

The rest will naturally be handled by the army coolies!

After all, the army is better at conquering strong cities, and their navy can't drive warships ashore to attack cities, can't they?

The only thing that needs to be vigilant is the Dutch fleet in the port of Batavia, rushing out of the port risking their lives, and then engaging in close-range combat attacks or simply arson.

Although the Nanyang Fleet has been equipped with some of the latest iron-ribbed wood-hulled ships of the Great Chu Empire, and their protection capabilities are much stronger than those of pure wooden ships, one must still be careful in the face of such attacks. After all, the hulls are still mainly made of wood, and Every ship still has sails on board.

So even a ship with an iron rib and a wooden shell is afraid of fire!
As for naval guns, the Chu Empire Navy is currently equipped with front-mounted smoothbore guns. Although grenades are used on a large scale, they are very lethal to sailing wooden ships, but their effective range and rate of fire are limited.

Therefore, the iron-ribbed wooden hull ships of the Great Chu Empire Navy did not have much epoch-making advantage in essence compared to pure wooden ships.

You can punch me a hole, and I can punch you a hole.

It's just that as long as you stay on guard, the Nanyang Fleet will not give the Dutch such an opportunity.

Because in the Nanyang Fleet of the Great Chu Empire Navy, some ships are powered by sails.

After the Great Chu Empire developed the high-pressure steam engine at the Guangzhou Machinery Company, it has already begun to put the steam engine on the ship.

For this reason, the navy has adopted two major routes together. On the one hand, it is to install steam engines on existing pure sail ships, especially warships with relatively new hulls that are worth refitting, so that these pure sail ships can be turned into machine sails. Power to enhance its combat capability.

Due to the limited time for this kind of modification, the production capacity of high-horsepower marine steam engines has not yet been fully released, and the modification will take several months. At present, only more than ten warships have been modified, and this time the battle also calls for six modifications. The old warships were put into battle.

It is worth noting that these warships after refitting steam engines, because of the size and weight of the steam engines themselves, coupled with the need to carry coal and a large amount of fresh water, made the interior space of the refitted warships very tight, and had to cancel some of the lower deck artillery to free up space and load.

Therefore, the firepower of the refitted battleship has decreased compared with the original one.

Among them, the third-class battleship Hami, which was the first to be refitted, has only 64 guns left after the refit, which is a full ten guns less than the previous 74 guns. At the same time, the living space and living supplies of the sailors are not as abundant as before. .

This is the price one has to pay for steam engine power!
Even so, the steam engine on the refitted Hami is actually not very reliable. In addition to the old-fashioned problems of many faults, the main reason is that the power is too small.

The power of the steam engine it carries is only more than 500 horsepower, and the coal carried is very limited. The steam engine cannot be used as the main power at all, and can only be used as an auxiliary sail when fighting or entering and leaving the port.

It is impossible to rely on the power of more than 400 steam engines to propel such a big guy with more than 700 tons for ocean voyage.

The second route is to build a brand new motor sailing ship, but the construction time of medium and large warships is relatively long, and the design and construction of brand new steam warships is also a new challenge for the Great Chu Empire Navy, so medium and large warships are currently not available. A completed service.

However, small-tonnage frigates are designed and constructed very quickly. The first specially designed motor-sailboat Yulin-class frigate in the Great Chu Empire Navy began to serve in batches at the beginning of this year. Currently, eight ships have been in service. Currently, these eight Yulin ships Class frigates are all serving in the Nanyang Fleet and participated in this combat operation.

In other words, in this battle against the Dutch, the Nanyang Fleet of the Great Chu Empire Navy mobilized [-] refitted or newly built motor sailboats, a total of two battleships, four cruisers, and eight frigates.

These fourteen steam engine sailing ships are also the absolute main force of the Nanyang Fleet's operation this time, because the excellent maneuverability brought by the steam engine is far from being comparable to that of pure sailing ships.

When you took advantage of the wind direction to kill me, I just started the steam engine and ran against the wind, what can I do?
Mobility, this is also the core reason why the Great Chu Empire's navy is firmly equipped with steam engines and ships.

Sure enough, the navy's precautions are necessary. In the evening, when the night was about to fall, but before it was completely dark, a group of ships rushed out of the Batavia port...not sails in the traditional sense Battleships, but more than 20 galleys!
These Dutch people even directly used the galleys that the Nanyang natives like to use to attack.

The speed of these galleys is very flexible, far from being comparable to those of large sailing warships.

At this time, if the warships in the Nanyang Fleet were all large ocean-going sailing warships, they might capsize in the gutter if they were not careful.

This kind of thing has been very common in recent decades. The indigenous countries of Southeast Asia often deal with the Dutch or Portuguese in small waters such as offshore or straits.

But today, the Nanyang Fleet of the Great Chu Empire has fourteen motor sailing ships equipped with steam engines. These warships all have maneuverability that cannot be matched by pure sailing warships.

The scouting ship at the front saw a galley sailing from the opposite port to attack, and the two motor-sail battleships and four motor-sail cruisers that had been prepared behind began to maneuver.

They completely ignored the wind direction, directly and quickly arranged in pairs, formed multiple horizontal formations and seized the T-head, preparing to cover the incoming Dutch galleys with artillery fire.

The powerful broadside firepower formed by the two battleships and four cruisers, even if the firepower is still only front-mounted smoothbore guns, can still smash the galleys on the opposite side into scum.

These are still the actions of those large-tonnage warships. Just as the capital ships in the rear were preparing for line combat, the Eighth Escort Fleet and No. 20 Third Escort Fleet in the Nanyang Fleet also began to move.

These two escort fleets are the only two Yulin-class frigate squadrons in the Nanyang Fleet, and each escort fleet has four Yulin-class frigates.

Yulin-class frigate, the first motor sailing ship in the Chu Empire Navy that was newly designed to be equipped with a steam engine, and this is an iron-ribbed wood-hulled ship, and adopted the unified large-caliber naval gun that has been popular in the Chu Empire Navy in recent years Thought.

This class of ship is the first iron-ribbed wooden-hull frigate in the Great Chu Empire. As the successor model of the Jiangning-class iron-ribbed wooden-hulled ship, it inherits the excellent hull shape of the Yulin class, but the internal cabin structure, sails, and armed layout. , are very different.

After all, the basic design concept of the previous pure sail ships, even the Jiangning-class frigates with iron ribs and wooden hulls, is still similar to that of the early pure sail ships.

However, after the era of steam engine sailboats, the design of ships must take into account the deployment of steam engines. The size and weight of marine steam engines are not light, and they also need to carry a large amount of coal and fresh water. Therefore, how to design the internal cabin is a very big challenge.

This is also the reason why the Great Chu Empire Navy did not use the original ship type to optimize the design, but adopted a new design for the Yulin-class frigate.

The Yulin-class frigate has a full-load displacement of 670 tons. It is equipped with a double-cylinder horizontal steam engine and is propelled by a single-shaft propeller instead of using a more mature technology and lower cost. It is now widely used on civilian ships and some naval inland river gunboats. paddle wheel propulsion.

This is not to say that the technology of propeller propulsion is better and more efficient. It is simply that the huge paddle wheel has poor protection in battle and is easily damaged by enemy artillery fire.

Moreover, the huge paddle may block the firing range of one's own naval guns.

For this reason, the navy has adopted a more advanced, costly, and riskier propeller propulsion method in the Yulin-class frigate.

The ship can reach a speed of six knots under pure steam power, and an economical speed of four knots under pure steam power, and its endurance can reach [-] nautical miles.This speed and endurance may not be worth mentioning for future warships, but for the contemporary era, it is still an epoch-making progress.

The maximum speed under the hybrid power of the sail has reached [-] knots in the test, but this maximum speed is of no practical significance, because unless the wind is smooth and the wind is particularly strong, otherwise the normal sailing can not reach such a high speed even if the sail is used together. speed.

The armament is equipped with four 130mm medium barrel front-mounted smoothbore guns and four 130mm short barrel smoothbore guns. The number of artillery pieces is four less than that of the Yulin class. This is because after the steam engine and coal are installed, As a result, the ship's load burden is relatively large, so the firepower is reduced.

In terms of protection, a thick wooden case is still used.

In addition to the internal load-bearing structure and ship ribs made of steel, other common parts, even the hull part made of wood, is still the most cost-effective in contemporary times, and it is also a shipbuilding method more suitable for the Great Chu Empire.

However, the Ministry of Ship Administration has tried to use steel on the hull of the test ship, and finally build a real pure steel warship, but just hearing the word pure steel warship, you know that it is very expensive Things, large-scale equipment is temporarily unreliable.

Compared with building pure steel warships, the Ship Administration Department is more interested in improving firepower, such as building a front-loading rifled gun. If so, in the next few years, the Navy may be equipped with a longer effective range and can fire conical shells to obtain a more powerful front-loading rifled gun with a greater range.

As for now, the navy of the Great Chu Empire was still mainly equipped with smoothbore guns in the past, but even the smoothbore guns were just as powerful, far exceeding the front-mounted smoothbore guns of ordinary indigenous countries.

Because the various naval front-loading smoothbore guns equipped by the Great Chu Empire Navy have generally used low-carbon steel as raw material, and are manufactured by drilling and expanding the diameter. on the difference.

But purely in terms of performance, it is still not as good as the same level of bronze guns from the army... The army's artillery is still a bronze gun, but their production process is also drilling and expanding, plus the superior performance of the bronze material itself , Its performance is even better than the navy's low-carbon steel artillery of the same level.

In the era of front-mounted smoothbore guns, bronze artillery had no disadvantages except that it was expensive.

The sail power driven by the propeller, the iron-rib wooden shell, the unified large-caliber low-carbon steel front-mounted smoothbore artillery, and the flying-shear flat-deck ship shape finally created the Yulin-class frigate.

The Great Chu Empire is also the first warship specially designed to use steam power in human history!

Now, eight such warships completely ignored the ocean current or wind direction, and formed two columns of white smoke to meet them directly.

They are about to announce to the world that the era of steam warships has arrived!

(End of this chapter)