Another four days later.

In the dock of the Huang family, the traversers quietly watched the 10 strangely shaped "artillery rafts" in front of them.

However, in fact, these water fire platforms have completely gone beyond the category of "rafts". More precisely, they should be counted as small unpowered floating batteries.

Viewed from above, the two pointed ends and the wide middle of the spindle-shaped flat bottom form the chassis and basic buoyancy module of these "artillery rafts". The raft was surrounded by thick hardwood planks on all four walls for armor, and six armor bulwarks enclosed a long hexagonal shape, in which all the artillery, crew and ammunition were perfectly protected. The most amazing thing is that Director Wen, who has a lot of ideas in his head, has come up with a simple composite armor assembly mode: the wooden armor plate is actually hollow, and the outermost layer of wood is the thinnest, but it is made of purple wood with the highest hardness; Inside the outer panel of the armored area is the "cotton armor" made by Wenjia Workshop using plant fibers. This kind of protective belt material was once widely used by the Southern Army, which lacked metal materials and metal processing technology in the American Civil War: a large amount of deseeded cotton was rolled into rolls, and after preliminary drying and dehydration, it was hammered, compacted and flattened with a large hydraulic forging press to form a fiber protective layer that was dozens of times finer than ordinary cotton. After the final drying and cutting, these layers of cotton are installed on the gunboats or armoured trains' armed carriages to be used as simple protective armor.

Of course, the "cotton armor" used by the traverser is more advanced, and it also fully takes into account the various special materials of the original plane. The craftsmen of the Huangjia Boat Company collected a lot of special papyrus-like reeds from the riverside, sliced and threaded the heavy reed rods into a fiber mass similar to cotton, and then compacted it using the processing technology of Wenjia Workshop. In the end, the research team led by Young Master Huang did not forget to saturate the cotton armor before it was made with a fuel barrier made of some kind of plant secretions, and the current plane version of the "cotton armor ship armor" was considered freshly baked.

The innermost layer of the armor is relatively low hardness, but extremely tough, yellow wood wood. The nature of the plates of this tree is similar to that of the oak tree in the original plane, which is very suitable for use as a backplate in composite armor to absorb the impact of solid projectiles--- in fact, this is why the naval powers of Britain and France in the 18th and 19th centuries of the original plane preferred to use oak wood to build sail battleships.

The three layers of armor were glued together by a special adhesive made by the chemical department of the Wenjia Workshop, and finally compacted with a simple steam forging press in the steamer room, and the complete conforming armor plates were formed.

As a result, although the traversers have not yet used the wrought iron plates produced by the steel mill as armor, they are confident that the opponents they face will never have the firepower to break through the strong defenses of such a wooden ship--- even if they seem so unreliable.

Of course, there is no doubt that in terms of armament, the traverser is also unsparing.

At this time, Shen Hanlin was directing a large number of workers to operate the rickshaw next to the dock, and used pulleys to lift a heavy cannon onto the raft. The first long-barreled guns produced by these traversers were the ancestral ship-borne 32-pounder guns used by the British Navy to dominate the Seven Seas in the early 19th century, using the Monk Pattern Contour and Miller square tail ring after the 1830s, which not only met the need for the defense of the ship guns, but also reduced the weight. Moreover, as a variant of the last 32-pounder gun of the smoothbore gun era, these 32-pounder guns naturally took into account the need to fire solid and explosive shells, and the power and range of the shotguns fired were not comparable to the short and thick Caron guns. If the raft with this terrifying cannon could reach the shore a stone's throw away from the bandit camp, then even some rookie gunners who were just starting out and lacked training could easily fire all kinds of shells into the bandits' camp and turn it into a Shura hell. There is no other reason, it's just too close! As long as the firing distance is close enough that the gunners almost put the muzzle of the black hole on the tip of the enemy's nose to open fire, it does not matter whether the shooting is accurate or not, as long as the general direction of fire is determined by direct aiming with the naked eye, and then mechanically reloading and pulling the fire.

In fact, this is indeed the idea of the traversers: their gunners are indeed substandard products that catch ducks on the shelves, but as long as the ships can bombard as close to the shore as possible, all this is not a problem. The artillery skills are not enough, so let's make up the distance!

"Old Wen, so you're planning to use the already built steam gunboats to tow these floating design platforms?" Lan Wang asked a question.

"Hehe, it is naturally necessary to use steam-powered ships to tow these unpowered batteries, but I didn't say that we had to use our precious gunboats to tow them, and I didn't say that we had to 'tow'!"

"Damn, what do you mean? How did I get confused?! Rao is Young Master Lan is well-informed, and he was completely confused by Wen Tongxin's marginal words.

The director of the steamboat room and the director of the mechanical department of the workshop began to sell the guanzi again: "First, the 'manual work' of driving the unpowered ships forward does not need to be entrusted to the gunboats that are the backbone of our firepower. Think about it, in our world, what kind of ship does such a thing usually do? ”

"Tugboats? Barge? Shen Hanlin was also a second monk who was confused, and began to guess blindly.

"That's right! It's this kind of ship! Unexpectedly, Shen Mengze's guess that the blind cat hit the dead mouse was actually correct, "We plan to use some unpowered small cargo ships or small ferry boats to install the batch of small steam engines newly manufactured and assembled in the workshop, and make some low-powered barges, which are specially used to assist in driving these batteries." In addition, I said 'not necessarily pulled' and that's what I meant--- these barges will be responsible for pushing these batteries forward in the rear, the barges will be able to power the batteries, and the armor and firepower of the batteries will in turn provide defense and cover for the barges, creating the conditions for our batteries to reach and shoot!" “

"What's more, the draft of these batteries and barges is very shallow, and they can even drive where our shallow gunboats can't get in, so this combination can help us put the muzzles of the black holes under the noses of those bastards!"

Director Wen, who has always been serious, also showed a wicked smile similar to when the conspiracy succeeded.