Jinghua Beiyang Fleet "Dengzhou" is a first-class cruiser built by Jinghua Northern Shipyard. This class of battleships has a bulk of 2,400 tons (1,200 tons of displacement) and is a standard two-deck gun battleship.
The entire ship is equipped with 52 artillery pieces of various types. Among them, the two main guns located at the bow and stern were the largest No. 1 heavy guns in Jinghua at that time. There are also 14 No. 2 heavy guns and 36 No. 3 medium guns. The ship has a crew of 346 people. In this expedition, the four cruisers and two high-speed reconnaissance ships were the only warships in the fleet that did not carry land division troops.
Since the No. 1 warship of this class is the "Laizhou" assigned to the Nanyang Fleet, Jinghua internally calls the same class of warships the "Laizhou-class cruiser".
Specifically, among the Beiyang Fleet, the two "Laizhou-class" first-class cruisers "Dengzhou" and "Jinzhou" are the most powerful battleships after the flagship "Liu Rengui", which is a third-class battleship.
Gao Zhenxin used two Laizhou-class cruisers, which can be regarded as the absolute main force, to provoke the Spanish treasure ship fleet. In terms of the tonnage of both parties, there is still a certain risk, because the Spanish fleet's large treasure ship tonnage is not as large as the two Laizhou ships. Class cruiser is small.
However, Gao Zhenxin is very confident in the strength of these two warships. This class of warships is built using what Gao Pragmatic calls the "combination of Chinese and Western" design concepts. It is a typical three-masted warship. The so-called three-masted sailing ship is equipped with three masts, the bowmast, the mainmast and the stern mast. The foremast and mainmast carry square sails, and the tailmast carries a diagonal spinnaker.
The square sail is a simple and ancient sailing rig. The sail is tied to the beam and then suspended from the mast at its center. It is rectangular in shape. Furthermore, although the girder can rotate widely around the mast, only the same side is exposed to the wind.
The jib is the prototype of the longitudinal sail that later appeared. A long girder is hung diagonally from the masthead. The upper end is much higher than the masthead and the lower end is close to the deck. This allows the two sides of the sail tied to it to receive the wind.
The biggest advantage of this design is that it is both fast and flexible; the horizontal sail is easy to manufacture and has a large wind-receiving area, while the diagonal spinnaker helps adapt to the wind direction. You don't have to wait for the most suitable breeze to sail as before. , increasing the flexibility of the ship.
The expansion of the sail area means that the hull size can be increased, the speed is increased, and the loading capacity is increased. The range and performance of the ship have increased sharply after the emergence of this sail type (this design has already appeared in Europe).
But if the Laizhou class only did this, Gao Zhenxin would not be so confident. In fact, the full sails used by the Europeans at this time were soft sails, while Jinghua always used Chinese hard sails.
The advantage of a soft sail is that it has a large wind intake, so the area can be larger. When the wind is strong and the wind direction is suitable, the speed and load have great advantages. Even the soft sail is part of another part of the same mast. The sail can be adjusted to a greater extent, which is helpful to avoid rocks and rocks. In addition, because the soft sail can be fully retracted, it is relatively safe when facing a storm.
However, soft sails also have many shortcomings, such as complex operations, large personnel, and long sailing time. At this time, the sails of Western large ships consisted of square sails, Latin sails and gaff sails.
This results in many modular and very complex procedures in operation. For example, the pulley can only be used to adjust the rope, but cannot directly raise the sail, etc.
In some later sailing-age sailing or naval battle films, the reason why there are so many crew members on Western ships is mainly because more than 80% of them are purely for navigation rather than fighting. Therefore, the manning has to be increased to avoid encounters that require fighting. There were not enough combatants at that time.
The main advantage of Chinese-style hard sails is that they are highly efficient in receiving wind. They can rotate around the mast, so they can achieve the so-called "eight sides of the wind" and are highly flexible and adaptable.
Another point that is often overlooked or misunderstood is that hard sails are actually lighter than soft sails, and because they have supporting bones, the quality requirements for the sail surface itself are very low.
In actual sailing, it doesn't matter even if there are many holes. The ship can still move. It is not like a soft sail, which is often severely damaged because a hole is torn by the wind and must be replaced quickly to keep moving. .
From such a comparison, we can see that for sails of the same weight and area, hard sails have greater advantages and the cost is much lower. However, please note that boats with soft sails generally have a very large sail area and a high mast, which can offset this advantage.
However, the advantage of a large sail and a high mast also brings troubles such as the mast being easily broken. Therefore, the masts of Western-style sailboats are equipped with reinforcing cables to stabilize the mast. But this made it impossible for the sail to rotate around the mast, so the efficiency of the Western square sail was very low in crosswinds, so they used spread sails to solve this problem.
In fact, Western-style sailboats later developed wing sails, which further accelerated the speed. However, this thing has not yet appeared, so Gao pragmatically ignores it for the time being.
Generally speaking, in history, the total sail area of Western sailing ships has defeated the unit area efficiency of Chinese sailing ships. The total sail area of a Western sailing ship of about 850 tons can reach the size of 6 basketball courts, while the sails of a battleship Area can exceed 10 acres.
Gao pragmatically remembers that the average speed of the last winner of the sailing blue ribbon could reach about 16 knots, and the coal-burning steam warships during World War I were only at this level.
Before Jinghua, Chinese sailing ships still had problems with gun positions and defense. However, these two problems were caused by the same reason, which was the water-isolated cabin design that made many Chinese proud in later generations.
The problem is actually this: If the entire ship does not have a watertight compartment, you only need an opening to hoist the cargo into the cabin, and then move the cargo position to fill the cabin.
But if there is a watertight tank, you need to open an opening in each tank to fill the entire ship, so you will have several openings on the deck, as well as the main deck below, and still below, so you will Considerable loss of gun emplacements.
Because Chinese sailing ships have bulkheads to support the structure, they either use no ribs or use very few ribs during construction. Since Western sailing ships have no compartments to support the structure, they use a large number of ribs, especially warships, almost one by one.
These ribs provide a very good defensive effect. For example, the solid shells of the 18-pound naval guns of the Napoleonic era cannot even cause decisive damage to the 46-inch-thick ribs at a distance of 300 yards, and they cannot penetrate even when fired at close range.
You must know that at that time, every British battleship had a rib on the left and right sides of its gun emplacement. Therefore, the proportion of warships sunk in real naval battles was very small, and most of them were captured.
After the Revolutionary War, the United States took advantage of the rich and high-quality timber resources in the North American continent to carefully build a number of oak battleships. These battleships played an important role in the subsequent war with Britain in its attempt to retake the North American colonies.
In the naval battles of this war, the artillery shells fired by British warships at medium and long distances were often bounced off the hulls of US warships, making it impossible for the British Royal Navy's proud artillery technology to take advantage. The British crew exclaimed, " iron ship".
The U.S. warships relied on their strong hulls and a large number of short and heavy guns to engage in short-range artillery battles with the British army. As a result, the British army was hit by the powerful short-range firepower of the U.S. military and suffered heavy casualties, thus allowing the young U.S. Navy to win the victory at sea. .
[Note: Of course, the U.S. Army was not so lucky. It was beaten by the British troops from Canada and even the capital Washington was lost. As a result, the British burned down the presidential palace. Fortunately, the Presidential Palace is a stone building, but it was burned black. Later, the Americans had to paint the Presidential Palace white... This is the origin of the White House in the United States. ]
Since Chinese sailing ships use fewer ribs, they are relatively easy to be penetrated, and the damage caused by cannonballs will be much greater than that of Western sailing ships. [Note: The Japanese ships were even worse. They once used 8 main ships to besiege a Dutch merchant ship and were all sunk. ]
At the same time, the enhancement of the hull structure of Western-style ships also helps to equip a large number of artillery on the ship without having to worry about being shaken apart by the recoil of intensively fired artillery.
The hull structure of the original Chinese-style ships could not withstand such force. This is the reason why Chinese ships in the original history could only be equipped with no more than 30 artillery pieces at most - it was not that they were unwilling, but they simply couldn't.
So if we look at the original historical situation, the Chinese sailing ship is an excellent commercial ship type. Due to the use of hard sails, it is easy to operate, requires much fewer sailors than a Western sailboat with soft sails, and is more flexible in complex sea conditions. And due to the use of bulkhead design, its sinking resistance and cost are also better than those of Western sailing ships.
However, due to speed, gun position and defense reasons, this Chinese-style sailing ship is not suitable for use as a warship in the era of hot weapons, especially in the era when solid bullets are used as the main weapon.
There is a doubt here: since Chinese-style sailing ships cannot carry more than 30 guns, how do you explain the 52 cannons equipped by the Laizhou-class cruiser? As a third-level battleship, the "Liu Rengui" is equipped with 72 cannons. Isn't it even more inexplicable?
There is nothing that cannot be explained. In one sentence: the hull of the Jinghua battleship actually adopts a Western-style design with compact ribs. Although the water-proof compartment design is retained, the number of water-proof compartments is much smaller than that of the original Chinese sailboat. Each compartment is The water tanks are made relatively large.
In other words, Jinghua actually uses the decrease in sink resistance under normal circumstances in exchange for the increase in sink resistance in combat. But one thing that needs to be emphasized is that only warship-class ships in Jinghua do this, and armed transport ships are not built according to this idea.
This also explains why the 1,600-material armed transport ship costs only 55,000 taels of silver, while the 2,400-material Laizhou-class cruiser costs as much as 160,000 taels of silver. As mentioned before, the cost of such a compact hull is very high.
A Western-style hull plus a weakened Chinese-style water-tight cabin, a Western-style full-sail design plus an improved Chinese-style hard sail (the improvement method seems to have been written before, so I won’t repeat it here). This is what Gao Pragmatic calls "Chinese and Western".
This design not only greatly improves the combat sinking resistance of Chinese sailing ships, but also greatly increases the number of guns that can be equipped - with the same hull size, European warships at this time can carry about 60-70 guns, while the Laizhou-class cruiser still has Less than that, but still loaded with 52 doors.
Relying on the high pragmatic design ideas and the small plug-in of Jinghua's gun manufacturing level, these 52 guns should not be weaker than the gun combat capabilities of European warships of the same size at this time.
If the Laizhou class has any disadvantages compared with the Spanish treasure ship (the two are about the same size), it is probably that the speed when the sails are full and the wind is strong is not as fast as the other. As for sea conditions such as headwinds and light winds, the Laizhou class actually has advantages.
The navigators temporarily assigned to the expedition fleet by the Nanyang Fleet in Quanzhou were not given for free. Gao Zhenxin listened to their judgment, so he dared to bet that there would be no strong winds in the next few days!
Of course, he also thought about what to do if it was really windy - well, there was no other way. If it didn't work, he would just drive away against the wind. But in this case, the plan of luring the enemy into encirclement and annihilation would be over, because this is the season when the south wind blows (mostly the southeast wind). If they escape against the wind, the "Dengzhou" and the others will have no choice but to run to Manila, away from the ambush location. Reverse.
A very important reason why the "Dengzhou" was selected as the command ship of the enemy formation is that the captain of the ship has experience in this area.
The captain is an "old acquaintance" named Takagi San. Before he became the captain of the cruiser "Dengzhou", he was the captain of the armed transport ship "Trichogramma" of the Nanyang Fleet.
Because this person had a brief encounter with the Spanish fleet during Huang Zhiting's expedition to Burma and commanded it well, he was promoted to cruiser captain [Note: See Chapter 246 of the Guangxi Volume: The Forward Battle]. And because Jinghua has internal system requirements for job rotation, he was transferred from the Nanyang Fleet to the Beiyang Fleet. This time the five main warships of the Beiyang Fleet came out in full force, and of course he followed them to fight.
Standing in the captain's cabin, Takagi San was listening to the first mate's report on the inspection just now, including whether the rigging was clean (the maritime environment determines that they are easily slippery with moss), whether the sail surface was intact and tough, whether the gunpowder in the gunpowder compartment was damp, Whether the shells in the shell compartment are rusty, etc.
At this time, the lookout on the watchtower suddenly shouted something and reported something. The first mate saluted Takagi with three fists and hurriedly ran out to learn the details.
When he came in again, he immediately reported to Takagi Sanhui: "Captain, the signal signal of the left wing Hussars is reporting: The Spanish fleet discovered their following and accompanying ships, but did not make any reaction and continued to sail towards Manila."
Takagi San frowned slightly and said sarcastically: "Why did the Spaniards lose their spirit this time? Wasn't it the same as the tiger's butt that couldn't be touched last time?" After a pause, he said again: "Does the left-wing light cavalry have any plans or requests? ?”
The first mate said: "Yes, they suggested getting closer, opening the gun doors, and getting ready for battle. If the Spaniards are still indifferent, they can simply order the Spaniards to stop the ship and wait for inspection."
Takagizo laughed: "This kid is very brave. A scout ship asked six large Galen ships to stop for inspection? If I were the commander of the Spanish fleet, I would have ordered the killing of this sea mosquito on the spot."
Unfortunately, the first mate of the "Dengzhou" seemed to be a very serious person. He did not join in the joke, but asked seriously: "Captain, do you approve their plan?"
Takagi San thought for a moment and immediately said decisively: "Why not approve it? Approve it and let them execute it immediately. But once the Spaniards really turn around and attack him, just let them fire a few long-range cannonballs for a while, but they must fight and retreat." , The main thing is to retreat, we can’t really fight with the Spaniards here.”
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