With the thaw of relations between the Chinese Empire and the West, the British returned to the East, and they had to return, because there was still an India to worry about, India's materials and resources, commodities were all they needed, neither Africa nor the Americas, could supply the British with huge raw materials like India, and at the same time sell British goods to India, make a lot of profits, and take away a lot of gold and silver treasures.

And since the Spaniards withdrew from the Far East and Asia more than 20 years ago, their merchant ships have never appeared on this side of the Strait of Malacca, they have been exploring Africa and the Americas, and even concentrating on the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico, fighting for colonial islands in the Caribbean with France, Britain, and the Netherlands, several countries have fought unrelentingly for twenty years, but in the end the Dutch withdrew, the British got some, the Spaniards won and occupied the Caribbean, and most of the Gulf of Mexico was occupied by the British, The Dutch just got some small islands around the corner.

The French and the British acquired islands in the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico, Bermuda and other places, and the struggle between the two sides in the Caribbean continued, but they were all exhausted.

So several parties chose a truce at the same time, and turned their attention to the east, where the war stopped, the eastern war has been away from them for twenty years, and the recent battle with Russia is only a small battle in Central Asia, and the war in Siberia is fought by the Qing Dynasty, not the Chinese Empire, which only supports manpower and material resources, guns, weapons, artillery, and other things in the back.

Although they could not colonize it, the huge market of the Chinese Empire was what all the Western countries wanted to enter, but the previous hostile relationship, coupled with the geographical distance, made it impossible for them to effectively and timely transmit news and communicate with the Chinese Empire.

Their side is already the era of sails, the era of sail battleships with iron sheets and wooden hulls, and the warships are getting bigger and bigger, the artillery is more and more powerful, and the way of engagement has changed from hand-to-hand combat between jumping gangs to shelling each other at a distance of 800 meters to 1,000 meters.

And the cost of ships is rising again and again, the original ordinary warship, 180 tons, sail warship is only 30,000 pounds a piece, simple even 10,000 pounds can be built, in the Caribbean is still the king and hegemony, but in the far sea, this amount of money to equip the warship is not enough.

The tonnage of warships increased from 180 tons to 300 tons and 500 tons when fighting the Chinese Empire 30 years ago.

1,000-ton battleships, 2,000-ton battleships, as a luxury configuration, cannot fight in peacetime, and only warships of which class will be dispatched when the two countries are in a national war, and there are not many in each country, three or four, seven or eight, a dozen or so, and the most is the British, more than thirty.

The cost of one is five or six hundred thousand pounds, and the cost of about two thousand tons is one million to three or four million pounds, which is simply a waste, so if it were not for the sake of highlighting the status and strength of a sea kingdom, many countries would not build such a large battleship with 100 guns.

The 1,000-ton warships costing between 300,000 and 400,000 yuan are everyone's favorite, specially used for fighting and pursuing the enemy, and at the same time the cost is not much, but there are a lot of them, Britain has nearly 300 warships, and Spain has nearly 100 warships, but these warships of theirs are all backward after they were defeated again in the South China Sea of the Chinese Empire, and after Britain obtained the iron sail warships of the Chinese Empire.

At that time, the Chinese Empire had already begun to renovate the sail warships to iron warships, and only with more than 100 modified iron warships, the second expedition and sweep after the encirclement and suppression of Zheng Zhi and their forces by the Western coalition forces ended in one fell swoop, and drove the Dutch, British, and Spaniards out of the South China Sea, the Indian Ocean, and the Strait of Malacca.

Completely dominate the seas of Asia.

After his return, the Chinese Empire continued to research and transform the iron warships and battleships transformed from flying clippers, forming sail warships that were mainly iron and iron, and even most of the sail warships using iron sheets, and the firepower also changed from mixed solid shells and inferior unstable flowering shells to cylindrical copper-iron alloy shells with shell texture.

The barrel of the artillery has also changed from the original large-bellied smoothbore gun bore to the straight barrel of the rifled gun, and it has been lengthened, and various bronze and steel artillerys have been scientifically and reasonably manufactured.

These artillery pieces participated in the battle with the Great Qing State, and later exported to the Great Qing State, supporting the Great Qing State to clear the Russian explorers and horse bandits in Siberia, and the battle of the expeditionary force, completing the first battle of the Great Qing State to occupy Siberia.

In the next twenty years, although there were many improvements, but the improvement was not much, the hull of the battleship still had a lot of wood, the sails were still the protagonists, and the speed increase was not large, from the original cruising six knots, eight combat knots and nine knots, and the speed of the fastest speed of twelve .5 knots to fourteen knots increased to eight knots of cruising, the combat speed of ten knots to twelve knots, and the speed of the fastest speed of 14.5 knots to fifteen knots increased.

It was not until the last ten years that a major improvement was made, and the steam engine was put on board, and the maximum speed was increased to more than 15 to 16 knots, which was not very stable, but it was still more than the original pure sail steering and sailing, relying on nature, to being able to sail on the open sea by one's own will, and drifting downwind for a while at the worst, and then using the steam engine when there was no wind, burning charcoal or firewood to escape or pursue the enemy, or return to the port.

At this time, Western warships are still changing to the hull characteristics of flying clippers, and they are still considering how to match the design to achieve maximum speed, but they have also been improved a lot, their sail battleships are faster, the combat speed of eight or nine knots, a more reasonable artillery ratio, reduce the number of guns, the weight of the hull, but increase the power of artillery.

All of this came from learning from the clipper warship that the Chinese Empire captured by them.

Britain is at the forefront.

The Netherlands knew the power of the clippers, and vigorously developed the clippers, for a time the Caribbean Sea to the African coast are the figures of the clippers, although the resistance to wind and waves is not high, but it can still sail far, although the combat effectiveness is not good, but it can still through its own rapid entry and separation, strike at the enemy, the speed of 12 knots to the fastest 178 knots makes the speed of Western news transmission accelerated, the speed of transporting population has accelerated, and the speed of population flow has also accelerated, which has well promoted the social development of the West.

Although the Spaniards were slow to get the news, after all, they had also participated in the battle with the Chinese Empire, and they also knew the characteristics of the warships of the Chinese Empire, the transformation of the British and the Dutch, and soon they got the technology and developed their own new warships.

(End of chapter)