In the deal with the Spaniards, a total of 500 small tonnage steam paddle steamers of about 200 to 1,300 tons were sold, and more than 90 sail warships of less than 2,000 tons, all of which were ships that the coastal naval division garrison was also preparing to eliminate, and they were to receive nearly 800 large and small tonnage clipper-type sail warships that had previously defeated the British and Spaniards, as well as iron-sheet, iron-bone, and ironclad sail warships. These are simply chicken ribs for the coastal naval division garrison, which is now greedy for the steam engine battleship.

But there is no way, their tradition is to receive the retired warships of the sailors, to teach and train the sailors needed by the sailors and the fighters needed by the sailors, as well as to patrol and garrison the coastline, and transport some supplies to the overseas fleets and overseas governors, while maintaining the suppression of the strength of the overseas governorates, they have no choice and income-generating ability, and they have no right to speak in the sailors, yes, they belong to the management of the sailor director, and they do not have their own independent departments.

Their wharves and shipyards are full of nearly thousands of warships that have been eliminated from the founding of the Chinese Empire to the present, and there are all kinds of warships, and there are even old ships of 180 tons of armed merchant ships that captured the Portuguese more than 50 years ago.

In the first 30 years, they bought almost all the obsolete and retired warships of the Chinese Empire except for the war losses, but later they sold more than half of the warships to the Naval Coast Guard as scrap, depreciated them and bought new ships, and then they lost the old ones to the Naval Coast Guard.

Year after year, more than 20 years later, the docks and shipyards of the Naval Division and Coast Guard are full of merchant ships that have been converted from these warships, as well as retired warships that have not been transformed.

If it weren't for the fishermen who wanted to buy these modified and smaller boats for fishing, the Navy Coast Guard would have gone bankrupt a long time ago, and the merchants were also very cunning.

There are still many merchant ships that the merchants don't want, all of which are new merchant ships that can't be bought at a price, so they are lost, and the Chinese Empire's maritime shipbuilding and shipbuilding business are quite developed, just like the American automobile graveyard in later generations, littered casually, until the Chinese Empire's processing capacity can not meet their discarding actions.

So everywhere were discarded old ships, and ships were worthless, which was the common idea of all the people of all the state capitals of the Chinese Empire.

When the Spaniards came, Zhang Qiang of course had to sell all these old goods to the Spaniards, and he even told Ruan Tian that if he could sell all the old ships and the old merchant ships and armed merchant ships of various ages produced by the shipyards that had been piled up over the years, and all the retired warships, he would refurbish the naval fleet with all 800 ironclad warships with steam engines.

Because there are still more than 200 experimental warships in the warships of the Chinese Empire, these warships have a high failure rate, at the beginning of the Chinese Empire's sailors were still very jubilant when they saw the steam warships, and felt that they could change to more suitable and more advanced warships, but in a few months, they found that they were particularly laborious, dirty, bitter, and tired, and they almost became miners in the coal kiln when they served these steam engine warships that were always faulty.

The first generation of stereotyped steam engine warships used a new type to reduce the soot drifting, and installed a filter device in it, and the frigate used a small boiler of 3000 horsepower, which was composed of two small boilers of 1,500 horsepower, with a cruising speed of 12 knots and a maximum speed of 17 knots. Compared to black smoke, it is less likely to be spotted at a distance.

Of course, the frigate also has a spare boiler group, two five-hundred-horsepower boiler groups, forming a one-thousand-horsepower reserve boiler group, once the enemy fleet is found, it is immediately increased to nineteen knots to escape, they have a small hull tonnage, line-type, but also carry some tail low-mast sails, the front mast can also hang the mast sails that can be turned, use two small boiler groups, escape with low smoke and dust.

The battleship uses the same dust reduction system, but there are more chimneys, and there are some black smoke in them, four huge chimneys, which occupy a large part of the space in the middle of the hull, which are equipped with four steam engine boilers with 1,500 horsepower, and sixteen small boilers with 500 horsepower, and at the same time there are two backup boilers with 1,200 horsepower in the tail, four boiler groups with 2,000 horsepower, and a steam warship of 3,000 tons, with a displacement of more than 5,000 tons, and generally four 1,500 horsepower, a total of 6,000 horsepower, Together with four sets of 2,000-horsepower boiler sets, a total of 8,000-horsepower boiler sets, a battleship of more than 3,000 tons was propelled to operate at a maximum speed of 18.5 knots.

If only four boiler sets of fifteen hundred horsepower are used, then only the boat can be propelled at a maximum speed of 16.6 knots, if four of these boiler sets are used, the small boiler group, two thousand horsepower, will only be able to propel the ship to run at a speed of 6 knots, and two boiler groups of one thousand five hundred horsepower, for a total of three thousand horsepower, can only propel the ship to cruise at a speed of eight to nine knots.

Generally, two 1,500-horsepower boiler sets, plus four 1,500-horsepower boiler sets, can propel the ship to run at a speed of 12 knots or more, maintaining the same cruising speed as a frigate.

After the warships of the Chinese Empire were finalized, most of them used 500 horsepower, 1,200 horsepower, 1,500 horsepower, 3,000 horsepower, and other boiler groups to match the power of each ship, this is because the researchers of the Chinese Empire found that once the high-horsepower boiler groups that exceeded these horsepower were on the ship, especially these tonnage on the ships of more than 3,000 tons and 4,000 tons, the utilization rate was not obvious, and increasing the horsepower could not increase the efficiency, but instead occupied the hull space and weakened the armor and firepower of the hull itself.

It can be said that researchers are already in a technological bottleneck and can no longer break through.

The efficiency of two 3,000-horsepower boilers to drive a ship is no more efficient than that of four 1,500-horsepower, a total of 6,000-horsepower boiler sets, which propels the ship to run faster, or has a lower failure rate, and the system composed of multiple groups of low horsepower effectively disperses the danger of a ship's efficiency degradation due to the failure of one boiler, or a direct shutdown on the sea, because it can be disconnected and recombined to maintain the efficiency of other boilers to solve the inefficiency caused by a full-horsepower boiler, or the accident of stopping the ship on the sea.

In a fierce battle, one boiler is hit, and then the whole ship becomes a target for the enemy, such a thing, it is terrible to think about, so the boiler for battleships generally uses a low-horsepower combination solution.

(End of chapter)