After marching down the river for more than a mile, he came to a fort, hiding on the side of a mountain battlement, if Feng Yunshan hadn't walked on the shore, he really couldn't have found it.

Xu Daguang, commander of the 27th Infantry Division, who was closely following him, hurriedly explained that this fort was specially set up when the Fuzhou Shipmaster Bureau was built later, in order to protect the dock of the Shipmaster Bureau from being attacked by the fleet from the open sea.

Feng Yunshan nodded, and under the leadership of Shen Baozhen, he bypassed the mountain battlement where the fort was located, and his vision in front of him suddenly became clearer. I saw that in front of the Minjiang River bay, 4 rows of deep digging directly into the mountain stream of the dock has been exposed, presented in front of several tall warships, are docked in the dock, surrounded by dense wooden beams, as if the whole warship is supported, and on the warship, there are dozens of shipwrights and people are busy up and down, as if the warship is not finished, and is still being built and repaired.

Shen Baozhen stepped forward quickly, pointed at the docks and warships, and said: "Your Majesty, over there is the shipyard dock of my Fuzhou Shipbuilding Bureau, a total of 4 docks, divided into four docks, A, B, C, D, the dock is deep and long, and can produce 8 ships at the same time. ”

It was the first time Feng Yunshan saw the appearance of this modern dock, so he deliberately walked in to visit. The first A-shaped dock is very spacious. The dock was obviously built along a small river ditch that flows into the Min River, excavated, widened and deepened, and then repaired on both sides with cement stones. It seems that the designer of the dock has a set of close to modern thinking, the dry dock and the floating dock are united, the front of the whole dock is mostly a floating dock, but the back, is a huge deep pit, there is no river water, between the front and back with a thick iron gate space, the front and rear parts of the river water separated.

At the outermost part of the dock, above the river, there was already a gunboat of small displacement, almost finished, with several craftsmen banging and busy hanging their sails; Behind it is a huge deep pit.

On both sides of the pit were dense scaffolding, and Feng Yunshan also saw several huge pulley sets in use. Looking closer, in the deep pit, a huge warship has been built, and it seems that the displacement of this warship is estimated to be more than 3,000 tons after it is completed.

Seeing that Feng Yunshan was interested, Shen Baozhen hurriedly came over and pointed to the large warship that was still under construction and explained: "Your Majesty, this warship is the largest tonnage warship currently under construction by our Fuzhou Shipbuilding Bureau, and it has not yet been named. This warship has a design displacement of 4,280 tons, and we are ready to try to build it into the first domestic battleship of the Empire. ”

Feng Yunshan said curiously: "Battleship? Shen Aiqing, don't lie to me, your Fuzhou Shipbuilding Bureau has developed to such a point? Even battleships can be made? Where did you get the drawings? ”

Feng Yunshan couldn't help but feel surprised, the Changzhou Shipyard, which developed earlier, also hired foreign technicians, and could only build a cruiser with a displacement of one or two thousand tons, which already made Feng Yunshan ecstatic. Now, it has only been two years since it was newly built, and the Fuzhou Shipbuilding Bureau actually said that they can build battleships, although there are only small battleships of about 4,000 tons, but this is also a great thing. He could not help but wonder if it was an exaggeration. You must know that the battleship is not simply to enlarge the hull, the larger the displacement, the more difficult it is to make the wooden hull firm, not to mention that if you sail on the sea, encounter strong winds and waves, and fall apart, and sink after being shelled by enemy ships a few times in a naval battle, it will be a heavy loss.

"How dare Wechen! Speaking of which, I would like to thank Franklin Buchanan, deputy chief of the training division of the General Staff, for helping to secretly buy several drawings of the battleship from the U.S. Department of the Navy, and inviting Mr. Donald McKay, the ship's designer and builder at the Boston Shipyard in the United States, to revise and improve the design drawings, and finally come up with a battleship design suitable for our Fuzhou Shipyard. Your Majesty, this Donner McKay really has some skills, I heard that in the Americas it was specially designed that the flying clipper ship for business made the ship run very fast. Wechen saw him slightly renovate a 120-ton Tong'an sea ship and increase the speed from the original 6 knots to 10 knots. The battleship he designed could reach speeds of 12 or even 13 knots, which was faster than a cruiser. Shen Baozhen said as he searched for the crowd that followed, beckoned to a forty or fifty-year-old foreigner, and called him over: "This is Mr. Donald Mackay, who has become my chief of staff, the chief designer of the Fuzhou Shipbuilding Bureau and the vice principal of the Shipmaster School. ”

Feng Yunshan saw a foreigner with curly hair bowing to him, and he also returned a smile in return.

If so, then maybe a battleship can be made. Feng Yunshan didn't have enough to stir up his mind, but when he saw the huge unfinished warship, he asked curiously, "Then how long will it take for this battleship to be launched, oh, by the way, I want to know how to get this into the water?" ”

There were no big cranes or gantry hammocks in those days, and Feng Yunshan wanted to know how they could push the ship down the river.

"It should be more than three months. Your Majesty, please see, there is an iron gate in front of the dock, and when the battleship is almost ready to be launched, open the gate and divert the river water into the back of the dock, and as soon as the water rises, the battleship will automatically float up, and it can go directly out of the dock. Shen Baozhen looked proud, the battleship, as long as it can be built, not to mention that the emperor will reward himself, it will also have a heavy stroke in history. Shen Baozhen could see the appearance of the Manchu Qing Dynasty being beaten and bullied by foreign warships more than ten years ago, and now his own country can also build that kind of foreign warships, and he can finally raise his eyebrows.

It turned out that this was the case, Feng Yunshan figured it out, and he was a little ashamed, he was from the next generation, and he was not even as good as the people of this era in terms of shipbuilding.

Leaving the dock A, there are three docks side by side, not as wide as the dock A, but it is also very busy, there are warships parked in front and behind each of them, a total of five warships, and one merchant ship is under construction. In these four docks, there are seven warships and one merchant ship under construction at the same time, Feng Yunshan can't help but be a little proud, the Fuzhou Shipbuilding Bureau has really begun to take shape!

"Your Majesty, except for the fact that the construction of this battleship took a little longer, which took about two years, the remaining three 2,400-ton cruisers, 2 1,100-ton frigates, and 2 400-ton gunboats could be built in about a year, but in order to meet the construction schedule, a large number of craftsmen were recruited, and the skills were a little rusty, and the cost was much more than that of foreigners, and it was more expensive than buying warships. A gunboat costs about 120,000 saint dollars, a 1,000-ton frigate costs 180,000 saint dollars, and a 2,000-ton cruiser costs 400,000 saints or more......

Feng Yunshan heard Shen Baozhen's nagging, and directly interrupted him: "Shen Aiqing is short of funds?" Needless to say, I asked the Ministry of Finance and Taxation to allocate another five million holy dollars to your Fuzhou Shipping Bureau, as long as I can build a bigger warship as soon as possible, I don't care about spending more money. By the way, Shen Aiqing, your Fuzhou Shipbuilding Bureau must train more shipbuilding technicians and warship designers, and you can't rely on foreigners! ”

The reason why Feng Yunshan said this is to think of the Fuzhou Shipyard Bureau in history, which originally relied on the Frenchmen Riyige and Dirk Bei to take charge of the ship's affairs, and later Dirk Bei left, and Riyige alone could not suppress the foreigners under him, so these people were "coerced by tricks and profit-seeking", and were finally dismissed by Shen Baozhen, and made ships with the domestic technicians and craftsmen who had been trained. Now that history has changed greatly, although the Fuzhou Ship Administration Bureau is still in charge of Shen Baozhen, the foreigner who is specifically responsible for the ship's affairs has become the American ship designer Donald McKay, who is naturally very skilled, but Feng Yunshan is worried that people with good skills may not necessarily be good at management, so he has to worry that the same thing will happen, so it is right to take precautions early and train his local technicians and craftsmen.

"Your Majesty is wise! Wechen also considered this, so after building a dock and starting to manufacture ships, because the Ministry of Finance and Taxation had a surplus of appropriations at that time, a shipping school was set up at the same time, which was specially set up for the future development of the Fuzhou Shipping Administration Bureau and even the national shipping affairs training personnel. Wechen specially selected a group of young people and soldiers from secondary schools in Fujian to enter the Ship Master School, and hired foreign technicians as teachers to teach shipbuilding, navigation, naval warfare and other skills. It has been more than a year now, and a few days ago, a group of young students were selected to go to Shengjing to participate in the foreign study program organized by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Education. ”

"Oh, Harbour Master's Academy?" Feng Yunshan was a little surprised, he didn't expect that without his order, the Fuzhou Shipbuilding Bureau, which appeared a few years earlier, was still like in history, and opened a shipbuilding school.

Along the way, Feng Yunshan listened carefully to Shen Baozhen's report and learned more about the situation of the Fuzhou Shipbuilding Bureau.

Shen Baozhen first requisitioned a private house as an office location, led a group of people to build a dock, and then waited for the recruited personnel to be in place one after another, and then successively built hundreds of buildings such as the yamen of the Shipbuilding Bureau, the craftsman's residence, the western-style house, the foreigner's office, the warehouse, the follow-up supporting iron factory and the additional dock, the shipyard and the shipyard school, covering an area of 800 acres.

The most important part of the entire Harbour Master Bureau is that it is composed of three parts: the iron factory, the shipyard and the Harbour Master's School.

Among them, the iron plant was increased later, because of the expansion of the dock, the number of warships built has increased greatly, the steel needs that originally relied on sea transportation have increased, and then rely on long-distance transportation is somewhat inadequate, and at this time, Shen Baozhen heard that the junction of Minhou, Minqing, and Yongtai counties, found the news of Muyuan iron ore and coal mines, so he directly set up a large iron factory, and took advantage of the convenience of transportation on the Minjiang River to transport iron ore and coal down the river to the iron factory on the bank of the Mawei River for ironmaking, so as to meet the purpose of manufacturing ships.

The shipyard consists mainly of four docks, plus a nearby warehouse, a lumber yard and a wharf in a river bay. The Harbour Master School is divided into two sections: the former school teaches shipbuilding skills, marine engineering and mechanical design, etc., and the latter school teaches navigation and piloting, and the school is taught by instructors hired from the United States and France, and teaches in foreign languages and original texts.