Dozens of workers turned huge winchs. Pen, fun, pavilion www. biquge。 The gates of the info dock began to slowly open, and the sea water poured in.

The sailors on the ship were busy with their duties, and the white sails were spread out in the wind. The cotton cloth in Yulin Bay could not be made into sails, and the tents brought by the bandits in Lingshui last time could not adapt to the requirements of the field, and they were basically rotten after 10 days of marching. This time, according to John's request, the committee specially commissioned Gao Pengju to go to Guangzhou to find someone to customize a batch of canvases. Now the Industrial Bureau is developing Jenny spinning machines and preparing them to spin and weave their own fabrics.

As the water continued to pour into the dock, the God gradually floated. This Englishman was very interesting, and contributed all his shipbuilding and shipbuilding skills, with only one request, and the first ship was named after the God. According to John's explanation, only God could have designed and built such a good ship.

The God slowly sailed out of the dock, the huge sails bulging to the brim of the wind. Qiu Peng stood next to John and watched the Englishman give orders one by one.

An hour later, the Horn of God sailed back into the Yulin Bay Pier. Qiu Peng and John ran down from the boat with excited faces: "Great, great." ”

The members of the committee on the shore couldn't help but laugh a little, this Qiu Peng rarely liked it so much, it seemed that the effect of this ship was very good.

"Distinguished gentlemen." John waved his two hands and shouted in stiff Chinese: "This is God's masterpiece, this is completely impossible, only God can do it." ”

"Mr. John, what is going on that makes you so excited?" Fan Qiuming asked.

"Your Excellency, during our trial voyage just now, the USS God ran at a speed of up to 15 knots, which is the speed of the devil, no, God." John was a little incoherent with excitement.

At the beginning of the 17th century, the general speed of sail warships was about 7 knots, and the maximum speed downwind generally did not exceed 10 knots, and the God easily ran to 15 knots during the trial just now. The traversers certainly know that this is thanks to the God's streamlined and V-shaped bottom design. Theoretically, as long as the wind is strong enough, the speed of the sailboat can reach infinitely fast, but this cannot be done. Even in the 21st century, the fastest speed of sailboats built with the most advanced materials and design concepts was just over 50 knots, and in 2008 the "Hydrofoil" reached a top speed of more than 60 knots per hour, but it soon fell apart. Because when traveling at high speeds of more than 100 kilometers per hour, the water becomes as hard as a rock.

"Is 15 knots the top speed?" Zhang Guodong asked.

"No, you can run faster." Qiu Peng replied, "But we didn't dare to try, I guess if it was fast, the ship would fall apart, after all, the materials are not good." ”

"You run a few more times and report the data." Xia Yang interjected on the side, "Let's confirm, if it's okay, let's finalize it, Chairman Fan, Chairman Zhang, how about it?" ”

"I think it's okay, let's just decide, we're too short of ships now." Pham Thu Minh agreed.

Zhang Guodong also nodded: "I have no opinion, but after the finalization, we must hurry up the design of a new type of warship, we can't have only one model." ”

"Let's go, go to the ordnance team and see how their artillery is doing." Fan Qiuming greeted everyone, "It's not enough to have a ship without a cannon. ”

Geng Rui was finally freed. After all the more than 2,000 prisoners of war were settled, Geng Rui's old prisoners of war were all released. Very few left Yulin Bay, and most of them stayed in Yulin Bay like Geng Rui. Geng Rui went to Jiang Beiming the day after he was freed, because he felt that only this chief was the one he trusted the most. Jiang Beiming didn't delay for a moment after knowing that Geng Rui knew how to make steel, and immediately sent him to Xia Yang, and personally signed a contract with Xia Yang on behalf of Geng Rui. As long as Geng Rui can smelt qualified steel for casting cannons, the commission for each ton of steel smelted is 5 taels of silver.

More than 2,000 new prisoners of war were all driven to the road construction site, and the speed of road construction was greatly increased due to the addition of more than 2,000 new troops. At the end of March, the dirt road from Yulin Bay to Tiandu was finally completed. At this time, the Guyunkun mine also began to see its eyebrows and began to produce ore, but the casualty rate of workers is also slowly rising, and in more than two months, more than 10 of the 300 miners have been disabled due to various accidents. Despite repeated increases in wages and pensions by the committee, discontent gradually spread among the miners. Gu Yunkun returned to Yulin Bay several times to request a moratorium on the development of the Tiandu iron ore mine, but the committee vetoed it, and if the development was stopped at this moment, it would be a waste of all the work. Gu Yunkun had no choice, so he had to take 2 more squads of the army back to Tiandu to prevent possible accidents.

The committee's directive finally came, and all the miners, except those who voluntarily stayed, returned to Yulin Bay. In their place were 800 prisoners of war and 1 army company. This made Gu Yunkun breathe a sigh of relief, after all, the casualties of these pirates didn't have to be too concerned. The Military Commission also made a decision that all prisoners of war would be rotated every two months and go to the Tiandu Iron Mine in turn, so that they could regain their freedom as long as they worked for one year.

The industrial bureau of smelting iron ore into iron has long been solved by itself, but there has been little progress in how to make steel. The steel smelting in the Ming Dynasty has reached a relatively high level, which is the steel filling method. Song Yingxing in his book "Heavenly Creations", described in detail the steel filling process at that time.

"In all iron and steel smelting, wrought iron is beaten into thin slices as wide as a finger and a half inches long, and the iron is bundled tightly and tightened, and pig iron is placed on it, and the top is covered with broken grass and the mud is applied to the bottom. When the fire arrives, the raw steel is first melted and soaked in wrought iron, and the two feelings are combined. Take out the hammer, refine and hammer, and so on. The common name is group steel, also known as the steel filler. ”

The meaning of Song Yingxing's words is that the method of steelmaking is to first beat wrought iron into a thin sheet as wide as a finger and about an inch and a half long, then wrap it tightly with wrought iron sheets, and then put the pig iron on top of the tightly tied wrought iron sheets. Then, cover the straw sandals with tattered straw shoes (they should be stained with mud so that they do not burn immediately), and apply mud under the iron sheets. When all this is done, it is put into the furnace and blasted vigorously to reach the required temperature, and the pig iron is first melted into molten iron, which seeps into the wrought iron below, and the two merge with each other. At this point, the hammer can be removed. After re-refining and hammering, repeated many times, the steel tempered in this way is commonly known as group steel, also called steel filling.

The steelmaking method contributed by Geng Rui is the advanced stage of steel filling, the "Suzhou Iron and Steel" smelting method. Put the pig iron and wrought iron together to smelt, and when the pig iron melts and the iron juice is about to flow, the molten pig iron is rubbed into the wrought iron, and the steel is smelted. Based on Geng Rui's method, the Industrial Bureau incorporated the experience of later generations and improved it. First, the unforged iron is put into the furnace and heated by blast. After two minutes, one end of the pig iron is clamped with tongs and placed diagonally in the furnace mouth, and the air continues to blow so that the temperature in the furnace continues to rise. When the furnace temperature rises to about 1300°C, one end of the pig iron that rests obliquely in the furnace mouth begins to melt and begins to drip molten iron continuously. At the same time, the wrought iron is constantly turned so that all parts of the wrought iron can absorb the molten iron evenly. After pouring twice, the wrought iron is clamped to the anvil and forged. Impurities are removed, and the required billet is obtained.

Steel is there, but what about the cannon. Using the current billet to directly use the drilling method to make flintlock pistols, but it is impossible to make cannons, because there are not so large billets and forging presses, another bottleneck is generated. Just when everyone was worried about the cannon, there was a self-recommender among the traversers. This person's name is Zhang Xin, he was a tugboat owner before the crossing, and the biggest characteristic of this person is that he can drink and swim well. It is said that in his original era, people gave him the nickname Langli tabula rasa. And this person's hobby of artillery is comparable to Shen Daxing's sword building, and he has previously received anti-aircraft gun training from the militia.

Zhang Xin's suggestion to the Ordnance Group was to use the Rodman method to cast iron cannons.

The casting method was invented in 1860 during the American Civil War by Major Thomas Rodman of the U.S. Federal Army.

Generally, the natural cooling of the cast red-hot barrel when it is standing is from the outside to the inside, the reason is that the outer surface area of the barrel is larger than that of the inner tube, and the second is that the air circulation outside is faster than that of the inside, so that the natural outer layer is cooler than the inner layer, and finally forms the result of layer by layer expansion, and the strength is reduced. However, if the inner layer of the barrel can be cooled at the same time, or even cooled down before the outer layer, it can not only increase the cooling rate of the entire barrel, but also improve the performance of the barrel.

Rodman's invention is to replace the mold used as the inner mold of the barrel when casting the barrel with a hollow one, add a cooling water pipe in the middle, and then inject cooling water into it. Of course, the cooling water pipe must be made into a recirculating style to ensure the stability of the inner membrane temperature, such as using the U-shaped pipe mode to start filling water from the inside, so as to continuously circulate cooling.

The only problem is that the cooling rate, that is, the speed at which the water circulates, is particular. If it cools down too quickly, the inner tube will burst, and it must be done at an appropriate speed. It took 10 years from Rodman's theory in 1844 to the scientific and reasonable technical parameters demonstrated by experiments. This method made it possible to significantly reduce costs and make it possible to cast large-caliber guns. The reason for this is that this "internal mold water cooling technology" can greatly reduce the scrap rate of artillery, especially large-caliber guns, when casting.