The new battleship "Nanhai No. 1" entered service, standing on its thick deck, Yan Changwu's heart was full of joy!

With the help of the British shipbuilder Phineas Pate, the Southeast Fleet made a great leap forward and built a three-stage sail battleship with 70 guns!

This was an "ideal" battleship, which was less than the Galen ships common in Europa, with a large stern arched at the back and a high bow tower at the front; The hull is wide and stable, which is conducive to fighting wind and waves, and the hull is streamlined, fast, and almost comparable to a fifth-class cruiser when downwind.

Its exterior is unpretentious, without any dazzling carvings of the red-haired battleship, except for the statue of Mazu carved on the bow.

The length of the ship reached 50 meters, the length of the keel was 43 meters, the width of the hull was 15.5 meters, the draft reached 6.5 meters, and the full load displacement reached an astonishing 2,280 tons (for convenience, with modern weights and measures), mainly made of fir wood from northern Fujian, and the keel on the battleship was made of hard but elastic teak (fir could not afford the keel of a battleship), and the teak used in this keel was cut down somewhere in Myanmar with a teak tree that had grown for at least a hundred years.

It was not easy to come by, it was transported by the British, and when it passed through the Strait of Malacca, there were "staunch patriots" among the Dutch who let it go, plus the British heavy artillery, and the British listed a staggering fifty thousand silver dollars in the bill, and the Southeastern Province paid according to the price!

The heavy weapon of the country can be transported, and you have to pinch your nose to give it how much money you have!

Because it was built in-house, the hull was reinforced and loaded with 70 guns, including 26 24-pounder guns on the lower deck, 26 18-pounder guns on the upper deck, and 6 12-pounder guns and 12 6-pounder guns on the open deck, and its firepower was second to none among ships of its class!

At that time, 24-pounder cannons were already very strong, and battleships of his class tended to use 12-pounder guns on the upper deck, while 4-pounder guns were used on the open deck.

Yan Changwu vigorously pursues high DPS output, always boasting that his cannon is thicker, bigger and harder than other people's cannons, and is a superstitious firepower maniac.

However, in the first Battle of Batavia that followed, the Dutch taught him a good lesson, beating him to the head with a thinner, smaller and softer cannon than him!

The gun doors on the lower gun deck are higher than those of the red-haired boats, so they can still open the gun doors when the wind and waves are a little stronger.

The bilge has compartments, and each compartment has elm water pumps (manpower) on both sides to facilitate damage management operations.

This battleship was soaked in a lot of Yan Changwu's hard work, and walking on the deck of the ship was like looking at his own child.

On the top floor of the stern there are two special cabins, each with a bedroom, a living room and a toilet, and below it there are several cabins for senior officers, who are living in the best conditions, and the rest of the personnel are improved, they are provided with more water (with a special reserve of fresh water) and better food, as well as more toilets, as well as mobile cabins.

……

The ship's staff, six hundred and fifty men, was fully equipped, and they were in full swing loading the battleship: food and clothing, supplies for the ship, and ammunition.

This is a large ship, and its reserves are so large that the sailors must prepare rice, noodles, biscuits, pork jerky, beef jerky, venison jerky, dried vegetables, mustard vegetables, salt, candy, tea, jams, dried fruits, pickled fish and dried fish, cooking oil, eggs, condensed milk, sugar, rum, soybeans, fresh water, and so on, and bread and fresh vegetables and fruits and fresh meat when they first set sail.

Compared with the red-haired boat, the food is unusually abundant, so that the officers and men can maintain good physical fitness to cope with training and combat.

If it weren't for the fact that the supply was handed over to the logistics department, I am afraid that the chief of the department on each ship would go crazy for the purchase of so many kinds of things.

There were also a lot of other things, such as medicinal herbs, coal, cables, wood, sail ropes, canvas, powder kegs, projectiles, etc., which had just formed a hill on the edge of the pier of Nanhai No. 1, but with the efforts of a few hundred people, the hill had almost disappeared (they had been working almost in the early hours of the morning).

Accompanied by the new deputy captain Shi Daxuan, Yan Changwu inspected the preparations of the cabins in various places, mainly material supplies, they were all wearing the official equipment of officers, the snow-white military uniforms were shining, and the various accessories on the military uniforms were dazzling, and the officers and soldiers who passed by stood to salute them.

Yan Changwu saw many young faces, this battleship has changed a lot of manpower, many positions are novices, like Yan Changwu's former deputy captain Yan Donglai, who is less than twenty-five years old, he is very lucky to catch up with this ship-building frenzy, and was appointed as the captain of the battleship Southeast, and this kind of position in the fleet of Hongmaofan is at least forty years old before it is possible to take office!

As the new flagship, the Nanhai No. 1 retained as many veterans in key positions as possible, while the personnel qualifications of other warships were worse than those of the flagship.

There is no way, that is, training, proficiency in business, and obtaining a certificate of induction.

Not only those newcomers, like Yan Changwu, an officer who has obtained the command qualification of a third-class battleship, also has to be familiar with his new flagship, this is a brand new model, the operation is definitely different from his previous Southeast, if he is not familiar with the performance of this new ship, then he will be unlucky in the battle with Hongmaofan, he will be unlucky to lead the entire fleet to lose!

Chief Instructor Storm proposed that Yan Changwu should continue to serve as the captain at least until he was 30 years old, so that he could leave the post of captain, and only in the long-term training and combat can he be familiar with the performance of the battleship and have enough sailing experience, and he should not pretend to others when commanding, but should do it himself like other captains, and what other captains do, he also does, Yan Changwu feels that it makes sense, so Nanhai No. 1 is him the captain and the commander of the fleet at the same time.

The officers and men of this fleet are very young and inexperienced, and they can only sacrifice the great law of moon and moon, water, fire, wood, gold, and gold, and constantly go to sea for training, and the allowances, attrition expenses, and supplies for going to sea (when they are at sea, the officers and men eat more and better than on the shore), and every shell shot out of the barrel is a silver dollar!

With so many warships for long-term training, the funds disappeared like a current, making Yan Changwu's financial expenditure tight, and CEO Chen Xinji threatened that if it reached the point of running out of money, then Yan Changwu would have to be auctioned!

……

Because of Storm's suggestion, he had to do his duties as captain.

Back in the captain's cabin, Yan Changwu was caught up in all kinds of accounts and books that the captain usually had to deal with, or troubles: rosters, uniform lists, crew certificates (files), various expenses reported by the chief of ordnance, boatswain, and carpenter, and the purchase accounts of supplies and necessities, with certificates of the quality of rum and tea, and orders that needed to be issued, especially the accounts of the various equipment, which were troublesome enough: barrels of beef, pork, and venison that had been counted and signed (there were two kinds of beef venison: cured and dried, Pork is also cured and smoked), large and small barrels of rum, military biscuits by the ton, barrels of gunpowder, cannon brushes, fuses, gun plugs, bomb-feeding rods, chains, projectile quantities, and a mess of necessities, such as all kinds of pulleys, long, single, double, parallel, with a single pulley with a rope and a double pulley without a rope......

Yan Changwu is familiar with everything, he personally participated in the counting of the goods when he received the goods at the dock just now (the supplies were all placed on the dock, and they were sent to the ship after the inventory), the difference between this pulley and that pulley was as clear as day and night, and he knew the number of shells and gunpowder well, but he still groaned, the captain's job is not done by ordinary people!

Of course, after the voyage can be handed over to the chief of affairs, he only needs to look at the accounts, a good chief can manage the supplies in an orderly manner, and a bad chief can cause you to lose the battle (because he can't say the exact amount of gunpowder and projectiles).

Therefore, any position on the ship is sloppy.

A young sailor with freckled faces, after being cleared to the gatekeeper, was allowed to come in and asked, "Captain, we are ready to sail!" ”

"Okay!" Yan Changwu grabbed his military hat, walked out of the cockpit, and went up to the top of it, where Storm, Shi Daxuan, and Mr. David were waiting for him.

"Dangdang!" The bell rang, and the Nanhai No. 1 set sail, followed by a fleet of two other battleships and twelve cruisers and two supply ships.