The U.S. Navy advisers were on track, and a month later two new gunboats were launched, and they succeeded in getting two gunboats into the fleet, and soon began training. Pen, fun, pavilion www. biquge。 info

Their arrival standardized Zhu Jinglun's navy and established various positions in the navy, from sailors to chief officers, to various positions on warships of different categories, and to train naval soldiers.

It was not easy to build a navy from a poor and blank slate, the previous warship, named Zero, meant the starting point, and the second and third ships became the previous and the Kailai, hoping to carry on the past and open up the future, and reshape China's naval tradition, which is somewhat far-fetched and can only be traced back to the Zheng He period.

There were already three warships, each of which was temporarily under the direct command of a US officer, but Zhu Jinglun was still not satisfied, he needed more warships, and he felt that it was urgent.

On the one hand, they continue to recruit all kinds of sailors, Xu Min is the best soldier, they are used to life on the ship, but the knowledge level is too poor, can only be used as a low-level sailor, the real officer must be literate, hired with a high salary, there is no one who cannot be recruited, naval officers are high-end talents in various countries, and the salary level is much higher than that of the army, Zhu Jinglun set the standard for the low-level officer sentry commander is 30 taels, the battalion officer is 50 taels, and the brigade commander has reached 100 taels, which is equivalent to the commander of the infantry, and as the commander of the ship, the monthly salary is as high as 300 taels.

But the requirements are also extremely strict, not simply to know a few words, but must have read more than eight years of books, and even recruited several talents.

With a monthly salary of hundreds of taels per month, even poor Xiucai can't withstand this attraction, and another important reason is that Zhu Jinglun's current status has made scholars begin to consider him.

This is not unusual, for the imperial examination of thousands of troops and horses on a single-plank bridge, many scholars are under too much pressure, and there will be any kind of bold ideas, as long as they can be officials, they dare to do anything, and even in the Opium War, there are also scholars who make requests to foreigners, saying that as long as foreigners sponsor him to go to Beijing to catch the exam, he is willing to work with filial piety, obviously those who can enter Beijing to catch the exam are definitely not ordinary scholars, at least they have the opportunity to make a name for themselves, and this kind of people are willing to lead the way for foreigners. Now that Zhu Jinglun has essentially controlled Guangdong, it is strange that the talents in Guangdong do not have the idea of finding a way out with him.

With the expansion of his influence, it is easier to recruit talents, which Zhu Jinglun has long discovered. He can now be regarded as having attracted a group of his own forces, Guangzhao Luo Dao and Gao Lei Yang Dao officials are basically appointed by him, and these people continue to recommend talents to him, he now has no less than 100 staff members of various fame, as long as someone takes refuge, he will accept it all, whether it is a person or a talent, he wants it.

Zhu Jinglun planned to train them as captains, and clearly told them that as long as they could learn, they would be appointed as commanders, and their grades were higher than those of the county order, and they were beaten one by one, and they didn't care about the difference between civil and military affairs, they really could afford to be scholars, and they couldn't get down from the dirty ship all day long, of course, there were people who couldn't endure hardships, such people were not reused anywhere, and there were three Xiucai who got on the ship, and after a few days, they were all kinds of illnesses, and Zhu Jinglun directly fired them, which also put pressure on the talents behind.

People can be cultivated, but warships can't wait, if Zhu Jinglun needs to attack Beijing in a year, then there are obviously not enough warships at the moment, he needs more, bigger warships, but his shipyard is saturated, whether it is a dock or talents, it is limited to his shipbuilding plan.

Find William, the person in charge of the arsenal, and tell him that he needs 30 warships, including at least 10 small gunboats of 500 tons, 4 capital ships of 1000 tons, and 2 of 3000 tons, and it is best to produce a 5000 ton giant ship, which can deter the Qing court more.

There are still ways, the shipyards under the arsenal itself are not capable of building, it does not mean that other parts of Guangdong are also capable of building, as a window of the five-port trade era, the shipbuilding industry here still has a certain foundation.

Guangzhou Huangpu Wharf, Scottish shipwright Kebai as early as 1845, built an advanced dock, and can produce 1000 tons of steam sailing ships, at that time in the world is also a relatively advanced ship type.

John. Kebai is an employee of the British Steamship Company, sent to China by the British Steamship Company, he is an old shipwright, has rich experience in repairing ships, the reason why he was sent to China is because in that era, the Chinese did not allow foreigners to go ashore, nor did foreigners build docks, so the foreigners' ships to Guangzhou, were repaired in the Chinese docks, so that at that time, dozens of repair docks of all sizes were formed in the Huangpu area of Guangzhou.

However, with the advent of the steam age, these local repair shops had no experience in repairing steamships, so Kebai was sent to Huangpu as the company's representative, responsible for the supervision of the company's ships sent to Huangpu. Therefore, all the Chinese craftsmen who repaired steamships in Guangzhou at that time were taught by Cobay.

Old Kebai, who had good skills and a nimble brain, found that there was a large repair market in Guangzhou, and that there were too few people who knew how to repair steamships, so he felt that this was an opportunity, and after saving a sum of money, he rented a local mud dock and hired Chinese workers to provide maintenance services for ships from other countries.

After saving a sum of money in a few years, the old Cobay saw that the ship repair business was getting bigger and bigger, and thought that it was the general trend for machine ships to replace wooden sailing ships. Acutely aware that this is a huge business opportunity. So he planned to stay in Guangdong and run a truly machine-driven dockyard company that hired Chinese workers to repair and maintain European steamers.

In March 1851, the elder Corbay and the Englishman Adu? Wellington? Grufan partnered to start the construction of a new dock in Ping Gang, Cheung Chau, which was designed by him himself, with a floating gate, and was a dry dock built entirely of granite, which was the first granite dock in the East.

Two years later, due to a disagreement, the two broke up, and Grufan took the funds for the construction of the dockyard. At this time, the mud dock in Kobay was booming and profitable, and it was already possible to build a new dock as a sole proprietorship. Three years later, the Kebai Dockyard was completed and the Kebai Dockyard Company was born.

The Kebai dock is located at the confluence of the Whampoa Waterway and the Xinzhou Waterway, and the sediment at the dock mouth is easily washed away by the current and rarely silted. The dock is 300 feet (91.44 meters) long, 75 feet (22.86 meters) wide, and can accommodate ships with a draft of 17 feet (5.18 meters), and a slipway on a small slope behind the dock for launching new ships.

The dock is made of granite, and the cascading dock edges resemble altar steps. The dock is equipped with a floating gate, which is made into a hardwood box shape to make the river mud brick ballast, and the whole is connected with brass bolts. The stone dock pumps water, and the pump is driven by a steam engine, and the cost of the whole stone dock is estimated to be about 70,000 yuan.

This dock was the first stone dock in the Far East at that time, and it was also the earliest industrial enterprise operated by foreign capital in Guangzhou, and had the ability to undertake the world's first-class steamships at that time. It was also the first time that a dock with a floating gate at the dock had appeared in China.

Since the shipyard in Cobay was the most advanced in China at that time, the British Steamship Company, the British Royal Navy, the shipping company and other first-rate international shipping companies soon became his customers, and the ship repair business was very busy, and the work was full throughout the year.

Along with the benefits, Cobay also began to develop shipbuilding capabilities, and in the spring of 1856, Cobay Dockyard built a steaming schooner for American dock owner James B. Endit. With an overall length of 179 feet (54.56 m), a keel length of 162 feet (49.38 m), a median width of 22 feet (6.71 m), and a displacement of about 1,000 tons, the Lily was the largest ship built in China at the time.

Despite his success, Kobay did not even have the right to live on the ground, his dock was nominally "rented", the owner was anchored by a local craftsman, and he built a boat of his own to live on the water all year round, keeping the Tan people company.

It is precisely because foreigners cannot buy land and build houses in Guangzhou, so that Kebai took the lead and opened this business model, but then many foreign companies began to imitate, and soon there were two other dock companies in Guangzhou Huangpu, Qiji and Yuren, and Kebai together formed a situation in which the three major shipyards carved up the Guangzhou market.

Like Cobay, the entrepreneurs of these foreign shipyards also live on ships, living next to each other.

By the time of the Second Opium War, they had monopolized the shipbuilding industry in Guangzhou, and all the local dockyards were bought by them, including the mud docks belonging to Chinese craftsmen.

But one day after the second opium began, I don't know if it was because their monopoly hurt the interests of their Chinese counterparts, or they simply wanted to kidnap the ticket, or they wanted to cut off the head to receive the reward, one day a sampan docked the big ship of Corbay and told him that there was a letter for him, and Corbay stood on the deck to get the letter, but was pulled down by seven or eight big men on the sampan, and disappeared from it.

Nine times out of ten, he was directly captured and beheaded by the Tan people on the Pearl River, and at that time, Ye Mingchen was spending a lot of money to reward the heads of foreigners, just like the Americans bounty the heads of Indians, but he was more generous than the Americans, giving 100 taels for one head.

When the war broke out, the local people destroyed the dockyard, but the dock did not end there.

After the end of the war, the British asked for compensation for Kebai, the Qing government compensated the Kebai dockyard, Kebai's son Kebai Jr. came to China and got the compensation of 120,000 taels of silver, Kebai Jr. used this money to not only rebuild the shipyard, but also expand the dock, after expansion and equipment, the rebuilt Kebai dock is 550 feet long, 70 feet wide, and 17 feet deep, with two floating doors, which can be used for two ships to dock at the same time.

Still the largest shipyard in China, Xiao Kebai also built a wooden dock and two mud docks.

That's what happened last year, the dockyard in Little Cobay has just been repaired, and business is still good. This year, we have begun to build a granite dock in a joint venture with Tom Maskent, the owner of Qiji.

It can be said that Guangzhou at this time has its own shipbuilding industry, so William directly took the order to these shipyards, they heard that it was for the navy to build ships, where is there a reason not to accept, is there a more profitable business in the world than to build warships for the navy, one bite agreed, swore a promise, within a year to deliver all the warships Zhu Jinglun needed, but the steam engine and weapons and equipment had to be provided by the arsenal, they only had the ability to manufacture hulls.

In the end, a total of 25 warships were ordered, all of which were handed over to the foreigner shipyards in Huangpu and Changzhou in Guangzhou to build, and the largest 5,000-ton flagship was built by the Kebai shipyard with the largest dock.

One year, that is, before March 1864, Zhu Jinglun would have 30 warships and become the maritime hegemon of the Eastern world. (To be continued.) )