The Battle of Zhangshui can be said to be the first battle since the founding of Great Chu, and it is also the first defeat. Although it was an unlucky omen, Yuan Shu and the others did not take it too seriously. After all, it was an away battle, the other party was waiting for him, and the two top strategists were calculating, but Gan Ning was alone, and he was irritable, and it was normal for him to plan in the middle. On the contrary, after the middle plan, he was able to fight back, break out of the encirclement, and severely damage the naval army led by Yuan Shao's general Chun Yuqiong, which is enough to show the strength of Great Chu. At the same time, the strength of the Great Chu naval army and warships revealed made the princes of the world completely break the idea of competing with the Great Chu in the naval army.

If the gap between the sailors and soldiers could be narrowed by constant training, then the gap in the warships was enough to make these princes despair. Due to Yuan Shu's attention and solicitation, eighty percent of the world's craftsmen and ninety percent of the shipwrights are in Jiangdong, after Yuan Shu's countless financial support over the years, coupled with the gathering of brainstorming and Yuan Shu's own vision, Jiangdong's shipbuilding technology has reached this point.

As for the other princes, not to mention the ships made of steel, even the most basic three-story ships in Jiangdong are difficult to build, and more than seventy percent of the warships under their command are boats, and at most they can swim in the Yellow River, and it is impossible to go to sea. Since the development of Jiangdong, the fleet that has been formed has been basically a fleet of large buildings with more than five floors and large semi-iron ships supplemented by some other small ships, the former is stronger than broadside combat, the latter is stronger than collision, and the gap between the two warships is simply boundless.

This absolute gap in shipbuilding technology basically completely curbed the possibility of other princes competing with Yuan Shu in the naval army. To give a simple example, the same 5,000 naval army, the warship on Yuan Shu's side is a building ship that can accommodate 5,000 people, while Yuan Shao's command can only accommodate 50 people. When the two sides are engaged, not to mention the problem of warships colliding, when the battle is engaged, the 5,000 people on Yuan Shu's side can be put into battle, and the boats under Yuan Shao's command can have 3,000 people into the battle for various reasons. This is the most obvious gap in the combat power of the two sides caused by the gap in warships.

And now on top of the new ship in Jiangdong, this gap is even greater. Due to the large size and weight of this kind of ship, the impact force brought by it completely ignores the difference in strength between the two sides. Directly giving full play to the role that the gap on the warship can play, to a certain extent, directly ignoring the difference in combat power between the two armies, it is basically an unreasonable crushing. The Battle of Zhangshui is proof of this.

Taking this opportunity, Yuan Shu also proved to the civil and military under his command that the craftsmen were terrible, and compared to the gap between the soldiers and soldiers, the crushing of weapon technology was even more terrifying. If it weren't for the unreasonable power of clouds in this era, Yuan Shu really wanted to directly post the slogan that science and technology are the primary productive forces and combat effectiveness, and after a few years of development, as soon as the muskets and artillery came out, what tigers and leopards and euphorbia warriors would all stop cooking, and they would still be so troublesome now?

Accompanied by Jia Xu, Yuan Shu came to the newly established Battleship Technology Institute, which is one of the many new military technology institutes established by Yuan Shu after the founding of the People's Republic of China, located in a hidden harbor on the coastline of Wu County, heavily guarded, and the world's top shipwrights can be said to be nine out of nine located here, Yuan Shu has worked hard for the research and development of ships.

"How's the all-steel ship going? Lu Lao? While casually touring around the port, Yuan Shu asked the person in charge of the technical institute who was following him step by step.

"Your Majesty, in fact, I can build this kind of ship a long time ago, but it is indeed quite flawed when applied to actual combat, and now we are stepping up research to improve the technology of all-steel ships as much as possible, and it is expected that it will take more than half a year to really build all-steel warships with actual combat significance and effect." Lu Lao said bluntly.

"Oh? What else needs to be improved? You elaborate. Yuan Shu said with interest.

"No." Since Yuan Shu's first guidance, Lu Lao has been extremely admired by His Majesty, who has countless whimsical ideas and knowledge, and even regards him as a confidant and teacher.

"When His Majesty first proposed the steel ship, it was an earth-shattering attack, for so many years we have always thought that there were only wooden ships, and we have been improving the structure of the ship, and our thinking has been completely solidified, and we have never thought about the problem that steel ships can float on the water. His Majesty's words have found a new direction for us shipwrights. Wooden clocks are made of wood, which is not as hard as steel, and the size and scale of warships that can be built are limited, while ships made of steel can be expanded on this basis. Theoretically, as the density of steel increases, the size of the ship can continue to increase. When it comes to professional knowledge, Lu Lao talked about it directly.

"On this basis, we have improved all the warships in Jiangdong, adding more or less steel to some key vulnerable parts, so that the size and sturdiness of Jiangdong's ships have generally increased. However, we still face many challenges in building meaningful, all-steel warships that can be used in battle. ”

"One is the size of steel production. Because steel was first supplied to His Majesty's artisan battalions for the manufacture of weapons and armor, and then it was our turn, the production was somewhat insufficient to supply the manufacture of ships made of all steel. With the continuous increase in Jiangdong's steel production in recent years, it can now be withdrawn. The second is the problem of steel quality. After so many years of refining the mass manufacturing of steel, the steel used in shipbuilding today is not only hard enough to reach 80% of the best 100 steels today, it is completely sufficient. ”

Speaking of this, Lu Lao himself couldn't help but sigh. Who would have thought that the quality of steel manufactured in batches through hydraulic power and machinery today would be such that more than ninety percent of the craftsmen in Jiangdong could not meet this standard in the past.

Yuan Shu was also quite proud in his heart at this time. You must know that the top quality steel of this era is definitely not worse than the ordinary steel of later generations, countless steel mixing ratio formulas have been lost in later generations, and the quality of some ancient unearthed sword steel is better than that of ordinary steel now. Therefore, although the manufacturing process is much worse, with the help of these mixing ratio formulas, the quality of steel that can be mass-produced in Koto today is not much worse than that of ordinary steel in later generations.

"The main problem that remains to be solved now is the connection between paint and steel. His Majesty has been vigorously planting lacquer trees in recent years, and the output of paint has been basically solved, but the current paint formula still needs to be improved. With today's paint quality, steel ships built don't last as long as wooden ships. The second is the connection between the steels, and we have not yet found a way to solve the welding method mentioned by His Majesty, so we can only try to use rivets and casting, but the ships built in this way are slightly loose. So we had to increase the thickness of the hull, but that caused more problems......"