The seagulls have a thick voice, and when they call over the barnacle-covered breakwater, their high-pitched voices are full of defiance.
"Come on! Come on!" When Ling Yunyi was walking on the Dagu Pier, the birds with gray and white feathers were hovering above his head, as if they were shouting like this.
Seeing Ling Yunyi, the navy's top commander, deputy privy envoy and naval commander, frowning, the soldier beside him pulled out his gun from his waist and fired a shot at the group of seagulls hovering in the air.
After a loud bang, the seagulls screamed and dispersed, and the pier immediately became clear. Everyone who was accompanying them saw it, and although they secretly criticized Ling Yun's power and the personal soldiers for making a fuss, they all laughed along with them and called the seagull annoying.
Standing next to Ling Yunyi was an old man with white hair and white eyebrows, wearing a green cocoon robe in the color of the people's uniform. He said nothing and frowned slightly.
Although Ling Yunyi was domineering, he didn't dare to show off in front of the old man. He scolded the soldiers: "Mr. Xu Jiang is here, who did you tell when you fired the gun? Go down and get twenty army sticks!"
The old man still frowned, bowed slightly and said: "The commander's words are serious, it doesn't matter. Dayou is old and comatose, and his ears have long been unable to hear clearly, so it doesn't matter."
Ling Yunyi came to Dagu to inspect this time, just to make arrangements for Yu Dayou. After hearing this, he was willing to let it go lightly, and finally sent the soldier away, and then walked side by side with Yu Dayou.
Yu Dayou has a skinny appearance. Although he wants to straighten his back, time has not spared him, and his back is still a little bent. He resigned from the post of Commander-in-Chief of the Left Army of the Privy Council Navy Governor's Office three years ago. After he handed over his errands, he taught martial arts in Nanyuan for three years. This year, he was released by Zhu Yijun because his body was unable to support him this year.
Before he left the capital and returned to his hometown, Ling Yunyi invited him to Dagu to learn the tactics of fleet command. After all, the only one who has actually commanded Ming warships in combat in recent years is Yu Dayou.
Ling Yunyi took over from the post of Governor-General of Guangdong and Guangxi to be the Vice-Privy Envoy and the Commander-in-Chief of the Navy after the ten-year military reform in Wanli. He had gone to sea several times in the past two years, but he always studied with the army - there was no one who was not open-minded about pirates and Japanese bandits. The Ming Navy got it right.
As the top commander of the navy, he could not put aside his dignity to learn from his deputies and junior naval officers, and he could not convert the hard-edged theory he learned in Nanyuan martial arts into actual command capabilities. Although he had tried his best to find time to communicate with Yu Dayou in his busy schedule, it was not until Yu Dayou reached old age that he made up his mind to let Yu Dayou accompany him on board the ship for a coaching class.
Although Yu Dayou had not been on board a ship for three years, he always paid attention to the construction of the Ming Navy in Nanyuan, and also led the teaching and research team to conduct in-depth research on new naval warfare tactics. At this time, Ling Yunyi dragged him to Dagu, and he was also happy because he heard that the Dagu Shipyard had produced a new type of warship, and the Ming Dynasty's navy was about to enter a new era of reform.
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During the Yongle period, the largest treasure ship during Zheng He's Seven Voyages to the West was twenty-three feet long, five feet wide, and had a displacement of nearly three thousand tons—basically the limit of a wooden sailboat. [Note 1]
However, more than 150 years later, in the late Jiajing period, the main ship of the Ming Navy was Fu Chuan, with a displacement of less than 100 tons. Even there are not many ships like this. The remaining small ships such as sand ships, small sentry ships, horn boats, and net ships, which can only carry one or twenty people, account for 96% of the navy.
The reduction of naval power reduced the maritime rights and interests of the Ming Empire to nothing. During this period, Zhu Wan and Hu Zongxian experienced naval battles when they fought against the Japanese. The Japanese pirates who were their opponents were also rookies. When the two sides fought each other, the Ming navy often lost troops and humiliated the country. .
All changes occurred in the second year of Wanli, when Zhu Yijun unearthed a complete set of blueprints and information about Zheng He's ships during his voyages from the old papers in the capital. He immediately sent his lieutenants to supervise the construction of new ships at government-run shipyards such as Longjiang Shipyard, focusing on using orders to train craftsmen.
Although Zhu Yijun attached great importance to it, the shipwrights who could build large ships had long since died of old age, and the Ming Dynasty had a serious lack of shipbuilding experience. Moreover, although the treasure ship was large, its speed could no longer keep up with the speed of Portuguese warships - the difference was about double, which did not meet Zhu Yijun's requirements.
Therefore, although the Zhongguan in charge of supervising the construction at that time used various means to win over some "elderly people" from private shipyards and caused some troubles, it was still extremely difficult to build a ship that could reach a speed of eight knots.
Zhu Yijun gritted his teeth and persisted in investing. Until Yu Dayou took over in the fifth year of Wanli, only more than 20 large ships that met the requirements were trial-produced, and the largest displacement was only 500 tons. Even so, in the eyes of people at the time, it was already at the "giant ship" level.
Now that we have the ship, it is more important to train the navy. What Yu Dayou was ordered to do is to train the navy and explore tactics. In the fourth year of Wanli's reign, Yu Dayou began to build a navy with the support of Zhu Yijun. Because of his status as a military general, Zhu Yijun was afraid that he would not be able to serve the masses. At that time, he was appointed as the governor of the rear army and the commander-in-chief of the canal guard army. The command post was located in Dengzhou.
Although Yu Dayou fought in naval battles, most of his opponents were Japanese pirate boats. Over the years, he and Zhu Yijun exchanged letters. Zhu Yijun tried his best to put forward some new ideas based on the new ship, which all required Yu Dayou to practice at sea and summarize experience and lessons.
In the fifth year of Longqing's reign, the Battle of Lepando between the European Combined Fleet and the Turkish Fleet used artillery placed on the bow of the ship on a large scale and achieved amazing results.
After the Battle of Lepando, only British warships went all the way and began to study broadside artillery for non-contact operations. Including the Spanish Armada, warships around the world still limited their use of firearms to bow guns, while the rest of the crew used caltrops and matchlocks. Angler and broadside battles were still the mainstream of naval warfare.
Fortunately, the Ming Dynasty in this time and space has travelers. Even more fortunately, in the 39th year of Jiajing's reign, Qi Jiguang organized and invented the anti-recoil device for naval guns, and applied small artillery to Qi's navy's ships.
When Qi Jiguang reported the anti-recoil device of the naval gun to Zhu Yijun, Zhu Yijun's eyes were moist. Although Qi Jiguang had been knighted by Jing Haibo in this time and space, Zhu Yijun knew that what he had given was far from enough - Qi Jiguang's invention alone was worth a marquis. [Note 2]
With the time traveler's new tactical ideas and the device to solve the artillery recoil, the birth of the "Sail Battleship" and the corresponding tactics was a matter of course. The arrival of the Roman mission in the ninth year of Wanli gave the Ming Dynasty's navy the wings to take off - the Ming shipwrights, who had restored 50% to 60% of their craftsmanship, learned the manufacturing skills of the new Galenic sailboat. Finally made up for the last shortcoming.
This time Ling Yunyi took Yu Dayou to Dagu to receive the first new naval battleship Fubo. This slender and beautiful three-masted schooner had a keel three and a half times the width of the ship, a pointed and long bow, a foresail as big as the mainsail above the mainmast, and a jib on the mizzenmast.
It should be noted that the concept of the spinnaker was proposed by Zhu Yijun and has been widely used on new Ming Dynasty ships. In fact, most of the non-professionals in later generations came to think of the large sailing ships of the European era from "Pirates of the Caribbean": the sprits sticking out from the bow of the ship and the wind-filled jib. Other than that, Zhu Yijun knew as much as Yu Dayou.
But after all, the emperor had his own way of looking after things - the Imperial Palace of Fine Arts. After the establishment of the Gewuyuan, theoretical research on sailing ships was also put on the agenda. There are three results of their research: First, "sail bones" were added to the sails, so that the Ming ships at this time had the advantages of hard sails and soft sails. Another result is to add multiple trusses to the mast and cut the large sail into small pieces, so that when the wind is upwind, the sailboat can still maintain a certain speed after complex maneuvers.
The most important thing is that after painstaking research, the Daming Academy finally placed the rudder on the front deck - turning it into a wheel rudder. In the Galenic sailing manufacturing technology brought by the Holy See, they found the solution to overcome the Daming Fu Ship The disadvantage of the rudder is its huge manufacturing process.
After a long period of hard work, the Fubo has finally been finalized and will be built simultaneously in ten shipyards including Dagu, Linqing, and Longjiang. The first test ship and training ship will serve as the flagship of the Ming Dynasty Navy to declare its mission to Japan.
Ling Yunyi, deputy privy envoy and naval commander, will lead the first large-scale fleet of the Ming Dynasty to Japan to convey the emperor's anger against the Japanese king for calling himself emperor. Before that, he had to master all the "Sail Battleship Combat Methods" studied by Yu Dayou in martial arts.
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