Listening to the discussion of his colleagues, Jiang Weizhi, chief of staff of the Navy Command, was thinking about something more.

This time the ship transporting military supplies was attacked, which was inevitably the responsibility of the Navy.

But he felt that this time, the performance of Lord Governor was a little harsh.

During the war, it was normal to be secretly attacked by the enemy and sink a cargo ship, but in a war, there will always be various risks, and this is not a whole fleet surrounded and annihilated by the enemy, nor is it a serious strategic and tactical mistake.

It's just that the enemy took advantage of the night to approach, and then sank a steamer in the chaos, there is nothing to make a fuss about, in general, the Nanhai State fleet is still firmly in control of the sea control of Shayang Bay, suppressing the Ningyu Prefecture Navy in the east, and at the same time also stifling the Dongdingzhou Navy in the early stage.

Now that it has accepted most of the navy of Dongdingzhou, the strength of the Luo Haizhou fleet has increased again, and it is enough to completely control Shayang Bay and turn Shayang Bay into its own inland sea.

However, even so, there is no way to stop the enemy fleet from sneaking in and attacking the transports.

Therefore, this accidental loss is normal.

Taking 10,000 steps back, even if the sea transportation in Shayang Bay cannot be guaranteed, it will not absolutely affect the operations of the South Navy in Dongdingzhou and Zishengzhou.

Because the troops fighting in Dongdingzhou and Zishengzhou, as long as their supplies still rely on the Nanluo River, they will be transported from Nanhai Prefecture to Dongdingzhou, and then transported to the front lines through the Dongdingzhou railway network.

Sea transportation is only a secondary supplement, and the materials transported are mainly from Qingyuan County or the western part of Luohai County, which is more convenient than transiting through the river for many times.

Most of the materials on the sunken freighter are actually military rations, and the weapons and ammunition are only a small part, and the impact of being sunk is not great.

Sure enough, the next day, Jiang Weizhi found that his conjecture had come true.

The state commander directly ordered the establishment of an escort fleet, and at the same time appointed Duan Hongxiao as the commander of the escort fleet.

Who is Duan Hongxiao? The first professional naval officer to defect to Lin Ziran, successively served as the commander of the Sixth Division Artillery Fleet, the commander of the Luoan Fleet, the head of the Military Command Department of the Nanhai Prefecture Fleet, and Lin Ziran's spokesperson in the navy.

The reason why the word spokesperson is still used also shows that Lin Ziran's current control over the navy is limited, and he cannot be like the army, from top to bottom, all self-trained officers.

The current Nanhai Prefecture Fleet is actually a combination of multiple naval forces, the main force is the Luo'an Fleet and the Luohai Fleet, and later gradually joined the naval forces of other feudal towns in Nanhai Prefecture, such as the navy of Anlong County and Hetai County, and the Guang'an Army, which were also integrated and joined one after another.

As a result, the initial Nanhai State Fleet was formed, and this is not counting, since last month, the Nanhai State Fleet has begun to accept the integration of the Dongdingzhou fleet.

How can I say it, the current Nanhai Prefecture Fleet is a fleet that Lin Ziran used to use his absolute land superiority to integrate the maritime forces of Nanhai Prefecture and Dongding Prefecture.

And there was no large-scale purge during this period, and even the fleets of the parties accepted by the original plate.

There is no way, this is not acceptable, on the one hand, Lin Ziran can't find enough professional naval officers, after all, the training of naval officers is much more troublesome than that of army officers, and it is impossible for him to train a group of naval officers who can drive and command steam and steel warships in just a few months, if he could, he would have changed the navy up and down a long time ago.

Another point is that if Lin Ziran refuses to accept it all, or accepts the backhand and purges, then the naval forces of other forces, after the defeat of the feudal towns they are loyal to, will not surrender so neatly, but will directly take the warships to the sea and go north to other feudal towns.

What, the sea is so big, the ship is in their hands, and people like to go wherever they want.

Therefore, in order to integrate the naval forces as much as possible in the early and middle stages, Lin Ziran adopted a rare tolerance on naval issues, as long as he used it for himself and obeyed orders, then Lin Ziran would not worry too much about them.

However, this has gradually changed over time!

Because when he seized the counties in Nanhai Prefecture, Lin Ziran not only accepted the army military academies such as Luohai Military Academy, but also the navy-related schools of the two counties.

Later, Lin Ziran also carried out relevant reforms and integration of these schools, and established the Luo'an Naval Academy on this basis.

In addition to the specialized courses, as in the Army, ideological courses have also been added to train naval officers in the new era.

It's just that the training cycle of these naval officers is too long, and all kinds of theoretical and practical learning are so that they can't be accomplished quickly.

Even if the shortened time accelerated the progress of learning, the first batch of students still took two years to graduate, just in time for the Eastern Crusade.

But these students, most of whom are currently non-commissioned officers, and most of them are still in the internship stage, still learning to be, let alone command a warship, and they haven't even figured out some of the internal affairs of a battleship......

Therefore, it's not that Lin Ziran doesn't want to use the newly cultivated lineage, but he can't use it!

This also led to the fact that, for the time being, Lin Ziran used some of his old naval officers who surrendered to him in the early days to indirectly control the navy.

Duan Hongxiao, the secretary of the navy, is a typical example.

The appointment of Duan Hongxiao as the commander of the escort fleet is nothing, the key is the particularity of this escort fleet, Lin Ziran directly incorporated the current more than 20 main ocean-going warships of the Nanhai Prefecture fleet into the escort fleet.

These more than 20 ocean-going warships are almost all the main ocean-going warships in the current Nanhai State Fleet, and before, they were scattered in various different sub-fleets.

In the past, there was no such highly unified fleet within the Nanhai Prefecture Fleet, and on weekdays, each fleet was mainly divided into regions and carried out its own activities.

It is said that it is a whole fleet, but in fact, it is more like a naval alliance established around the core of Lin Ziran, not to mention the internal factions, and some of them are dragging each other back.

In Lin Ziran's view, the current internal organizational structure of the Nanhai Prefecture Fleet is unreasonable, and the staffing is even more unreasonable, and change is necessary.

This change began with the establishment of the escort fleet.

Lin Ziran wanted to set up an escort fleet to gather all the capital ships scattered in various places and build a real ocean-going combat fleet.

At the same time, it is also possible to weaken the influence of the local sub-fleets by transferring these capital ships, and finally completely abolish these sub-fleets.

In terms of personnel, Duan Hongxiao is reused as a representative, and he is loyal to his old career naval officers in both thought and action, and Lin Ziran will gradually support and train naval officers in the new era from Luo'an Naval Officer School.

This is the future of the Nanhai State Fleet!