After dinner, the conference room on the fifth floor was lively again, and according to the usual practice, Sun Lao had to preside over a plenary meeting, or a work summary meeting.

On the whole, the safety and results of this ocean-going trip were successful, and it is widely recognized that there are many things that are worth discussing and summing up.

In the opening remarks, Sun Lao did not say any polite words, he first asked Li Sanduo, Zhu Beiguo and others to introduce the naval battle on Timor Island, which was repeatedly requested by the mechanical group, especially Wang Xue, as the leader of the Australian shipbuilding industry recognized by the mechanical group, she needs to understand the level of the world's ships from the details of this naval battle, which is related to her future shipbuilding development ideas.

Although the daily telegrams made the people in the Red Mansion more aware of the entire navigation process, they did not know the details of this naval battle, after all, the description in the telegram could not be too detailed.

As soon as he talked about this naval battle, he finally touched the G-spot of the crew, and before Li Sanduo could say a few words, a group of young people next to him began to interject and supplement, so Li Sanduo had to shut up, smiled and listened to the group of young people talking about the meeting place, and only corrected it when they said it was too exaggerated.

Although the teenagers were clueless, they finally understood the reality of the naval battle: that is, the advantages of the hybrid sailing ship in terms of maneuverability, gun range and rate of fire gave the Pride an overwhelming power at sea in this era.

Wang Xue, as the person in charge of shipbuilding in the mechanical group, asked extremely carefully about the situation of the naval battle, because she was going to design a hybrid sailing ship similar to the Pride, but more lightweight, and her own design needed to meet the actual production conditions, and there must be a comparative advantage over this era.

For example, first of all, there is the issue of artillery, for the two 76 naval guns equipped with the Pride, that is, the famous three-inch naval guns before World War II in the old world, the mechanical team believes that it will not be able to produce them in a short period of time, as for the 20mm machine gun, it is a pinnacle product, I am afraid that it is a goal that requires them to work hard in the next ten years.

At the end of the discussion, everyone calmly came to the conclusion that this naval battle did have some reference value, yes, only "some", because there are many characteristics of the Pride and its weapons that we cannot copy.

Of course, there is also a very important highlight, that is, the performance of the opponent's sailboats, through the description of witnesses and the comments of experts such as Gu Li, Zhu Xu, etc., the maneuverability of those wooden square sailboats is simply miserable, the maximum range of the artillery is only about one kilometer, if it is downwind, it may be a little two to one hundred and three kilometers.

For this key data, the witnesses have witnessed it with their own eyes, and the two experts Gu Li also recognized that when the Casa Princess was in the upper hand, a bow cannon on the ship fired a solid bullet and fell about fifty meters away from the Pride, at this time, the combat distance between the two sides was about 1.3 kilometers, and the light guns on the side of the Casa Princess did not hit a distance of one kilometer at all during the entire engagement.

At the same time, another important conclusion was also drawn, the effective range of the enemy's bow heavy guns was about two-thirds of the longest range---- note that the effective premise was that the wooden ship was hit.

At that time, the Casa Princess's fatal blow to the upper mast of the Aurora was impressive, and it almost caused the Aurora to lose power, but fortunately, the small sailing ship in a tailwind state quickly accelerated, gradually increasing the distance, so the Casa Princess never fired again, it seems that the pursuers are well aware of the performance of their cannons, and they will not waste shells to do useless work.

Of course, as for our iron ship, although it is unknown how effective it will be when hit by this chain bullet, it is probably a shallow pit in the hull.

Everyone's description of this naval battle and the official written report written by Gu Jin later became an important reference material for Wang Xue to later preside over the manufacture of mainstream armed merchant ships in Australia.

So not long after, when all the Pride class armed merchant ships in the cave were assembled DIY, Wang Xue, an engineer with rich experience in shipbuilding, presided over the design and manufacture of an armed merchant ship that was slightly inferior to Pride in tonnage, the tonnage of this kind of armed merchant ship was about half smaller than that of Pride, and it belonged to a light armed merchant ship, but it was slightly better than Pride in terms of maneuverability, and it also set up the same artillery emplacement as Pride class.

Although at that time, the industrial capacity of the traversers was still limited and they could not produce a gun that was as good as the three-inch naval gun of the old world in terms of performance, especially in terms of range, but the mechanical group headed by Boss Luo, with the vigorous cooperation of the metallurgical group, actually imitated another classic artillery - the 92 infantry gun with a caliber of 70 mm, and increased the double diameter, transforming it into a naval gun that later became a classic and legendary in the New World.

In addition to this, the Technic later developed a mortar cannon for firing ** packs, a short-range mortar that was used as a weapon for melee combat at sea and once terrified all the captains who fought with it.

In short, this light iron armed merchant ship is a miniature version of the Pride class clipper sailing ship developed by the traversers themselves under the existing conditions of the New World, and has an overwhelming maritime advantage in this new world, and together with the sister ship of Pride assembled with cave materials, it became the main maritime force in the early days of the Australian Commonwealth.

Of course, that's another story.

The topic of naval warfare came to an end, and while everyone was talking about dry mouths and drinking water, the ladies jointly proposed a plan for chocolate production.

Speaking on behalf of the ladies, Duna said that in the present era, chocolate was a very expensive and rare food that could only be enjoyed by the European aristocracy, because the production of chocolate required cocoa beans, the former of which was collected from South America and shipped all the way to Europe by ship, was very costly, and the latter was by no means a bargain.

In addition, there was no milk chocolate at this time, and it is said that the way to eat milk added to chocolate in the old world should have been invented by some European country a hundred years later---- if we did not "invent it".

There was no disagreement about the development of chocolate, and many people felt that it was time to start working on it.

However, Lao Wang shook his head and said, although we have cocoa bean seeds, there are only 500 kilograms of cocoa beans in the crossing aid materials that Anna gave us, but they have not been opened yet, and they have been stored in the cave.

Wang explained that he was indeed a little reluctant to move, because these high-quality cocoa bean seeds from the old world were very valuable, and they were unique in the world, and you couldn't exchange ten times or a hundred times the same weight of gold.

Because these seeds are the best seeds of the Old World over hundreds of years, the quality and yield of the cocoa beans far exceeds that of this era, and is simply not comparable to that of the present era when Europeans collected in the wild in Central America or picked from semi-wild cocoa trees on the estates.

Therefore, without in-depth research on the local temperature and soil, it is not easy to scatter it into the ground.

Looking at the slightly disappointed eyes of the ladies, Lao Wang finally reluctantly agreed that he could find a piece of land on this island and build an experimental greenhouse to try to plant it. But Wang said that cocoa beans come from mature cocoa trees, which take at least five years from seed germination to maturity, and that cocoa trees prefer warm, humid climates and fertile soils, and that Wang is worried that the island's climate ---- dry weather in the dry season may affect the growth of cocoa trees.