This is a picture that people of this era could not have imagined:

On the vast sea, three huge wooden boats slowly approached.

Compared to other wooden boats, it has no sails or oars, and there are huge wheel-like devices on both sides of the wooden boat, and what is even more strange is that there is a chimney erected in the center of the wooden boat, and a thick smoke rises from the chimney.

Maybe when outsiders first see them, they won't think they're wooden boats, but devouring monsters, whose wooden boats look like this, and they will swallow black smoke?

But they really appeared, and these three wooden ships were the first batch of ships built by Wanghaizhen Shipyard according to Yunyi's requirements for long-distance voyages in the sea, namely Exploration, Exploration and Visitation.

The most obvious feature is that there are huge wheel-like devices on both sides of the ship, which is the power part of the ship, and the inside is the Minglun blades, and the steam engine inside the ship drives the Minglun blades to rotate, and the blades make the ship produce forward power.

The three "Tan" class ships are similar in size, 18 zhang long, 3 zhang wide, 1 zhang draft, and the load is about 1,500 materials (converted into a displacement of 750 tons), which can be called a thousand material ships, with a speed of about 45 miles per hour (that is, a speed of six knots), and a crew of 120 people.

Compared with the ships of the same era, the ships of the "Tan" class should be regarded as the largest and most peculiar ships, and the ships in other places, because they only travel in inland rivers and lakes, the driving space limits the size of the ships, at most they are ships of several hundred materials, and more are small boats of dozens of materials.

On the contrary, there are larger ships in the naval armies of countries like the Great Li Empire, called Lou Boats.

The building deck building is particularly huge, the height of the ship is wide at the head, the appearance is like a building, it has multi-storey buildings and offensive and defensive facilities, it is mainly the warship used by the naval army in the rivers and lakes, and the largest building ship has reached the scale of thousands of materials.

However, the ship is too high, the center of gravity is unstable, and the ability to resist wind and waves is extremely poor, so it is impossible to sail on the sea.

……

Back to three years ago, in less than a year, Yun's has undergone earth-shaking changes because of Yunyi, and the biggest change is that Yunyi's annual income has increased tenfold, which was unimaginable before.

However, the rapid development of the Yunhua Yun clan has brought the Yun clan into a bottleneck, and this bottleneck can be broken through by the Yun clan, but the consequence of the breakthrough is likely to be the destruction of the entire Yun clan.

In the eyes of some people, no matter how much money there is, it is just a number, but when the money reaches a large number, some forces are very likely to attack the Yun clan, if the Yun clan does not have enough strength to defend itself, maybe a congenital martial artist can wipe out the entire Yun clan.

In this case, the Yun clan can only calm down and increase its own strength, as long as the Yun clan can appear an innate martial artist, then the problem that the Yun clan is currently facing will be self-defeating.

It is not so simple to want to be promoted to an innate martial artist, Yun Yi's talent is very high, but Yun Yi doesn't know when he will be promoted to innate martial artist, so he can only accumulate it slowly.

Unable to develop rapidly on land, Yunyi decided to develop to the sea.

What's on the sea?

Yun Yi himself doesn't know, there are dangers or opportunities, if he accidentally discovers a new world, it will definitely be an unimaginable and shocking wealth for the entire Yun clan, even if the Yun clan can't stay in the land of Shenzhou, he can lead his clan to the new world, and even build a country by himself.

Even if you encounter danger while exploring the ocean, it is nothing, at most it is just a loss of some money and manpower.

So Yun Yi began to act, relying on the reputation of Yun Hua Yun's family, Yun Yi quickly recruited several Mo disciples who knew how to build ships, and also recruited a large number of carpenters who had been engaged in shipbuilding.

The news that the Yun clan wants to explore the sea has not been blocked, and such a big move cannot be blocked, only the forces that do not care about the outside world at all know that the Yun clan wants to build a ship and visit the overseas immortal island.

In this regard, most of the forces watched coldly, and a few hostile forces directly ridiculed the Yun clan in public, and the Yun clan didn't care, this is a matter of Yun Yi sitting in the name of the Yun clan, the elders will not care about Yun Yi's private affairs, at most they will only lose some money and manpower, and now the Yun clan can afford to lose.

Soon, a shipyard was established in a forestry-rich place to the east of Linhai City, and a large population formed a town near the shipyard called Wanghai Town.

The abundant forestry resources bring great convenience to the shipyard.

Steel ships were stronger than wooden ships, but the Cheongsan Iron and Steel Works had limited steel production, so it was impossible to build steel ships with large quantities of steel, so only wooden ships could be built.

The shipyard was set up, the manpower was in place, and according to the simple drawings provided by Yunyi, the disciples of the Mo family were ready to build ships.

In fact, when Yun Yi first proposed to the Mo disciples that the ship was not powered by sails and manpower, these Mo disciples wanted to say goodbye, but when they saw the steam engine and other steam-powered machinery, the Mo disciples threw away all the thoughts in their minds, and at the same time, they also knew that after seeing such a thing, they could only be loyal to Yun Yi for the rest of their lives, and once they wanted to leave the Yun family, death was their only way.

The design and construction of the steamship began, and the processing of shipbuilding timber was also underway on the other side to ensure that there was no shortage of timber for shipbuilding.

For the processing of wood, the disciples of the Mo family spent a lot of thought, if they want to sail safely in the sea, the power problem has basically been solved, and the most important thing is that the ship itself must be strong, and the ship will be broken when a storm comes.

Starting from the construction of small experimental ships, step by step, when it came to the construction of the "Tan" class ships, many important places on the "Tan" class ships were added with steel plates, and the steel plates could protect these parts well.

There is now a larger ship under construction in the shipyard than the "Tan" class, which will have a load of more than 2,000 materials.

In the process of building a steamship, some disciples of the Mo family once considered adding sails back, so that when the wind and waves were not too big, they could rely on the wind to speed up the speed of the ship, but when reporting to Yunyi, they were directly stopped by Yunyi.

Three "Tan" class ships were launched in turn to complete the test in the near sea, and there were several test voyages to farther away, and even stayed on the sea when the storm came, after many tests, except for a few people who accidentally fell into the sea, nothing big happened, Yunyi made a decision, and sent three "Tan" class ships to form an exploration team after the year, and began to explore the sea.

Note 1: The material is actually a load unit, which has nothing to do with the displacement, and is defined here as the load of 2 materials = 1 ton of displacement

Note 2: The knot is a unit of rate dedicated to navigation, 1 knot = 1 knot/h = 1.852 km/h