The Rise of the European Emperor

In early September, two new battleships were launched from Emden Shipyard. Both of these battleships are 500-ton "Hoffman-class" battleships, which use the warship construction method of dense dragon ribs and thickened side flank. In addition, the ship is equipped with 40 12-pound iron cannons, with full protection and attack power.

Moreover, because of the 4: 1 aspect ratio, the speed of the warship reached 10 knots, which was higher than 9 knots of the 250-class armed merchant ship.

It can be said that this "Hoffman-class" battleship, which refers to the later British Galen ship, has high protection and strong attack power, and it is also very fast ...

In short, in this era, it is the most perfect warship ...

After the launch of the first Hoffman-class battleship in October last year, Marin was satisfied, so he arranged for the Emden Shipyard to start using high-temperature steam boxes and molds according to the previously recorded data, and began mass-bending warships. The required boat ribs. After being washed by high-temperature steam for several hours, the interior of the wood was completely wet. For this reason, the ribs of these ships need to be air dried for several months before they can continue to be used.

Therefore, in the second spring, these ship ribs can be used for shipbuilding. As it happened, Marin's caravan purchased two 30-meter-long main keel wood from Eastern Europe, and two new warships were built. By the end of August and early September, the two ships were finally ready to launch ...

Marin came to inspect again, and boarded the ship to feel, it feels good. As a result, the two warships were officially commissioned and were numbered Huffman-class ships 2 and 3.

The sailor on the ship can control the full set of sails on the ship (middle sail, first and last spinnaker for downwind voyage) and full spinnaker (for upwind voyage). Because the sailor school created by Marin has trained a large number of young Frisian fishermen to become sailors. A battleship, the sailors needed to control the sails, but only 60 people, Marin trained two or three thousand sailors, which is enough.

Of course, the artillery on board is somewhat difficult to train. Marin set up artillery training camps on land to train artillery. However, firing on land and firing on warships are completely different.

Firing artillery on land, if you use guns from the turret, there is no "reset" link at all, which is extremely simple. Because the stone foundation of the fort can completely absorb the recoil of the artillery, regardless of the caliber of the artillery.

But it is different on the ship. Marin's four-wheel gun mount "designed" according to the pictures seen by future generations. After the gun is fired, it must definitely retreat. Otherwise, if fixed on the hull, all recoil will react to the hull. Once the side volley is volleyed, it is easy to cause the ship to overturn ...

Moreover, behind the four-wheel gun mount, before firing, the rope must be tied. After firing the gun, the four-wheeled gun mount recoiled violently and would break the rope. Of course, the breaking of the rope at this stage will also absorb a lot of work done by the reaction force. Then, tie the broken rope and keep using it ...

The guns of the artillery on the battleship must have protruded from the guns of the artillery of the ship's side and the lower splint. However, because it is a front-loading gun, if the muzzle remains outside, it is impossible to load gunpowder and shells from the muzzle. Therefore, the retreat of the four-wheel gun mount can also return the muzzle back to the ship, which is convenient for the gunner to load gunpowder and shells.

Therefore, the retreat of the four-wheel gun mount and the breakage of the rope are very useful for reducing the impact of the artillery recoil on the ship or for convenience of loading.

But after the four-wheeled gun mount had been loaded, there was another step-reset, which required several gunners to restore the heavy naval gun to its original position, and tied the rope behind the gun mount ...

Fortunately, the four-wheel gun mount has wheels. Although it is not a round wheel (the round wheel is unstable and will run), it is a regular polygonal wheel (mainly to increase resistance and prevent the gun mount from automatically sliding backwards), but it is pushed with wheels. The gun mount is much easier than simply carrying the heavy gun body. How heavy is it if the gun body is lifted? But the 12-pound heavy gun is designed for the safety of the 18-pound gun, which weighs 2 tons. Even 10 people can't lift it. Because, a person has to carry a weight of 200 kilograms, equivalent to 400 kilograms.

After using the four-wheel gun mount, although it is not easy to push, 5 gunners can do it. After all, it has wheels ...

In fact, in this era, the artillery was still a barrel, and the artillery came to lift it. Because there is no need for a gun mount, and the use of light Fran cannons is now popular on warships, there are now dozens of artillery on many warships. When firing, everyone should lift the body of those lightweight Fran cannons on the side of the ship and set it up. It will be fine to squeeze it.

It's just that these "thin" small caliber guns have little power in naval battles and can only bully the boat. When encountering large ships, it is difficult to achieve results. The Portuguese can defeat the Indian-Egyptian joint fleet in the "Dieu Battle", because most of the other ships are small boats, many of them are simply troop-carrying boats, and many are forced from the fishermen. The small fishing boat ... So, the Portuguese Fran cannon can make merit ...

At this stage of "lifting the barrel", if the cannon is heavy, the sailors will not be able to lift it. Even if it was lifted by the sailor, because it was too heavy, we could not lift it several times. This four-wheel gun mount, which is far inferior to that designed by Marin, is pushed, which is much more labor-saving than lifting, and can last for a long time ...

Therefore, the four-wheel gun mount "invented" by Marin is actually ahead of the times, and is very suitable for heavy artillery. It's no wonder that Marin clearly saw the turrets of the famous sail warships of the 18th century plagiarized. How can it be unreasonable?

And in this era, other European countries, not to mention naval warships, are on the land, but also the structure of people carrying guns. They all used horse carriages to carry the guns and marched. When they arrived on the battlefield, they were asked to carry the guns off the carriages and bury them in front of the battlefield .... Only the French invented the gun ears and started to use low-level four-wheel frames to place artillery, There are a lot of three-pound guns behind Marin ...

In short, Marin has been ahead of this era in terms of how artillery is placed ...

In order to adapt the gunners to firing and aiming on the battleship, Marin ordered that these three ships should train a lot of guns and do not be afraid of wasting ammunition. Moreover, Marin also plans to train more naval gunners. Therefore, he mobilized more gunners than needed from the artillery training camp and boarded the ship to learn how to control the gun. Because, Marin plans to build more warships ...

In fact, before Marin prepared more ship ribs. The Emden Shipyard had previously bent the ship ribs needed to make 10 warships. However, it was only the 30-meter-long main keel that was insufficient, and only three warships were built first. If the number of main keels is sufficient, it is no problem to build 10 ships ...

Right now, probably aware of the prosperity of maritime trade, many royal families in Western Europe now regard old oak trees higher than 20 meters as their strategic resources. Even if Marin wants to buy, it is difficult to buy.

In fact, there are many old oak trees in the inland areas of Europe with a height of 20-30 meters. However, if it is too inland, such large trunks may not be transported to the seaside smoothly ...

After all, the trunk, which is tens of meters long, weighs more than ten tons. For such a heavy thing, it must also be handled as a whole, and it cannot be cut. Is it generally difficult?

Therefore, even if there is such a big tree in the inland mountainous area, it cannot be shipped out. Even if it is shipped, the cost is staggering ...

And in this era, the keel needed for shipbuilding. Those oak trees are often grown by the sea, it is convenient to pull to the sea, or grow by the river connecting the sea. In this way, after felling the old oak tree, you can let it float on the river, flow down the river, and reach the seaside ...

As for the old oak trees hidden in the deep mountains, I'm sorry, but I can't ship them when I find them; the price is unacceptable when they are shipped out ... And most of the old oak trees that grow on the seaside and the big rivers were mostly made by those ships. The craftsman of the factory discovered and felled, and won't wait for you to discover ...

Therefore, it was difficult for Marin to collect the main keel material of 30 meters in length. The Americas are different. The Americas are almost unexplored (the Indians have done very little damage to nature). On the beaches and rivers, dozens of meters of old oak trees have gone. If you want a keel, Garland said that even if Cape Breton Island is dominated by coniferous forests, you can still find a lot of old oak trees more than 30 meters long that are suitable as keels.

Just before Garland left Cape Breton Island and returned to East Friesland, he directed the immigrants to cut down a dozen trees 30 to 40 meters long (Note: Marin has promoted the use of meters, kilometers, kilograms, grams, Mu and other new styles weighed) hundreds of years old oak trees, and organized everyone together, difficult to lift to the designated air-drying position ~ www.wuxiaspot.com ~ For this, everyone almost exhausted. However, in a year or two, Marin will add more than a dozen keels suitable for large ships.

The problem is that these newly cut old oak trees need to be air-dried for one or two years before they are suitable for shipbuilding. Marin has to wait ...

However, while Marin was anxiously waiting, the ship that went to Teutonic to sell salt came back and brought Marin a surprise ...

It turned out that Marin had previously allowed old Steen Sturre to send young officers into Schwartz's leading new army to receive training and learn new tactics, which made Sr. Sturre very grateful.

In return, the old Steen Sturre found five huge oak logs of 30 meters in length from the Swedish shipyard and gave them to Marin to use as the main keel of the new battleship.

These logs have been air-dried in a shipyard in Sweden for a long time, and have reached the demand for shipbuilding. Moreover, in fact, the Swedish shipyard did not intend to build ships of four to five hundred tons, but only intended to build the currently popular ships of two to three hundred tons. Therefore, these five logs were originally intended to be sawn shorter. Fortunately, old Steen. Steure discovered in advance and gave it to Marin in return for Marin's support for him.

So, when Marin sent the ship to the Baltic region, when returning home, the street notified Sweden that he would go to Sweden and tie these 5 huge logs to the side of the ship.

Obtaining these five huge oak logs, Marin immediately organized craftsmen to process them to make them the main keel of the ship. With the ship ribs and other materials already prepared, the new five warships can also be built at the same time. By the beginning of next year, five new 500-ton Hoffman-class battleships will be launched. By that time, Marin, who had eight large battleships equipped with heavy artillery, could also be called a sea tyrant ...