Although the Dutch knew that the Da Chu Empire was very powerful, they also knew that once the Da Chu Empire became ambitious and launched a war on their Spice Islands, it would be difficult for them to resist it.
However, as a maritime coachman country, the reason why they have been able to develop to this extent and have a large number of overseas colonies is that they have a spirit of unwillingness to admit defeat and adventure.
All Europeans who come out to engage in overseas trade these days are risking their lives with their heads in their belts.
These people are all desperadoes in the true sense, the kind who want money rather than their lives. Well, they also include those from the Chu Empire who went to overseas indigenous countries to take risks in doing business.
For such a person, relying solely on intimidation is of no use.
Even if you know you can't win in the end, you still won't give in easily until the last minute.
These colonists from the Dutch were no exception!
The Spice Islands were the lifeblood of their East India Company. It was impossible for the Da Chu Empire to use a lame reason and military intimidation to make them give up their lifeblood.
As the saying goes, if you don’t need money, you need your life!
Therefore, even though the Vassal Affairs Department of the Dachu Empire had sent an ultimatum, although the Dutch in Batavia were panicking, they showed no signs of surrender.
Instead, they were prepared to resist and defend to the death, so that the Chu Empire could not attack for a long time before giving up its plan to attack Batavia and control the Spice Islands.
For this reason, they have been mentally prepared to stay in Batavia for a year or even longer.
For this reason, they quickly prepared for war. The gunners on the fort were ready, and the fleet in the port had already set sail, preparing to intercept a possible attack by the Dachu Empire Navy.
A large number of Dutch soldiers stationed in the city and the indigenous servant troops recruited and armed also gathered urgently, preparing to resist and defend to the death.
This reaction of the Dutch was also within the expectations of the Chu army.
If an ultimatum alone could make the Dutch East India Company surrender obediently, then the Chu Empire would have conquered the world long ago.
But it doesn't matter. Anyway, the Chu Empire never thought that the other party would surrender obediently, otherwise it would not have dispatched a large number of army troops to cross the sea and land in Wandan.
Therefore, the Nanyang Fleet outside Batavia is still floating outside, with no plans to approach Batavia Port for bombardment or direct landing.
That's not necessary!
Although the strength of this Nanyang fleet at this time far exceeds that of the Dutch East India Company fleet, it is still not necessary.
In this battle, the Nanyang Fleet's mission was very simple. One was to blockade the Batavia Port and block a large number of Dutch sailing warships in the port.
The second is to dispatch escort fleets to maintain the maritime transportation supply lines in the rear and escort various transport ships to avoid threats from sporadic Dutch warships or armed merchant ships.
The rest will naturally be taken care of by the coolies from the Army!
After all, the army is better at conquering fortified cities. The navy cannot drive warships ashore to attack the city, right?
The only thing that needs to be vigilant is the Dutch fleet in the Batavia port, which rushes out of the port at the risk of death, and then engages in close-range gang combat attacks or simply arson.
Although the Nanyang Fleet has been equipped with some of the Chu Empire's latest iron-ribbed wooden hull ships, which have much better protection than pure wooden ships, you still have to be careful in the face of such attacks. After all, the hulls are still mainly made of wood, and Every ship still has sails on it.
So even an iron-ribbed wooden hull boat is afraid of fire!
As for naval guns, the current equipment of the Da Chu Empire Navy is still mainly front-loaded smoothbore guns. Although grenades are used on a large scale, they are very lethal to sailing wooden ships, but the effective range is limited and the rate of fire is also limited.
Therefore, the iron-ribbed wooden hull ships of the Dachu Empire Navy actually did not have much epoch-making advantages over pure wooden ships.
You can punch a hole in me, and I can punch a hole in you.
But as long as they stay on guard, the Nanyang Fleet will not give the Dutch such an opportunity.
Because there are still some ships in the Nanyang Fleet of the Dachu Empire Navy that are powered by sails.
After the Dachu Empire developed the high-pressure steam engine at the Guangzhou Machinery Company, it had already begun to put the steam engine on ships.
To this end, the Navy has adopted two major routes. On the one hand, it is to install steam engines on existing pure sailing ships, especially warships with relatively new hulls and worthy of modification, turning these pure sailing ships into motor sails. power and enhance its combat capabilities.
Due to the limited time for this kind of modification, the production capacity of high-horsepower naval steam engines has not yet been fully increased, and the modification will take several months. Currently, only more than ten warships have been modified, and six modifications were also used for this operation. The battleships that passed were put into battle.
It is worth noting that the internal space of these battleships modified with steam engines was very tight due to the size and weight of the steam engines themselves, coupled with the need to carry coal and a large amount of fresh water, and part of the lower deck had to be eliminated. artillery to free up space and load.
Therefore, the firepower of the modified battleship has dropped compared to the original one.
Among them, the Hami, the first third-class battleship to be refitted, had only 64 guns left after the modification. Compared with the previous 74 cannons, it was ten guns less. At the same time, there was no living space and living supplies for the sailors. Plenty before.
This is the price you have to pay for steam engine power!
Even so, the steam engine on the modified Hami is actually not very reliable. In addition to repeated problems such as many failures, the main reason is that the power is too small.
The steam engine it carries only has more than 500 horsepower, and the coal it carries is very limited. The steam engine cannot be used as the main power at all, and can only be used as an auxiliary sail in battle or when entering and leaving the port.
It is impossible to propel such a large ship of more than 1,700 tons on an ocean voyage by relying on the power of more than 400 steam engines.
The second route is to build a new motor sailing ship. However, the construction of medium and large warships takes a long time, and designing and building a new steam warship is also a new challenge for the Da Chu Empire Navy. Therefore, there is currently no medium and large warship. One vessel was completed and put into service.
However, small-tonnage frigates are designed and constructed very quickly. The Yulin-class frigates, the first specially designed motor-driven sailing ship in the Da Chu Empire Navy, began service in batches at the beginning of this year. Currently, eight ships are in service. Currently, these eight Yulin-class frigates class frigates, all serving in the Nanyang Fleet and participated in this combat operation.
In other words, in this battle against the Dutch, the Chu Empire Navy Nanyang Fleet mobilized 14 modified or newly built motor sailing ships, a total of two battleships, four cruisers, and eight frigates.
These fourteen steam engine sailing ships are also the absolute main force of this operation of the Nanyang Fleet, because the excellent maneuverability brought by the steam engine is far beyond what pure wind sailing ships can only compare with.
When you take advantage of the wind direction to kill me, I will start the steam engine and run against the wind. What can you do to me?
Mobility capability is also the core reason why the Chu Empire's navy is determined to equip steam engines and build ships.
Sure enough, the navy's preparedness was necessary. Just in the evening, when night was about to fall but before it was completely dark, a group of ships rushed out of the Batavia port... not sails in the traditional sense. Not a battleship, but more than twenty galleys!
These Dutch people actually used the galleys that the Southeast Asian indigenous people liked to use to carry out attacks.
The speed of these galleys is very flexible, far beyond what those large sail warships can compare with.
At this time, if the warships in the Nanyang Fleet were all large ocean-going sail warships, they might capsize in the gutter accidentally.
This kind of thing has been very common in recent decades. Southeast Asian indigenous countries often deal with the Dutch or Portuguese in small waters such as offshore or straits.
But today, the Chu Empire's Nanyang Fleet already has fourteen motor sailing ships equipped with steam engines. These warships have maneuverability that pure sail warships cannot match.
The reconnaissance ship in front saw a galley being dispatched from the opposite port to attack, and the two sail battleships and four sail cruisers that had been prepared in the back began to maneuver.
They completely ignored the direction of the wind and quickly formed into pairs, forming multiple horizontal formations and then seizing the "T" position, preparing to cover the incoming Dutch galleys with artillery fire.
The powerful broadside firepower formed by two battleships and four cruisers, even if these firepower is still only forward-mounted smoothbore cannons, can still smash the galleys on the opposite side into slag.
These were the actions of those large-tonnage battleships. Just as the capital ships at the rear were preparing for line combat, the Eighth Escort Fleet and the Twenty-third Escort Fleet in the Nanyang Fleet also began to take action.
These two frigate fleets are the only two Yulin-class frigate squadrons in the Nanyang Fleet. Each frigate fleet has four Yulin-class frigates.
The Yulin-class frigate is the first newly designed sailing ship in the Da Chu Empire Navy specially designed to be equipped with steam engines. It is an iron-ribbed wooden hull ship and adopts the unified large-caliber naval gun that has become popular in the Da Chu Empire Navy in recent years. Thought.
This class of ship is the first iron-ribbed wooden hull frigate in the Chu Empire. As the successor model of the Jiangning-class iron-ribbed wooden hull ship, it inherits the excellent hull shape of the Yulin class, but the internal cabin structure, sails and armed layout , are all very different.
After all, the basic design concepts of the previous pure sailing ships, even the Jiangning-class frigates with iron-ribbed wooden hulls, were still similar to those of the early pure sailing ships.
However, after the era of steam engines and sailing ships, ship design must take into account the deployment of steam engines. Ship steam engines are not light in size and weight, and they also carry a large amount of coal and fresh water. Therefore, how to design internal cabins is a very big challenge. .
This is also the reason why the Dachu Empire Navy did not use the original ship type for optimized design, but adopted a new design of Yulin-class frigate.
The Yulin-class frigate has a full-load displacement of 670 tons. It is equipped with a two-cylinder horizontal steam engine and uses a single-shaft propeller for propulsion. Instead of using a single-shaft propeller, the technology is more mature and the cost is cheaper. It is now widely used on civilian ships and some naval inland rivers. Paddle wheel propulsion used on gunboats.
This is not to say that propeller propulsion technology is now better or more efficient, it is simply that the huge paddle wheel has poor protection in battle and can easily be hit and damaged by enemy artillery fire.
Moreover, the huge paddle wheel may block the firing range of one's own naval guns.
For this reason, the Navy has adopted a more technologically advanced, more costly, and more risky propeller propulsion method in the Yulin-class frigates.
The ship can reach a speed of six knots under pure steam power, and can reach an economical speed of four knots under pure steam power, with an endurance of 300 nautical miles. This speed and endurance may not be worth mentioning for future generations of warships, but for the current generation, it is still an epoch-making progress.
The maximum speed under the hybrid power of the sails has reached over 16 knots in the test, but this maximum speed has no practical significance, because unless the wind is smooth and the wind is extremely strong, normal sailing cannot reach such a high speed even if the sails are used together. speed.
The armament is equipped with four 130mm medium barrel front-loading smoothbore cannons and four 130mm short barrel smoothbore cannons. The number of artillery is four less than that of the Yulin class. This is because after the addition of steam engines and coal, As a result, the ship's load burden is relatively large, so its firepower is reduced.
For protection, it still uses a thick wooden shell.
In addition to the use of steel for the internal load-bearing structure and ship ribs, other common parts, even the hull part, are still made of wood, which is still the most cost-effective contemporary method of shipbuilding and is more suitable for the Chu Empire.
However, the Ship Administration Department has tried to use steel on the hull of the test ship to eventually build a real pure steel warship. However, just hearing the word pure steel warship, you know that it is very expensive. Toy, large-scale equipment is temporarily unreliable.
Rather than building pure steel warships, the Ministry of Ship Administration is more interested in improving firepower, such as building a front-loading rifled cannon. The Guns and Artillery Department of the Navy Department of Ship Administration has conducted trials and tests on the front-loading rifled cannon produced by Jiangnan Weapons Company. The results were successful. If so, in the next few years, the Navy may be equipped with front-loading rifled guns that have a longer effective range and can fire conical shells, gaining greater range and power.
As for now, the navy of the Dachu Empire is still dominated by front-loaded smoothbore cannons, but even the smoothbore cannons are just powerful, far exceeding the front-loaded smoothbore cannons of ordinary indigenous countries.
Because the various naval front-loading smoothbore guns equipped by the Da Chu Empire Navy have generally used low carbon steel as raw materials, and are manufactured by drilling and enlarging the diameter, their performance is essentially the same as those directly cast indigenous pig iron cannons. difference.
However, purely in terms of performance, it is still not as good as the bronze guns of the same level from the Army... Although the Army's artillery is still a bronze gun, its production process is also drilling and enlarging, coupled with the superior performance of the bronze material itself , which is even better in performance than the navy's low-carbon steel artillery of the same level.
In the era of muzzle-loading smoothbore cannons, bronze artillery had no shortcomings except being expensive.
The propeller-propelled sail power, the iron-ribbed wooden hull, the unified large-caliber mild steel forward-mounted smoothbore gun, and the flying shear flat-deck ship shape ultimately created the Yulin-class frigate.
The Dachu Empire was also the first warship specifically designed to use steam power in human history!
Now, eight such warships completely ignored the ocean currents or wind directions, and braved the light white smoke to form two columns and charged directly towards them.
They are about to announce to the world that the era of steam battleships has arrived!
