This was the first time the travelers had fought at sea. The captured pirate ship gave them a chance to see the specific equipment of the Chinese pirates who once roamed the southeastern coast in the late Ming Dynasty and became famous in Southeast Asia. Not long after the ship was towed into the port, an inspection team composed of military, intelligence, industry, agriculture and other ministries came to Bopu by car to conduct an on-site inspection of the entire ship.
The intelligence team once again confirmed that the ship was indeed a type of "Guangzhou ship", which showed that the pirates should be from Guangdong, not Fujian, the main area of activity of Yiguan. Therefore, Liu Xiang's gang was highly suspected.
The hull inherits the consistent advantages of Guangzhou Shipbuilding and is made of very hard wood. At first, no one could recognize what kind of wood it was. Later, Fa Shilu of the agriculture team identified it as lychee wood. The hardness of this wood Very high. In 1927, the Red Army on Hainan Island used lychee wood to build an all-wood muzzle-loading artillery piece. If it weren't for the combination of SKS + M43 bullets that transcend time and space, it would be difficult to penetrate the small artillery and muskets common at sea in this era.
There are a total of 16 guns on the ship, and it is difficult to identify the specific types of these guns. According to European standards, it can be regarded as a 4-8 pound artillery piece. The cannons were roughly cast, and most of them were made of various types of pig iron and miscellaneous iron. One of them even had an iron-bore wooden structure. It can be seen that the people who cast the cannons basically do not understand the technology of cannon casting: the artillery casting is rough and the structure is crude. Not to mention the technology of boring the gun bore, the countless pores on the gun body make the mechanical team stunned - with This thing has a greater chance of blowing itself up in a fight than killing the enemy.
The cannon was simply installed on a wooden frame, with a muzzle made on the bulwark and tied with a rope. There is no device to move and adjust the position of the gun, nor is there any aiming equipment. The only way to make the gun aim at the target is to constantly move the hull and bring the ship close enough. This is why the ship is equipped with more than 8 oars - in addition to serving as additional power, it also plays a role in quickly adjusting the ship's position.
After field tests, it was found that when using the fine-grained gunpowder modified by the traverser, the largest 8-pound gun can shoot iron bullets 5oo meters away. If the elevation angle is increased, it should be able to go further, but this The poor structure of the cannon prevented it from being loaded with too much gunpowder. In the battle, no shot was fired over 200 meters, which shows that the pirates were very aware of the quality of their artillery. Inferior ammunition further reduced the effective range: in addition to a small amount of lead bullets for muskets, the main shells on the ship were stones and some small iron bullets. From 184o to 1842, when the Qing army's fort bombarded British warships at the Pearl River Estuary , despite the "rain of bullets", no amount of stone shells could cause much damage to the oak hull of the British warship.
The quality of the gunpowder on the ship was even worse. It was completely powdered gunpowder with a high sulfur content. When this gunpowder was used for test firing, a lot of thick smoke was produced and the explosive power was very weak. In comparison, the quality of the gunpowder seized in the first anti-encirclement and suppression campaign was the best, apparently because it came from the official treasury, while the quality of the gunpowder seized from Gou's family was slightly lower. It seems that the gunpowder of this group of pirates was privately produced by underground workshops. The lack of saltpeter probably explains this.
In addition to the artillery, there are also more than a dozen different matchlock guns, some obviously obtained from the Portuguese or the Dutch, and some are local knockoffs, as well as bird guns and fire guns ranging from one eye to three eyes - ―Probably got it from the Ming army. These guns were rarely maintained and did not look very useful. Weapons enthusiasts from the mechanical group, which was always known for their fearlessness, did not dare to test-fire them. According to his estimation, the best quality original matchlock gun made in Portugal or the Netherlands, with good ammunition, has an effective range of no more than 5o meters.
The cold weapons seized on the ship were very rich and varied. Some of them had never been seen before. The intelligence and information department organized experts from various historians to come to identify them and they were able to roughly distinguish what these complicated things were.
The most common ones are bamboo spears, with blade-shaped spear points installed on the top of the bamboo poles. The length is between 5 and 6 meters. There are many such spears, which greatly exceeds the number of corpses found on the ship. Later, it was found out through prisoner interrogation. , in addition to being used for fighting, it was also used as a javelin.
Another type of spear is made of wood with spear points at both ends, and is used for close combat. One of the most commonly used cold weapons by pirates is a short waist knife that looks like a hatchet. The total length is only 5ocm and the blade is very strong.
There are also a large number of pear-headed darts and small darts used for throwing, hooks, hooks used to fix enemy ships... there are all kinds of things on the ship. Finally, a large number of fishing nets and rawhide were found - they were used to be installed on the bulwarks. They could withstand the enemy's light projectile weapons and prevent the enemy from engaging in gang-hopping. This time, they were dismantled in order to disguise themselves as fishing boats. down.
As common water weapons, there are two types of incendiary weapons: a bamboo tube with a torch, with a greased wood block inserted at the top of the bamboo tube, which is lit and thrown like a wooden handle grenade; and the other They are clay pots of different sizes, containing fire items such as gunpowder and sulfur. The top of the pot is concave and used to hold charcoal fire. When in use, the rope from the mast is swung to the deck of the enemy ship and smashed. .
"It's really too rich." Yu Eshui ignored the fact that the blood stained on the weapon was condensing and smelly, and he kept looking around excitedly, "I can write three or four papers on these things alone, and the core is all A piece of cake.”
"That's right, you can also interrogate real Chinese pirates from the 17th century. No historian can compare with you in this advantage!"
"Yes, yes." Yu Eshui didn't hear the ridicule, and kept taking pictures and taking notes of the messy scrap metal.
Wu De sent a group of commune members from the commune to clean up the bodies, and washed the deck with sea water and fine sand. By evening, the ship had been washed clean, except for the numerous bullet holes and bullet holes on the side panels and deck. The deck shed was beaten to pieces, and there were no traces of the battle.
Wu De looked at the ship and felt strange. He was also a navy soldier, and now he became the secretary of the commune! I had done this task of driving a fishing boat to protect fishermen countless times in the army, but it was actually snatched away by Chen Haiyang, a man with a frigate background. Jealousy, jealousy!
Jealousy was jealousy, and he had to do whatever he had to do. He looked at the things unloaded from the boat. They had basically been emptied of them, and even the sails had been removed - completely smashed. The members were still squatting on the deck, concentrating on picking out the lead bullets embedded in the wood with iron picks.
"We are really poor." He couldn't help but sigh. Lead is not that valuable anyway. As long as you look at the composition of the Ming Dynasty's inferior money that is everywhere, you will know that lead is a standard base metal. Stinginess in the industrial sector was also forced out. The ancient mining and metallurgical industry was too small compared to the huge appetite of the travelers. Once the new army under planning is established, hundreds of muskets will have to use lead bullets...
"Commander Wu, the navy handed over eighteen prisoners, please tell me how to deal with them?" Fu Youdi reported to him respectfully.
Fu Youdi became a cadre again, and Wu De took a fancy to him because he liked to dominate and control his harsh style. As soon as the public security crackdown at the Dongmen City Police Station ended, he was always anxious to get into the leadership position because he did not get it. Huo Fu Youdi was approved by Wu De and was appointed as the captain of the labor camp.
"All of them are assigned to the labor reform team. They must be under strict supervision!" Wu De ordered. "The leaders of the security team will interrogate them at any time. Don't send them too far away when they are assigned to work."
"yes."
After a comprehensive inspection of the ship's structure, the joint survey team concluded that the ship was very well-made and would be best restored for use. Whether as a fishing boat or a transport ship, it would be of great benefit.
The damage to the ship was not major, and the basic structure was intact. However, there were too many bullet holes in the ship's board, and water poured into it when the waves bumped. After on-site inspection, the ship still has value and can be repaired and continued to be used.
To repair the ship, it involves the upper pier of the ship. This is a rather complicated matter, but it is inevitable for ship repair and shipbuilding. According to the Navy's opinion, it is best to directly build a dry dock. The Navy proposed a plan to excavate a simple dock in a sheltered bay at Lingaojiao and dig out a 40-meter-long, 12-meter-wide, and 2.4-meter-deep dock. The canal is surrounded by stone walls, and then the water is drained. The ship is repaired in this dock without water. After repair, water is put in, and the ship can sail away. The locks will be manufactured and installed later so that new ships can be built and used.
This plan was rejected by the Planning Commission, which estimated that the investment would be too large. The construction team came up with a simple alternative to the huge and expensive dry dock - a simple slipway.
Simple slides use wooden slides and a large amount of grease to complete the up and down of the ship from the water to the slipway. The advantage is that the equipment is simple and easy to operate. The pressure-resistant requirements for the shore and beach foundation soil layers are not high. For ships under 500 tons, when going up and down the pier, the original ground only needs to be leveled, appropriately added with gravel and ballast, and rolled and smoothed. . And because of its simple structure, it is easy to disassemble and assemble. If you need to relocate, you can move it easily. In the past, many domestic small and medium-sized civilian shipyards used this equipment.
