In Tokai County, huge ships are being built on huge docks.

However, compared with before, there has been a strange situation in the shipyard in recent times, for example, the number of new ships has decreased significantly, and the new ships have also been changed from military to civilian.

And what is the difference between military and civilian? The difference is that military ships have a place for the installation of cannons, while civilian ships have only a bow and arrow hole, as well as a batter bar at the front and a bottom at the bottom of the bow.

No one knows how these two parts should be described in later generations, and Li Yuanji doesn't know.

But it does not prevent him from designing these, the upper striker bar also assumes the role of connecting the sails, in fact, the specific role is not large, the real role is the bottom of the bow of the ship.

The reason why it is called hitting the bottom is that it is to use him to hit the bottom of the enemy's ship, relying on its own huge impact force to directly smash the bottom of the opponent, so that seawater can be poured into it, resulting in the sinking of the opponent's ship.

This is a means of self-protection of civilian ships, and it is not known whether it will be useful for the time being, but one thing is certain, it will definitely not be useless.

Military ships do not have this design, no, or rather, from this moment on, all military ships will completely cancel this design.

In other words, from now on, all military ships will be completely changed.

It's not just his form that has changed, but also his interior, the way it is powered, and the structure of the hull.

The shipyard, which was originally thriving, has suddenly fallen into an embarrassing situation recently.

Shipbuilding was almost free of charge, except for the cost of labor, but the imperial court ordered that the construction of existing ships should be stopped, and that the design of sails should be abolished and the installation of steam engines should be reserved for those that continue to be built.

At the same time, it is necessary to use new materials, and this new material is the most headache for them, and the imperial court has also given a clear answer, steel.

New ships were to be built with steel to replace wooden ships.

Needless to say, the benefits of steel are known to everyone, strong, durable, and hardness are sufficient, even if it encounters a ship with a bottom, it is difficult to knock it apart, and even if it encounters a military ship equipped with artillery, the ability to protect itself has been greatly increased.

But here's the problem......

"Wang Gong, how is the situation?" Wang Xuance's face was full of depression, this ship was well built, and the plan could have been carried out in the second half of the year, but because of this order from the imperial court, there were not enough ships.

Now there are only two options left for Wang Xuance, postpone the planned time, or use the existing ships to continue the plan.

The two choices, no matter which one makes it a little difficult for Wang Xuance to choose, and even faintly biased towards the latter, because although the current ships are not enough, if they are planned properly, they are barely enough.

And Wang Gong, whose full name is Wang Li, was a family with Wang Xuance five hundred years ago, the deputy director of the Steel Research Department of the Academy of Sciences, and this order was brought by him, and a whole team came at the same time.

"No, according to this situation, a battleship made of steel will not work for a year at most after launching." Wang Li shook his head, and after checking the situation of all the different materials of steel soaked in seawater, he also felt that it was a little tricky for His Majesty's request, and even felt that it was impossible to complete it.

Scrapped in a year, this time may not be particularly accurate, but in fact it is not much worse, and before that, Wang Li also tried to put the corrosion rate of steel in water in the Academy of Sciences, but that speed was far less than now.

"I didn't expect that the corrosion intensity of this seawater would be so great, and all the materials we brought, only this one can last a little longer, but for a warship, this time is still too short, and even after a year, there is no value for repair, the only thing that can be used is to dismantle it and then return to the furnace to reforge it." Wang Li continued to explain.

The problem of materials is the most headache, before they were all wooden ships, simple maintenance, and there was no need to worry about corrosion, but now it is not possible, the biggest opponent of steel is corrosion, that is, rust.

It's been a month since I came here, and on another dock, hundreds of samples of materials are densely hung with ropes, all of which have been immersed in seawater for a month.

But after the inspection, it turned out that the results were unexpected, and even unimaginable, steel can make warships?

"What if the exterior was still made of wood, and the inside of the hull was built with steel?" Wang Xuance looked at the shipbuilding engineer on the side.

"I'm not sure about this, I still need to test it to find out." The shipbuilding engineer shook his head in response.

Is it okay to build a ship out of steel? The answer is yes, because they've trial-built a steel ship that can float in the water without affecting buoyancy, but the big question is how to stitch it together?

This is a big problem because the existing splicing method does not guarantee that the seawater can be isolated from the outside.

Because the trial ship soon had water seepage, the glue used on the wooden boat basically had no effect.

"Will wooden boats seep water?" Wang Li asked.

"Yes! However, the problem of water seepage on the wooden ship is not serious, the ship is equipped with special glue, and the bottom also has the crew in the continuous inspection, once the water seepage is found, it will immediately plug the leakage with glue, and then quickly return to the factory for repair. The ship engineer responded.

Any ship will seep water, wooden boats are no exception, there are always accidents will happen, but the problem of water seepage of wooden boats is not difficult to solve, apply this glue on it, return to the factory to repair is just to apply glue inside and outside, if the wood is not good, replace the wood, in short, it is not a big problem.

"That won't work!" Wang Li shook his head, although he didn't know much about shipbuilding, but as soon as he heard this, he knew that it couldn't be done, and then explained: "Unless it can be guaranteed that the wood outside does not seep water, but even so, it still can't prevent the steel inside from rusting, but in a humid place, even if it is not in direct contact with water, it will rust, if it is like this, it will accelerate the corrosion rate of steel, although it is only a situation, but ......"

Wang Li still shook his head, if he kept soaking in the water and didn't come out, this speed might be a little slower.

What I was most afraid of just now was going back and forth, and this situation was obviously going back and forth.

And after wrapping a layer of wood on the outside, it's hard to even clean it up, so you can't remove all the wood from the outside after a while, right?

If you don't dismantle it, you won't know where the rust is on the outside, and you won't know where to start.

Of course, Wang Li is only an expert in steel, and he knows nothing about the sea, and although his experiment is representative, it is not accurate.

Because of the test in the dock, this environment is relatively closed, although the sea water is constantly flowing, the speed of flow is relatively slow, and when the ship starts, its own speed and the speed of the sea water, the corrosiveness of the hull is more severe, and the year he predicted, in fact, can last half a year is good.

"The ship's cannon can be rust-proof, and the steel used in the hull can also be made of this kind of steel?" Wang Xuance thought of the ship's cannon.

"You can give this a try." Wang Li nodded, he also thought of this problem, the anti-rust of cannon steel is because of a layer of other metal materials on the outside.

In this era, there was no electroplating technology, and there was no anti-rust paint technology, so the anti-rust technology used in artillery steel was actually ......

Well, when a cannon barrel is made, the special material is put on the fire to burn red, and then some anti-corrosion metal powder is sprinkled on it, so that it melts, and firmly sticks to it, forming a whole with it, so that it also has anti-rust properties.

If you are not sure, you can apply a layer of wax on the outside, but after the cannon is fired, the wax will be shaken off, and you need to repeat it, but if you don't open the gun, this problem is relatively simple.

"Go to the ship, dismantle a cannon, throw it in and test it!" Wang Li commanded directly.

They don't have artillery steel in their hands, and they still need to transport it from Chang'an, and this time and again, there will be no more than a month.

What is most lacking now is time, and the battleship has no special tasks, so it is worth it to directly dismantle a cannon for testing, in Wang Li's opinion.

And there was this time to re-transport the materials, and the results of the test came out.

After a short time, the craftsmen dismantled a cannon from the ship, fixed it with a few ropes, and dozens of people worked together to put the cannon at the bottom of the dock, and finally tied the rope to the ship's bollard.

Once that's all that's done, all that's left is waiting.

And Wang Li was not idle, but quickly let people build a simple laboratory, and began to use his imagination to re-refine new materials by using some scattered materials he brought.

And the success rate of this method is actually quite high, but the biggest problem is that even the people who invented them don't know where this new thing is suitable for? You can only experiment over and over again, and use time to prove it.

Therefore, so far, the Academy of Sciences has made hundreds of different specifications of steel, but the number of steel that really understands the use is not much.

In the final analysis, it is the overall level of technology that limits their usefulness.

If it is in the future life, you can directly test it, you can clearly know the hardness and various properties of a material, and then according to the test results, you can know where the material is suitable for.

But now, that's not possible at all.

You don't have to think about it, you can only use time and human lives that may be lost to test over and over again, and get specific uses from the results of the experiment.