Industrial Cthulhu, starting from the island lord

Chapter 402 New Ship Launched
"Ken, quickly bring over the new blueprints, the lord is coming to inspect them."

Which version is it?

"The new version!"

"I know, it's the new version 1.0, the new version 1.1, the latest version, the newest version, the newest version that absolutely won't be modified?"

"what?"

Ken looked up from the filing cabinet, his face full of helplessness: "These were all drawn by Master Tata yesterday while he was working overtime. They are all new versions."

The room descended into chaos once again.

This is the design institute affiliated with the Castells shipyard.

Generally, design institutes are not located in manufacturing plants, but Castells shipyard does not yet have a mature shipbuilding system and is almost entirely in the process of exploration. Therefore, Tata simply placed the design institute in the factory.

After the engineers produce the blueprints, they can open the door, turn left, and walk into the workshop in three minutes to try production. They can then see the finished product and analyze any problems on the spot.

It must be said that this is extremely efficient, with ship designs iterating at an incredibly fast pace.

Ken was taken away by Tata as soon as he returned to Castel.

Kenben had received advanced training and had sailed on the Black Pearl many times, gaining extensive experience in navigation. In addition, with Jeremiah's generous instruction, he also learned a great deal about hydrology and other related knowledge.

Hughes sent this group of people out to gain experience in shipbuilding, and now it's time to reap the rewards.

Ken did not disappoint. He had a solid foundation in mechanical knowledge, and most importantly, he had a lot of practical experience at sea, which was something that Tata, a designer from the mainland, lacked.

When the shipyard was being built, Hughes had no one else available, so he had to pull out Tata. Tata was originally a researcher at the Fire Moth, and he was responsible for a significant part of the design of the cathedral. He was also the chief designer of the Stellar Furnace.

Although Tata had some knowledge of mechanical principles and architectural design, he was not an expert in any particular field and had little experience in shipbuilding. In addition, Castells' shipyard was set up out of thin air and he had little experience even in designing sailing warships.

Gem Bay does have a large number of shipyards, but the skilled workers perished at sea along with the pirate king, leaving behind only some incomprehensible blueprints.

This industry has a very high barrier to entry, and the result of starting from scratch is...
Shipwrecks were piling up at the Castel northern test site, and the scrap metal could be piled up to form a lighthouse.

However, steel doesn't suffer much loss when recycled. If you accumulate enough, you can scoop it up and melt it down for reuse.

Therefore, Hughes didn't impose many restrictions.

But there hadn't been much progress, and Tata and the shipyard were under a lot of pressure. When they heard that the lord was coming to inspect, Tata pulled Ken into working overtime that night to finish the drawings.

So when Hughes walked into the design institute, he was stunned by the bags of blueprints that were almost piled up to the ceiling.

"My lord, this is our latest warship design. What do you think? If it's satisfactory, we'll move it into production."

Ken nervously handed over the drawings.

The blueprints for a ship can be thousands of pages long, enough to bury two people alive. What he was looking at was a rendering of the exterior, along with a cross-sectional view that included a brief explanation.

"Where's Tata?"

"He went to the shipyard to oversee the process. The ship has now completed its basic construction and could be launched within a week at the earliest."

If we're going on an expedition to the North, there's definitely not enough time to build ships now; we'll have to use the ships we've already built.

Because blueprints are iterated so quickly these days, these ships are already outdated by the time they're built. But there's no way around it; if we don't build them, we'll never gain any experience, and we still have to learn from the mistakes we've made.

Even though ships were sinking every day north of Castells, Hughes withstood the pressure and did not hold them accountable, allowing them to proceed with confidence.

Hughes took the blueprints and looked at them for a long time, only to find that he could hardly understand anything about them.

He could study the engine design drawings, but he had no knowledge of the hull or watertight compartments.

The saying "a trade is like a mountain" is no joke. He knew practically nothing about shipbuilding, only that the ship looked plump and was obviously quite large. "Well, this ship was designed as a main battleship, with heavy armor to withstand the concentrated detonation of explosive charges. It has a ram at the front, explosive charge launchers on both sides, and a take-off and landing platform on the top deck."

"Wait, wait a minute!"

Hughes rubbed his temples. What kind of nonsense had he heard?

"Putting everything else aside, what is this ramming device?"

Ken scratched his head: "This was Nini's suggestion. We took into account some of her naval combat experience. Apparently, gunfire isn't very effective at sea, so we..."

"So you're going to use a ram?!" Hughes felt a headache coming on. "What's the point of referring to Nini's experience? All the naval battles she's fought have been in the water. She's never actually fought a war from a ship."

That makes sense.

"Your ship is so wide, how fast can it turn? If it can't turn fast enough, how effective will the ram be?"

Hughes stared at the ramming angle on the blueprint, speechless.

I must say, the ramming horn looks pretty cool, and paired with the heavy and tall shape of the ironclad warship, it's incredibly intimidating.

Should we add it?

"Well, I'm not a professional naval strategist either, so you guys figure out for yourselves what that catapult thing is?"

"It's not a catapult, it's a dynamite launcher."

Hughes looked down at the several energy storage structures on the design drawings. This thing looked like a hybrid of a ballista and a catapult, but it was used to throw explosive charges.

It has an aesthetic appeal similar to using chips to make arrows.

"How's the artillery research going?"

"That's Mr. Richard in charge of. He's said to have made some breakthroughs, but there are still many problems with miniaturization."

“No need for miniaturization. You can use it on the ship, so a larger size is fine. A larger caliber isn't a bad thing.” Hughes clicked his tongue, then suddenly an idea struck him:
"And we don't necessarily have to focus on miniaturizing artillery."

"what?"

"We can enlarge the firearms, increasing the caliber and bullets simultaneously. Since there isn't much logistical pressure on the ship, we can directly upgrade the Gatling gun to a Gatling cannon and use it in a fixed position without worrying about recoil."

This type of machine gun poses little threat to ships, but it can effectively kill personnel or provide some fire suppression.

Theoretically, it is more suitable for air defense, but currently there is no other air force besides Castells, so it cannot be used for the time being.

"Alright, we'll talk about that later. I'll contact the military factory."

Hughes pointed to the huge platform on the blueprint.

"This is... a flight deck?"

“Yes!” Ken nodded quickly.

"What is that flying thing? You actually built an airplane?"

"What's an airplane? This is for parking airships."

"."

"You mean, this is an aircraft carrier equipped with rams, catapults, and Gatling guns all at the same time?"

(End of this chapter)