The captain of the left wing Hussar was following the enemy fleet while waiting for orders. Due to the arc angle of the sea level, there was still a short distance between him and the Dengzhou. He had to rely on the watchman on the tall watchtower. The crewman used binoculars to observe the semaphore orders of the Dengzhou from behind.
This captain is called "this kid" by Takagizo because the two of them are quite familiar with each other. The middle-aged Takagizo is eleven years older than him, and he can be said to be treated as a biological brother. of.
Takagi's ancestors, five or six generations ago, were all shipwrights. Because they have excellent carpentry skills, and are especially good at splicing keels and ribs on sea ships, their lives are not that rich, but they are still decent.
Unfortunately, when it came to his father's generation, he was unlucky. Once, when his father accompanied Takagi San's mother to her parents' home, they were attacked by Japanese pirates. Takagi San's mother was humiliated and committed suicide, while his father and he were attacked by Japanese pirates. Take away.
Later, his father died in the Japanese pirates' lair, and he finally found an opportunity to escape when he accompanied the Japanese pirates to the coast to plunder wood and repair ships. However, he was suspected by the local officials of being a Japanese pirate and almost died in prison.
Fortunately, it had not been long since he was kidnapped, and his family's property was still there. Takagi San was able to get out of prison after losing all his money. However, because of his reputation as a "Japanese", the original boss did not dare to use him. In desperation, Takagi San had no choice but to sell his craft and work as a servant in Beijing. He also gave up his original name and changed his name to Takagi San from then on.
When he was imprisoned in the Yamen Prison, the person who helped him sell his property and take care of everything was the current young captain of the "Left-wing Hussars", Luo Yuan.
Luo Yuan and Takagi San are family friends, and their ancestral craftsmanship is in shipbuilding. However, the ancestors of the Luo family left the craftsmanship for some reason in their early years and made a living in private shipyards. They were wealthier than the three families in Takagi. Two generations later, Takagi San's family gathered enough money and managed to leave the craftsmanship. The two families then worked together in the same shipyard, and their relationship became even closer.
Later, the Japanese pirates came, Takagi San's mother committed suicide, and the father and son were kidnapped. The Luo family was not that strong either. Luo Yuan's father and uncle were both arrested, but he escaped because he was ordered to take his mother and aunt to escape.
After Takagi San escaped from the Japanese pirate team, Luo Yuan learned that his father and uncle had died in a foreign country because they were discovered after escaping.
When Takagi San was taken away by the Yamen people, he thought he would not survive. Before leaving, he publicly confessed that everything in his family would be handled by Luo Yuan. As a result, Luo Yuan not only did not embezzle his family's property, but also participated in most of his own property, and finally fished out Takagi San.
In this way, the two people are really close to each other. But the situation was not good at that time. The shipyard where they used to work was also robbed by Japanese pirates - in fact, the main purpose of that wave of Japanese pirates was the shipyard - so now not only the family property is gone, but also the job.
Luo Yuan also had a mother and aunt to support, and Takagi San also felt that he had the obligation to support them, so the two had to do everything possible to find work.
Jinghua was recruiting people in Guangzhou at the time, and found that both of them were familiar with ships and were young. After an inspection, they were given two options: change their surnames to Gao family servants, or accept long-term employment. The former's monthly salary is 8 taels, while the latter's monthly salary is 6 taels and has to be signed for twenty years.
Gao Musan chose to become a servant of the Gao family because he had an uncle who settled in Linxian. Luo Yuan was still responsible for carrying on the family line, and his mother refused to allow him to be a servant, so she had to sign a twenty-year contract with Jinghua. Long term appointment.
In fact, according to his point of view, if he is doing the same work, losing a quarter of his salary in a month is still a big loss. It's a pity that people in this era are very concerned about keeping their surnames, and he can't face his mother.
However, although their identities were different when they entered Jinghua, fate is sometimes so magical, and both of them ended up being transformed from shipbuilders to sailors.
This is a long story, but to make it short, the key is that Gao Pangshi suddenly and unexpectedly transferred to Guangxi to the south, so the construction of the Nanyang Fleet was greatly advanced from the original plan.
At that time, Gao pragmatically had a shipyard in the north, and because the Craftsman School had opened a shipbuilding department, he was able to recruit shipbuilding manpower faster than he imagined. The shipyard in the south was suddenly over-staffed. So based on the principle of putting talents first, he asked the Guangzhou Port to select a group of smart and willing young people to study in the Shipbuilding Department of the Craftsman School - but not to learn shipbuilding, but to learn navigation.
At that time, the standard given by the Guangzhou Port was that men over the age of 16 and those under the age of 26 could go to the craftsman school for further studies. The Guangzhou Port was responsible for the expenses, and it was paid, and they promised to "double their salary" after completing the course. .
Of course, this condition was very favorable. Luo Yuan immediately signed up and passed, but Takagi San was older than him - he was already twenty-eight years old at that time.
Unexpectedly, there is no way out, and there is a bright future in another village. Gao Musan happened to run into Gao Mengnan (who was in charge of Guangzhou Port at the time) who came to inspect the preparation progress. Gao Mengnan was very satisfied with his performance and wrote to him separately after asking the reason. He wrote a letter of recommendation recommending him to go to the Craftsman School to learn navigation.
Gao Mengnan was known as a "big old man", and this letter of recommendation was obviously useful, so Gao Musan and Luo Yuan became classmates and studied and trained together in Tianjin Port (both shipbuilding and navigation majors require practical training, so they usually Most of them are in Tianjin, but rarely when they stay in Jian Xinzhai).
Only half a year later, because Gao Pragmatic had already moved his mind to capture Annan and asked for the expansion of the Nanyang Fleet, Takagi San and Luo Yuan graduated early and both transferred to the Nanyang Fleet for internship.
Perhaps because of his age, Takagi San was considered very stable by his superiors, so his starting point was very high. He started as the first mate of an armed transport ship, while Luo Yuan had a slightly lower level, starting as a gunner.
Here I want to talk about the job system of each ship under the Beijing-China Liangyang Fleet. The Ming Dynasty had its own navy, and had a glorious voyage to the Western Sea in its early years. However, the official data on the voyage to the Western Sea has long been lost. It is said that it was burned by Liu Daxia that year.
As a result, the navy naturally declined. Later, as the Japanese pirates became more and more serious, they began to build some more ships, but not too many. They rarely went to sea to fight Japanese pirates to the death, but mostly conquered and suppressed them on land.
In this way, the establishment of the Navy is also relatively chaotic. Every general is almost doing his own thing, and the chaos is terrible. Gao Pragmatic felt that his own fleet couldn't mess around like this. If he couldn't find any information about Zheng He's period, he could just learn from the British guy who was the most widely circulated in later generations. After all, he had traveled all over the world for three to four hundred years, so he shouldn't go wrong if he learned a basic system. .
As an independent unit at sea, no matter how big or small a warship is, the topmost person is of course the captain. As the most basic combat unit, when performing tasks independently, the captain of a warship is the highest officer of this small maritime world. He manages everything on the ship and is also responsible for everything that happens on the ship.
The captain has absolute authority on his battleship. No one is allowed to question the captain's authority under any circumstances. Anyone who dares to question the captain's authority, whether he is an officer or a sailor, will be severely punished.
Below the captain is a deputy captain, also called a ship officer or a ship's mate, usually called the first mate in our various works. In fact, this is not exactly the same thing as the first mate of a modern civilian ship. At least on later Chinese warships, he is generally called the deputy chief directly. However, because Gao Pragmatic himself often makes slips of the tongue, Jinghua people also like to call him first mate.
When the captain dies, is injured, or is unable to command the warship for any reason, the ship officer is the first "successor" to take over the command of the warship.
Behind the mate are several officers who are usually lower in rank than the captain and mate. For example, the Navigation Officer (Jinghua changed his name to the Navigation Captain to avoid trouble) is similar to the navigator. It is usually an old officer with rich navigation experience but unable to be promoted to captain for some reason. However, the Jinghua Two Ocean Fleet is too young, and other The age requirement for a captain is not that high.
The gunnery officer is responsible for directing the artillery and sailors in combat, and Luo Yuan did this from the beginning. Of course, for the same reason, this position is called gunner chief in Beijing.
British Royal Navy warships usually have a group of special members whose status is between officers and other sailors. These are midshipmen (cadet officers).
As the world's number one navy for a long time, the success of the British Royal Navy is inseparable from the officer training system. To become a naval officer, you must first become a naval trainee (that is, a trainee officer).
Some children who become navy students will leave school, parents and affluent life, and travel to the world on warships to kill people and set fires. At this time, some of them are still children in their 10s. In later generations, there was a quite famous naval battle film "The Furious Sea" in the Age of Sail, and those naughty kids in it were.
They have the lowest status among officers, but are far higher than any other sergeants and sailors. In "The Battle of the Sea", a certain tough sailor buddy did not salute these trainee officers, but bumped into them. This kind of illegal behavior is a taboo in the Royal Navy, and can even be regarded as a precursor to mutiny among sailors. So after seeing this, the captain immediately took measures to severely punish the sailors to maintain the dignity of the officers and order on the battleship.
The Beijing-China Liangyang Fleet did not implement such a system at first, but after the defeat of Annan, it also began to apply it on a small scale. Of course, there are no aristocratic officers in Jinghua. Those who serve as naval students are all students majoring in navigation from the Shipbuilding Department of Jinghua Craftsman Academy. On rare occasions, there are also students from the Shipbuilding Department, but they are very few.
Although the British Royal Navy is nicknamed pirates by other countries, especially Spain, the Netherlands and other countries, the Royal Navy system is still very aristocratic. This does not refer to the style or etiquette of the Royal Navy, but to its personnel composition: there are always two classes between soldiers and officers.
If you want to be a naval officer, you must first have a good background - money and status, both are indispensable. Because at the very least, even if you are not from a noble family, you must be born into a middle-class family that can afford high tuition fees. In addition, you must be recommended by a big shot with a naval background (at least a captain level) to the Navy Department, so that you can become a A famous naval student.
In other words, if you are a child of ordinary people, you will almost never become a naval officer. You should just remain a sailor and soldier.
In "The Battle of the Sea", there were originally 5 such marine students on the ship. At the end, 2.5 marine students survived: one committed suicide, one was killed in action, and one was disabled and became a one-armed hero - the casualty rate was exactly 50%. It can be seen that marine students Although they have a special status, they will still face the test of life and death when they actually face war.
Since Jinghua has no status restrictions, he can even get paid to study in the shipbuilding department, so the key to becoming a naval student lies in his daily performance.
Not only must he perform extremely well before entering school, he must also perform well after entering school to have the opportunity to become a naval cadet and train on the ship - this kind of training generally means that his starting point will be higher than others in the future. Just like a Jinshi and a Juren have different official positions when they first join the officialdom.
Doctors are a special position on British Royal Navy warships, because sometimes the ship's doctor is not a soldier but a civilian employee of the navy. Just as doctors were a respected profession at that time, they had a certain status on the ship.
Of course, if a doctor is in the military, he must at least be a master sergeant. Generally speaking, a good doctor would disdain being a doctor in the navy, but at that time, British technology was developing very rapidly, and natural science and natural history were also developing rapidly. The same, so many doctors are usually the people with the most knowledge of natural sciences on a battleship, and naturally they also serve as naturalists on the battleship. Therefore, many doctors are still willing to take the salary of the Navy and travel around the world on warships with the name of doctor.
Although there is a big gap in the level of doctors on board the ship, considering how rare doctors were at that time, even a doctor with a moderate level could confidently say to some officers - "I treat you because I am looking after you, sir." You don’t know how to praise me!” Of course, you shouldn’t dare to say this to the captain.
The military doctors on Jinghua's ships do not have such a high status. This is not because they are pragmatic and do not respect doctors, but because there is no shortage of doctors in Jinghua.
Jinghua's medical system is its own, with Jinghua Pharmacy practicing medicine (and selling medicine) all over the country, and the Medical Department of Craftsman School headed by Li Shizhen, which graduates a large number of medical students every year. In this way, medical students who need to practice everywhere can just be put into the two-ocean fleet, which not only facilitates their growth, but also helps them find employment...the relative status is not that noble.
Below the officers of the British Royal Navy, there are petty officers and petty officers at all levels. Like modern warships, these petty officers grew up to be technical petty officers.
For example, the sailing sergeant is responsible for organizing and storing sails and rigging; the gunnery sergeant is responsible for the management and maintenance of swords, guns and firearms (with the addition of the word sergeant, the responsibilities are different, the former is responsible for command, the latter is responsible for maintenance) and the supply officer (commander), etc. ; There are also carpenters who are responsible for repairing warships... The lowest-ranking non-commissioned officers are paid about the same as ordinary sailors, not much better.
In the Royal Navy, boatswain and helmsman are normally the highest positions that an ordinary sailor or soldier can obtain. However, Jinghua is not so strict in this regard. Those who perform exceptionally well or make great contributions will have the opportunity to be recommended to study in the shipbuilding department. After studying, they can usually wait for promotion.
In addition, there is a relatively special group of people on board the British Royal Navy, which is the Marine Captain who leads the Marine Corps on board the ship. The role of the Marines on a warship is somewhat similar to that of the military police on a modern warship. In addition to using rifles and cold weapons to fight the enemy in battle, the most important role of the marines on board ships of various countries at that time was to prevent their own sailors from mutiny.
The ratio of them to sailors usually does not exceed 1:4, they are not responsible for driving the ship, and they are usually the only people on the ship besides the captain who can control weapons. Other personnel are only allowed to possess weapons after the captain orders their distribution.
Then there are the off-duty personnel, that is, the "craftsmen" on the ship, that is, the assistants of professional non-commissioned officers. For example, a sail patcher, a carpenter, or a supply officer's assistant who repairs sails.
Although their treatment is not much better than that of sailors, the biggest advantage is that they do not have to be on duty (that is, they are exempted from duty) and can sleep peacefully. Moreover, certain positions can provide you with a little convenience on a first-come, first-served basis, such as chef, which is the most lucrative position for ordinary sailors on a sailing battleship.
What's left are the sailors who are at the bottom of the warship and the entire Royal Navy: the largest number of people. Their number accounts for the majority of a battleship, and they are also the cornerstone of a battleship's ability to operate.
Sailors are usually divided into deck crews and gun crews. As the name suggests, the deck crew is the people who work on the deck. During the long voyage, they are responsible for taking care of the huge sails and countless dense spider webs of rigging on the ship. During the "border battle", they also have to rush forward like soldiers. The leader of these sailors is the boatswain.
The artillery team operates various types of artillery in the gun cabin below the deck (however, Jinghua's armed transport ship has open-air deck guns, and the artillery team also works on the deck, while cruisers and above have two-deck guns).
The gunners on battleships are usually commanded by an officer during battle. Some smaller warships have an experienced senior petty officer as firing commander. But when they are not fighting, they usually work in groups on the deck and in the cabin like ordinary sailors.
The person in charge of commanding the artillery battle in Jinghua was the gunner-gunner - Luo Yuan did this in the beginning.
Takagi San was rewarded for his meritorious service during Huang Zhiting's expedition to Myanmar. He was promoted from captain of an armed transport ship to captain of a first-class cruiser. Luo Yuan was the first mate of the armed transport ship "Civet" during that battle. This was the temporary assignment assigned to Takagi San at that time. He commanded a ship and was therefore rewarded after the war.
The reward was so great that he skipped the captain of the armed transport ship and went to the warship. However, he did not get a job on the cruiser. Instead, he was transferred to the only two high-speed reconnaissance ships because of his age advantage. long. The reason why his report seemed so radical was because young people were eager to try out new "toys" after getting them.
Now that Takagi San's approval has come down, it's time for his little brother to show off.
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