The ship is also large, and the chance of being hit is also greatly increased. Pen & Fun & Pavilion www.biquge.info Zhao Yu is also preparing to carry the rocket onto the ship while installing the ballista, and the place is capricious. While increasing the firepower, he removed the flashy things such as the cornices and the top of the hill in the ship's building, striving to be round and smooth, reducing the wind surface and reducing the chance of being hit. He also changed the portholes on the upper floors to double, using lattice windows in peacetime to facilitate ventilation and lighting, and in wartime, another layer of thickened solid wood panels was put down to close the entire window to resist flying rocks and arrows. At the same time, he also laid iron plates and covered raw cowhide on key parts to increase protection.

The warships were so large that they could not be driven by manpower, so they could only sail by the wind. This ship adopts four masts and six sails, with the seat as the sail, which can be sailed against the wind with the cooperation of the rudder, but there are more sailors who need to operate the boat, Zhao Hao calculates that a group of sailors will cost about 100 people, and it will take 200 people to divide it into two shifts, plus shipwrights, shipwrights, sailmakers, ropemen, blacksmiths and other auxiliary personnel, and the sailors will be in their early 200s.

"Old Zhou, how are the fire measures on the ship?" The hull of the ship was almost entirely made of wood, and it caught fire when it caught fire, so not only did it have to guard against enemy rockets and fireships, but it also had to worry about accidentally catching fire. He asked, after a turn.

"Your Highness, don't worry. The fire areas in the ship were protected, the partitions in the galley were made of brick and stone, and the floor was replaced with terracotta plates. The lights in the cabin are covered with lampshades, so as long as you inspect carefully, there will be no accidents. In addition, each floor is equipped with a water suction gun and a large water storage tank, which can be extinguished in time in case of fire. There are sandbags on the deck, which can be crushed with wet sand even if the enemy uses fire oil. Zhou Xiang said.

"The hull is huge, what if the enemy sends a fireboat to ram it?" Zhao Hao asked again.

"Your Highness, we are equipped with so many ballistas that we can sink fireships from afar, or intercept them with small boats. If we still rush to the front, we can lower the pole and push the fireboat away so that it can't get closer. Zhou Xiang pointed to a few long logs placed on the side of the ship and said.

"Oh, that's a great arrangement!" Zhao Yu nodded, he thought it was a spare mast at first, but he didn't expect it to be a struts. He took two steps and asked as if he remembered something, "Eh, then we have a cat on the boat?" ”

"Cat?!" Zhou Xiang was stunned for a moment when he heard this, and then reacted again, "Your Highness, this subordinate has prepared it, and it can be sent to the ship after the repair is completed." ”

"You're still thoughtful." Zhao Hao was very satisfied. He knew that there were not only people living on the sea, but also haunting rats, who would steal food, bite the sail cables to grind their teeth, and spread diseases. In order to deal with them, the only way to keep cats on ships was to keep them, and he knew that foreigners had a tradition for a long time, but he had not found cats on either the imperial ship or the other warships of the navy, so he asked.

"This is what subordinates should do!" Zhou Xiang smiled and saluted, but he wondered where to find a cat for His Highness. However, he secretly sighed that it was not easy to fool His Highness, and he knew even such a trivial matter.

"What about the trial production of the flowering bomb?" Zhao Hao looked at the busy craftsmen and asked as if unintentionally.

"Your Highness...... Something went wrong. As soon as His Highness asked about this, he immediately wilted, and said with his head drooping.

"What happened, hurt someone?" Zhao Hao looked at how much of a mistake he had made and asked urgently.

"No, no, it's all the incompetence of the subordinates, and the trial production of this flowering bomb in several batches can't meet the requirements of His Highness." Zhou Xiang waved his hand again and again, he knew that if there were casualties among craftsmen in the work, His Royal Highness would definitely punish him heavily, and if there were no dead people, he could still negotiate.

"What's the problem?" Zhao Hao's voice softened a lot.

"Your Highness, one is the flowering of the shell, this one is so thin that it shatters when it cannot penetrate the side of the ship when it is fired; If it is thick, it can penetrate the gunwale, but the charge is small, and the fragmented shrapnel is too small to achieve the killing effect. Zhou Xiang looked at His Highness's face and said.

"And then what's the problem!" Zhao Hao saw that he was silent, and urged.

"Oh, and then there's the fuse, the ballista fires too fast, and it's easy to blow the fuse out; Then there is the fact that after falling into the water, the fuse is immediately annihilated by the water. Both of these conditions lead to an increase in duds. The craftsmen thought of many ways, thickening the fuse and installing bamboo pipes, but the effect was very poor, and they couldn't think of a solution, so they couldn't produce it. Zhou Xiang saw that His Royal Highness had no intention of getting angry, and hurriedly said that he poured beans from the bamboo tube.

"Alright, let's go to the powder shop right away and see what the hell is going on!" Zhao Yu thought about it and said, he doesn't have a score in his heart now, let's talk about it when I go to the scene.

"Your Highness, wait a minute, my subordinates will go to prepare the car!" Zhou Xiang trotted away......

To be honest, Zhao Hao was very anxious. Ever since Chen Yizhong left the city and never returned, he began to feel uneasy. And then Jiang Wanzai fell into the water and died, His Royal Highness was frightened and sick, and the line moved to Jizhou Island, which made him panic even more. This thing is moving forward along the original trajectory of history, and it seems that he still can't escape the fate arranged by God.

Regardless of whether Zhao Hao succeeds or not, he has to resist, he has not successfully gotten rid of several bad luck, and he has also laid this large foundation. And he remembered that he was defeated in Yashan and was carried by Lu Xiufu to jump into the sea and 'die'. So if you win this battle, or break through despite your defeat, then you can avoid death!

Zhao Yu felt that no matter what, he had to have a weapon to save his life and the capital to escape. thought that it was unlikely that he would take a dragon boat again after becoming the emperor, so he thought of the giant boat that captured Liu Shen. Originally, he used it as his own ship, and he had ordered the capital to be renovated, and he hurriedly asked people to draw a ship pattern, and then partially transformed it according to his own ideas, and built the giant ship into a sea fortress that could not be damaged or broken.

As for the flowering shell, during the Battle of Qizhouyang, Zhao Hao found that the solid bullet found by the ballista could not cause fatal damage to the enemy ship, and then he had the idea of continuing to trial produce the flowering bomb. At that time, he was worried that the flowering bomb would accidentally explode in the closed dragon boat, causing great damage to both the ship and people. On the giant ship, he placed the ballista in the open air on the deck, and even if it was not launched and exploded on the ship, it would not cause fatal damage to the ship, so while transforming the giant ship, he also made the gunpowder workshop step up the development of flowering shells. He thought it was a very simple thing, but something went wrong like this.

Zhao Yu didn't rest when he arrived at the gunpowder workshop, and he didn't even drink saliva, so he asked the craftsmen who participated in the trial production to bring two bullet shells first. He looked at it, and the material was gray cast iron with high carbon content, which had high hardness but poor toughness, and was easy to break after being stressed. The ballista fires quickly and has a great impact, and if it is thin, of course, it will crack first without waiting to penetrate the gunboard, and of course it will not produce the desired effect. Therefore, there is no need to think about it, and this plan is directly excluded.

Picking up the thick bullet casing, Zhao Hao looked at it as if it was only four or five millimeters. According to several craftsmen, after many tests, only this thickness is guaranteed to penetrate a three-inch-thick gunway and burst, but the effect is not satisfactory. He then asked the craftsmen to charge the medicine, press the fuse, and instead of firing it with a ballista, they lit it on the spot. He had already figured out that if the shell could not be used, there would be no need to consider whether the fuse could be used.

'Boom! With a loud bang, the blossom bomb exploded. Zhao Yu ran over without waiting for the smoke to dissipate, and he didn't need to look carefully to see the bullet casings that were broken in half, he picked it up and looked at it and shook his head, this fragmentation rate is too low, and the killing effect on personnel can be imagined, and the enemy can only be injured by the shock wave generated by the flame and explosion, and only those who are lucky can be smashed by shrapnel.

"Try a few more!" Zhao Yu waved his hand and ordered the remaining ones, but the results were all about the same, and the most one was broken into five pieces.

'Jingle bell, ding bell...... Smack! ’

"How did this break?" The experiment failed, Zhao Hao didn't have a good way for a while, he took a hammer and took a few bullet shells as a drum kit, and suddenly a bullet shell was broken into several pieces, how hard he was He knew that it was impossible to break this cast iron bullet case. He looked up at his masterpiece and asked a few overwhelmed craftsmen.

"Temple...... Your Highness, it should be that in addition to the problem when casting, the sand mold was not done well, leaving a mark, so His Highness broke when he knocked it! A craftsman picked up the shattered shell and looked at it.

"Hey, it turned out to be a defective product...... You show it to me! Zhao Yu thought that he would find something, but he was told that it was a problem when casting, which made him very disappointed, but a flash of inspiration flashed in his mind.

"There's a way, come with pen and paper!" Zhao Yu put together the broken bullet casings and looked at them, patted his head and said.

The craftsmen didn't dare to slack off, and hurriedly found the four treasures of the study, Zhao Yu drew a round spherical one first, thought about it and threw it away. Then I drew a cylindrical one, then a pointed one, and then a garlic one...... He drew and threw away, and drew a dozen in a row, before picking out a spindle-shaped one and drawing a grid on it, and then writing and drawing a bunch of symbols that no one could understand, and finally marking the size. Give it to Zhou Xiang, who is still waiting on the side, and let him go to the iron workshop immediately and immediately open the furnace and cast it.

Although everyone couldn't quite understand why His Highness made the cannonball look like this, it can be seen that he was full of confidence, and he had a successful experience in the past, and he felt that he had a door, so he went immediately. In fact, Zhao Yu thought of the grenade in his previous life from the fracture of the remnant, and when this thing was first introduced, people were also worried about the low fragmentation rate, and later thought that the problem was solved by nicking the bullet case.

Unlike grenades, artillery shells fly at a long distance, so they must not only ensure the strength of penetrating the gunwale, but also ensure the fragmentation rate, and they must be accurate. Therefore, Zhao Yu thought of all kinds of shells in his previous life, and pondered that only by increasing the weight of the cannonball head can the direction of the cannonball's flight and fall be guaranteed......

Zhao Yu was not idle, he asked the craftsman to bring the fuse, and it was still made of the kind of cotton paper roll gunpowder that he had "invented" at the beginning. You don't have to try, let alone throw it in the water, you can't even light it at the tide point. He pondered for a while, if he could invent the impact fuse, he wouldn't have to worry about it, but although that thing was simple, the current technical conditions were still difficult to manufacture, at least the detonator was a difficulty, and it was practical to think about it and use fire directly.

Recall that modern fuses use fuses as fuses, which play the role of delay or timing. And that kind of thing he only remembered was to wrap the black powder in paper, and then tie it tightly with a cotton rope on the outside, and it should also be necessary to use a moisture-proof agent so that the gunpowder would not be soaked in water and burn in the water. Zhao Hao thought down this line of thought, there are not many moisture-proof agents that can be used in this era, and the only ones he can think of are beeswax, resin and tung oil. Tung oil is the most common, the price is also cheap, and now there are gunpowder shops, which are used to make oil paper to seal medicine barrels.

Zhao Yu thought of it, and asked people to find oiled paper, loose gunpowder and hemp rope, cotton rope is still a luxury in this era, and can only be replaced by hemp rope. According to the instructions of the prince, several craftsmen went on the horse, wrapped the gunpowder into a medicine pillar with oiled paper and wound it with hemp rope layer by layer, making a fuse with the thickness of a finger. He saw that it was almost the same as he had seen in his previous life, and ordered someone to light it with fire.

'Woo ...... Burst! The ruler lit the long fuse, and then spewed green smoke on the ground, sparkling and swaying, and finally spewed out a stream of fire at the other end, and extinguished.

"Your Highness, it's done!" Several craftsmen said excitedly.

"I'm afraid it won't work out yet." Zhao Yu shook his head, he found that the gunpowder in the center could not be completely wrapped, and it would become powder with a little force, this situation would definitely not work in actual combat, and it would be difficult for anyone to serve it carefully in any tense state.

"Try again!" Zhao Yu knew that this was due to the lack of adhesive, but he really couldn't think of anything that could be used, so he could only continue to experiment to see if he could find another way. But after trying several times in a row, he still couldn't solve this problem, and he was a little frustrated.

"Your Highness, can we try to wrap the lead in it?" At this time, a young craftsman asked cautiously.

"That's right, reward him with a hundred times!" Zhao Yu listened to the muttering for a moment, slapped his thigh and said excitedly, wouldn't wrapping the lead twice solve the problem of dropping the medicine powder!

"Thank you...... Thank you, Your Highness! The little craftsman was startled and stayed there, and the people next to him hurriedly pressed him to the ground to thank him.

Everyone immediately tested according to this method, and sure enough, the powder was no longer dropped, and it would not be blown out by the wind during the test firing, but some could burn to the head when placed in water, and some were blind, even if it was intercepted from the same fuse. Although the effect in the water is not good, it also shows that the idea is right. Zhao Yu took two paragraphs and compared them and found the problem, the nonsense was because there was a gap between the leads, which caused water to enter.

But in any case, the problem is found, as long as the problem of compactness is solved, the problem of blind fire of the fuse is solved, and if this problem is solved, then the flowering bomb is not far from success...... (To be continued.) )