After the fifteenth day of the first lunar month, Li Guolou ended his indulgent life and devoted himself to his work with enthusiasm, Li Guolou took the tenth lady Huang Xiaoman to leave Beijing to inspect the Qing Dynasty and build his own warships

Huang Xiaoman stands out among many wives because she understands Western mathematics, Geometry, so Li Guolou brought her out, the future family will also enter the ocean shipping industry, Li Guolou took precautions, first trained Huang Xiaoman to be an expert who knows how to do things, Huang Xiaoman has made great achievements in the military, no one can crack the cipher code, Li Guolou has regarded Huang Xiaoman as a confidant, the wives of the family are self-reliant, women do not let the eyebrows, all walks of life are outstanding, Li Guolou promotes talents, is the first to discover the advantages of his wife, and promote them to important positions, his own wife will not betray him, Li Guolou let the ladies go out to work, although he does not approve of monogamy, but approves that women have the right to work, this is Li Guolou's advocacy of the women's liberation movement, to this day, has made achievements, leading the Qing Dynasty fashion

In the carriage, Huang Xiaoman was lying in Li Guolou's arms, Li Guolou gently stroked the silky hair and said: "Tenth Madam, you are like the Empress Dowager Ci'an, I think of her when I see you."

"Yes, you are like my first love, when I see you, I think of him," Huang Xiaoman was not to be outdone, and twisted his head

Li Guolou hurriedly hugged Huang Xiaoman and said meaty words, which made Huang Xiaoman smile, Li Guolou is good at coaxing women, this is his strength, playing cards at home, he can get together at three tables, so many women can get together and get along, it can be seen that Li Guolou is capable

Huang Xiaoman stared at Li Guolou comfortably and asked, "Xiaolou, this is the first time you have taken me out alone, I will definitely work hard."

Li Guolou was silent, one hand stroked Huang Xiaoman's abdomen, and it was not a good thing to have too many children, there were several ladies in the family who were happy and indulgent, life had fruitful results, and it was difficult for a woman to get pregnant, so he could only take responsibility for his husband and let everything happen

"Xiaolou, don't touch it, be a good baby", Huang Xiaoman knocked out Li Guolou's hand, she wants to have a successful career, a businesswoman, instead of relying on beauty and vassal men, the wives in the family envy Yelia's reputation and want to become a leader of the times

The light of love will eventually fade, and her admiration for Li Guolou will turn into a driving force for progress, and she, like the sisters in the family, hopes that this family will be strengthened and make a modest effort

"Well, I love you at night," Li Guolou kissed Huang Xiaoman's hair, sniffed the woman's fragrance, closed his eyes and thought about it

Li Guolou is quite scheming, thinking about many things, family responsibilities have to be shouldered, as a man, he has the responsibility to make women happy, but he can't indulge in women, the huge Li group wants to develop benignly, the fate of the country is in his hands, if he is slack, indulgent, and talks with the old bureaucrats every day, and pushes the work to his subordinates, the development trajectory of the Qing Dynasty will change qualitatively

Pioneers must have the courage to take responsibility for failure, Prince Gong should be a hands-off shopkeeper, do things from the beginning to the end, and never learn from Prince Gong

The reform of the Qing Dynasty has not yet succeeded, and the comrades still need to work hard, Li Guolou suddenly thought of the Baath Party's proposal on "comrades", and could not help but feel worried about the group of high-minded opposition parties in the concession, and the Baath Party disappeared for a long time after the Qing government severely cracked down, but as long as there were disputes of interests between the countries in the concession, the Baath Party would resurge, and the British and the Qing Dynasty were friendly, and the Baath Party members moved their nests to the Russian Concession, and the enemy was still brewing conspiracy, how could he indulge in the halo of glory, and he should always keep the enemy's movements open, hoping that the "rabbit" and the peaceful country could win the trust of the Russians

The convoy lineup is neat, everyone along the way gives way, 200 cavalry hug in front of and back, this formation is more majestic than the prince out on patrol, he has become a flag character of the Qing Dynasty, does not need to be a low-key person, every moment will cause passers-by to watch, Li Guolou offended too many people, afraid of a mistake, so safety first, accompanied by hundreds of Goshha Li Guolou's whereabouts are mysterious and unpredictable, and his character is more difficult to figure out than Li Hongzhang, and what he did is that no one knows a country's wealth is under the control of Li Guolou, and he wants to do something earth-shattering

Li Guolou's concept of sailors was incompatible with the important ministers of the imperial court, and he wanted to compete with the Japanese ironclad ships on a small and mosquito boat, and the convoy went straight to the harbor wharf of Tianjin Machinery Manufacturing Bureau, which was the beginning of his ocean dream

The harbor wharf is heavily guarded with three steps, one post, five steps and one sentry, and Xu Jianyin, deputy general office of the Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau, is extremely dissatisfied with Li Guolou's luxurious pomp and circumstance, and said when he meets: "Li Xuezheng, when it is cold and freezing, as for using so many soldiers, don't you always remind us to save ourselves, and lead by example."

Li Guolou shook hands cordially and said with a smile: "Mr. Xu, you don't know how bad the world is, I have offended countless people with a straight heart, and the enemy will want my life at any time in the dark corner, I have to guard against it."

Xu Jianyin pouted, did not say anything hurtful, he had already understood Li Guolou's poisonous tongue, Xu Jianyin used to be a pragmatic faction, a senior technician, enjoying the treatment of a seven-grade official, and now he has become a powerful faction, the military industry has long been afraid of Li Guolou, if it is not pleasing to the eye, he will be scolded, very arrogant, his temper has become more and more weird, very much admire the great inventor Edison, he personally engaged in invention and creation, and every technical difficulty in the shipbuilding industry is that he personally led a group of technicians to tackle key problems, it can be said that the Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau has poured Xu Jianyin's hard work into the construction of every ironclad ship

Xu Shou, Xu Jianyin, father and son were originally Zeng Guofan's cronies, and they were pioneers in the shipbuilding industry of the Qing Dynasty, since Zeng Guofan's death, there was no backstage career in the imperial court, and the career had gone downhill, Xu Shou had already given Shi Shanghai the year of the sixtieth year, and founded the "Shanghai Gezhi College" in Shanghai to cultivate the shipbuilding industry as his own responsibility, but suddenly Li Hongzhang re-enabled, Xu Shou sat on the "Tianjin Machinery Manufacturing Bureau" general office, and Xu Jianyin was promoted to the deputy general office of the "Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau", and the three ranks, overnight, two scientific and technological talents in the Qing military industry were promoted to the top management, disrupting the officialdom tradition

Li Hongzhang pinned the revitalization of the shipbuilding industry in the Qing Dynasty on Xu's father and son, all of which came from Li Guolou's "daughter buys bones" allusion, Li Guolou recommended to Li Hongzhang "a generation of masters", Xu's father and son, Li Guolou's wisdom and pearls, is the benefactor of Xu's father and son

Therefore, although Xu Jianyin and Li Guolou have contradictions from time to time and ridicule each other, they can tolerate each other's shortcomings, and this time Xu Jianyin drove from Shanghai to build an ironclad ship to Li Guolou to inspect the technical functions of the "mosquito boat".

The so-called mosquito boat, as the name suggests, is this kind of small hull, the mosquito boat is modeled after the Jiangnan shipyard bought from the United Kingdom, poured into the ingenuity and ingenuity, and was built by Xu Jianyin

The mosquito ship is a gunboat, the shipbuilders of the Qing Dynasty affectionately call it "mosquito boat", it is very vivid, the mosquito ship is mainly used for offshore operations, mainly used to arrest smuggling ships, to prevent piracy infestation, the advantage is flexible and fast, the disadvantage is that the ability to continue long-distance navigation is poor, the hull is too small, can not be loaded with too much fuel, the mosquito ship can not resist wind and waves, can not cruise at sea for a long time, dare not be too far away from the port

Xu Jianyin supervised the design, material selection, construction, acceptance, recruitment, training, etc., during the construction of mosquito boats, Xu Jianyin supervised the construction of a total of 20 mosquito boats, because of the high quality and low price of widely praised, foreign engineers also praised him for his extensive knowledge and many merits

The hull design and the materials used in the ships can be copied by the Qing Dynasty, but there is still a big technical difficulty that cannot be overcome, and the steam engines built by the Qing Dynasty themselves are far from those made by the British, and the speed of the mosquito ships cannot be compared with the imported gunboats

Due to the technical monopoly of the ship, in terms of steam engine, there is a huge gap between the Qing Dynasty shipbuilding industry and the Western shipbuilding industry, Xu Jianyin came up with a way to overcome this difficulty according to local conditions, that is, to reduce the weight of the hull, according to Xu Jianyin's design, do not use the wooden hull of the British gunboat, the hull is wrapped with iron sheets, the hull floor is made of teak, the secret row is the bone, the iron bar is the root, and the bent wood is the beam, and only the important parts are wrapped with iron armor, which can not only avoid the rust of the iron sheet, but also save materials and save money, mainly to reduce the weight of the hull, so that the navigation is convenient

In addition, the gunboat's bow gun was changed to Prussia's advanced breech gun, that is, the Krupp cannon, this breech gun weighs 12 tons, with more than 8 kg of solid ammunition, can also charge 43 kg of fire, can also be hollow loaded with 3 kg, firing breech gun than breech gun greatly reduces the recoil when firing, can increase the stability of the ship, the gun body can rotate up and down, left and right, flexible control, turret armor up to 19 cm thick

There were also four auxiliary guns on either side of the ship, and iron stakes were installed in the bow to ram the enemy ships

The Mosquito is about 41 meters long and 4 meters wide, powered by a replica steam engine, with a horsepower of 25 horsepower and a speed of 8 knots

Compared with the British gunboats, there is no big difference in the size, shape, speed, maneuverability, sensitivity and firepower configuration of the domestic mosquito boats, but the silver required for shipbuilding is 1/4 of the British gunboats, which can be said to be cheap and good

The Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau built 20 mosquito boats, nominally to arrest smugglers, drug traffickers, pirates, and garrison several ports in the north, but Li Guolou transferred them to Tianjin, and all of them were refitted, and he wanted to drive 20 mosquito ships into the deep sea, and use the superiority in quantity to defuse the enemy's superiority in quality

As for the endurance of the mosquito boat, it has been properly solved with the collective efforts, that is, to use several coal carriers to follow the mosquito boat to sail, as long as it does not encounter a dozen typhoons in the sea, the mosquito boat will not capsize in the deep sea

The sea breeze blew and Li Guolou and his wife Huang Xiaoman boarded the gunboat "Haidongqing" to hunt the flag and hunt the flag, and Deng Shichang, the captain of the ship, led the whole ship's 40 crew members to gather on the deck to welcome Li Guolou for review

Drums aqualimatically sounded on the shore, and the royal guard of honor played music to the beat of the drums and walked in fancy dance steps

Captain Deng Shichang personally raised the color bar, and the whistle sounded harshly, proving to the world that the Great Shimizu Division was advancing towards the blue ocean

Twenty salutes roared, and twenty mosquito boats Li Guolou stood in high spirits, and the Haidongqing broke through the wind and waves and sailed towards the blue sea

The officers and captains of the 20 mosquito ships were the first batch of students of the Fujian Mawei Shipbuilding School, and Yan Fu was their chief student, and Li Hongzhang used two battleships to incorporate the outstanding students of the Mawei Shipbuilding School into the Beiyang Naval Division

At this time, Deng Shichang had just joined the Beiyang Naval Division, and he was not yet eighteen years old in the internship stage, with a strong physique and a very stocky physique

Deng Shichang stood at Li Guolou's first pair of phoenix eyes, and he was spying on Li Guolou's every move, in such a cold weather, Li Guolou came to inspect the mosquito boat, what did Li Hongzhang's successor think

Xu Jianyin commanded and said: "Li Xuezheng, this is the world's gunboat, and now the British gunboat is at this speed."

Li Guolou squinted and said: "General Manager Xu, you are not fooling me, science and technology are changing with each passing day, can you guarantee that the British-style turbine engine has not been developed, if you don't advance, you will retreat, don't do it for a while, you are modeled after the British second-rate gunboat, you are made into a mosquito ship, a good gunboat, the British will not let you visit, don't want to steal the division"

Xu Jianyin was dumbfounded by Li Guolou's question, in the field of science and technology, the Qing Dynasty was a start-up baby, and the gap with the Western powers was obvious, and now although the Qing Dynasty's defense industry was helped by the Prussians, but every country considered for its own sake, the Prussians were also unwilling to sell military technology to the Qing Dynasty, he personally participated in the Krupp cannon technology transfer negotiations, and the Prussian Prime Minister Bismarck refused to let the Krupp cannon manufacturing drawings, and many military industry difficulties were still dependent on self-reliance

Xu Jianyin was a little weak-hearted and said: "I have already done my best, and the entire Oriental mosquito ship is enough to be proud of the others, but unfortunately the Prussian turbine engine introduction project has not yet been eyebrowed."

"Mr. Xu's office is too windy, you have to be louder," Li Guolou roared angrily in the wind, expressing his depression in his heart

The Qing Dynasty was strong and strong, and it was sent by the Westerners to betray the national interests in exchange for Qingdao to become a Prussian naval base

Exchanging territory for development space sounds shameful, but the effect is very good, if it were not for the help of the Prussians, the Jiangnan Manufacturing General Bureau would not be able to build compared with the British gunboats, the American mosquito boat people could not eat fat in one breath, and the filth between Prussia and Prussia was only a small flaw in a good situation, only a number of cooperation in the civilian field was carried out, so that the Prussian locomotive sailed to the territory of the Qing Dynasty, and Prussia's military secrets would not be guaranteed, and the transfer of civilian technology to military was the hope for the revival of the Qing military industrial enterprises