In fact, Hong Tao's design of using the figure of a first-class battleship with the firepower of a third-class battleship is very suitable for the current naval battle. In later generations, the reason why Western countries made their hulls bigger and the number of artillery guns increased was because they had opponents with comparable shipbuilding technology, and they had to suppress each other. Hong Tao doesn't have this need, and he doesn't need to compete fiercely with other countries in the maritime business, the current Jiaosha level is enough to deal with all naval wars.

The Sea King was just a monstrous warship that he had compromised with the Council, with neither a technical advantage nor any efficiency to speak of. To put it bluntly, this is a large yacht built by the Imperial Parliament for their emperor, or a luxury armed yacht, specially for the emperor who is not very comfortable to drive around, and he is not expected to fight a naval battle with the enemy.

The real battleship of the Royal Navy is the Jiaosha-class battleship that has undergone a second major remodel. Through this large-scale naval battle with the Mongol sailors, everyone from Hong Tao to the Imperial Diet realized that the scale of the Royal Navy was a bit small. It is difficult for less than twenty warships to fully cope with a possible large-scale naval conflict with neighboring countries, let alone face two or more wars at the same time.

In response to this situation, Hong Tao took a group of graduates of the navigation school and the Wen family, a group of pure practical old shipwrights, to work together to design a new type of warship on the basis of the original Jiaosha-class battleship, which is specially used to deal with the current large and medium-scale naval battles.

The newly designed battleship was named the Seawolf class, its displacement was only 350 tons, and the length was about the same as that of the Jiao Shark class, but it was thinner than the Jiao Shark class, narrower bow and stern, and with three masts and a Bakentin sail type, the standard speed could reach eleven knots. The maximum speed is not less than fifteen knots, and the number of sailors on board can be reduced to about one hundred and ten, and the full load in wartime is only one hundred and eighty. Due to the small number of people, its endurance is not bad, and without any replenishment, it can last more than three months on the sea.

In addition to high speed, high endurance. The firepower of the Seawolf class is also ferocious. Imperial Metals produced a 120 mm caliber long-barreled cannon specifically for it, with thirty guns per Seawolf-class battleship as standard.

This small-caliber naval gun not only reduces weight, but also speeds up the reload and reduces the number of gunners, each gun only needs three gunners to operate, and can reach a rate of fire of one round a minute with tacit cooperation. As for the power, it is definitely not as powerful as the 135 mm extended naval gun, but it is enough to deal with the current ships of various countries in the world, and relatively speaking, the 135 mm and 155 mm naval guns are a bit wasteful.

Running fast, running far, steering agility, and fierce firepower are all advantages of the Seawolf class. Then it definitely has drawbacks. That's right, as with anything in the world, there are advantages and disadvantages, and the more prominent the advantages, the more obvious the disadvantages.

The disadvantage of the Seawolf class is that it is difficult to handle, which is due to its slender shape. It is difficult for ordinary sailors and sailors to master the performance of this kind of battleship immediately when they arrive at the Seawolf-class battleship, and they need to go through more complex training before they can go on board.

The lesser of two evils! Hong Tao was finally able to finalize the mass production of this kind of warship, because he saw that its advantages and disadvantages were equally prominent. At the same time, it also refers to the current technical conditions of the Golden River Empire. After so many years of maritime expansion, the empire had no shortage of good sailors, good gunners, and good naval officers. As long as they are given a period of familiarity, they can overcome the shortcomings of the Seawolf class and bring out all its advantages. This kind of warship is a chicken rib in the navy of other countries, but in the hands of the Jinhe Empire, it is a perfect weapon.

In addition, the Seawolf class has a more important advantage, that is, the cost is relatively cheap. A Shark-class battleship costs more than 2,000 Imperial Gold Coins. A Seawolf-class ship costs less than fifteen hundred Imperial Gold Coins.

The weight of an imperial gold coin is half a Song amount, that is, about 20 grams (Song Jin is 640 grams, and 16 taels is one catty), and according to the current ratio, it can be exchanged for 15 Song copper coins. In other words, the hull cost of a Jiaosha-class battleship is as high as more than 30,000 yuan. And a Seawolf-class is only more than 20,000 yuan, which is about one-third to one-quarter cheaper.

This price is only the internal accounting price of the Golden River Empire, and cannot be used as a market price. Because there are many vassal countries in the Golden River Empire that are rich in high-quality wood, and it doesn't cost too much to obtain these woods, you only need to exchange them for iron farming tools or sugar and high-grade wine produced by the empire itself. And so it was not an equivalent exchange, and under the obscenity of the cannons, the wood was cheaper to obtain. This is the advantage of colonial rule, and by exploiting the colonial people, the Golden River Empire can save a lot of costs economically.

How to calculate the market cost of these warships, Hong Tao really can't calculate. Due to the fact that the circulation of goods was not very developed in this era, many things were separated by hundreds of miles and were completely different prices, which were far from each other and could not be compared one by one. If you only compare the prices of coastal cities in the Southern Song Dynasty, the cost of a Jiaosha-class warship may reach more than 40,000 yuan, which is still the cost price.

Don't think that the cost of a battleship is so much, this is only part of it, to be precise, the price of the hull, sails and guns are not counted. The cost of a bronze cast 135 caliber cannon alone is as high as 500 guan, and the cost price is estimated to be about 700 guan after counting labor and fire consumption, as well as the scrap rate. Even if a warship is equipped with 30 naval guns, a single ship of guns is worth 20,000 yuan, which is basically the same as the cost of the hull.

The cost of an iron cannon of the same caliber is two-thirds lower than that of a copper cannon, mainly because the price of materials is cheaper. This is only said in the Golden River Empire, no one in the world can smelt the gray cast iron that casts iron cannons, and no one can object to saying that it is at the same price as copper. Moreover, with the Rodman casting method, the yield of the Imperial Metal Group's cast iron cannon is very high, and the cost has also been reduced by more than 60%. This is the power of technology, which can make very expensive things worthless, and it can also multiply the value of a pile of inconspicuous ores that no one else can steal if they want to.

It is not so much that the navy plays with the country's financial resources, in fact, it can also be said that the navy needs the overall scientific and technological level of a country to support. If, like the Mongol Empire, it has no financial resources and no technology, and the navy built by copycat other people's technology is a very unreliable development direction to suppress the opponent by ten or dozens of times the numerical superiority alone. Once the enemy's base has changed and the technology has improved, you will have to work hundreds or thousands of times to level the level, and it is no wonder that such an arms race is not lost.

Now Hong Tao is ready to change the base change, and it is not a small change, but a big change. After temporarily removing the threat of the Mongol Empire, the Royal Navy's mission in the next decade will not be limited to East and South Asia, and its range of activities will extend along commercial routes to the Arabian Peninsula and the west coast of Africa. This will require more warships to protect the safety of navigation on these commercial sea routes, as well as to deal with possible contingencies.

Therefore, Hong Tao wanted to increase the strength of the Royal Navy from less than twenty capital warships to fifty. Thirty of the Seawolf-class ships will be built, and a few Salmon-class armed cargo ships will be added, and 120 mm short-barreled naval guns will be installed to make them more suitable for slightly more intense naval battles.

These thirty Seawolf-class warships could not all be built by the Imperial Shipyard, because most of the Imperial Shipyard's energy was devoted to the construction of the Sea King, and there was no time or manpower to take care of so many Seawolf-class ships, so Hong Tao reorganized the structure of the Imperial Shipyard.

The original Imperial shipyard did not move, but only transferred 200 shipbuilders to the shipyard in Phuket, expanded the shipyard there, and then went all out to build Seawolf-class warships, which are expected to launch at least eight ships a year.

In addition, the Imperial Shipyard, the Imperial Metals Group, the Imperial Petrochemical Group, and the Imperial Ordnance Group will also send personnel to the port of Cape Town to build a large shipyard, a metal smelter, a forging and a foundry at the foot of Signal Hill, as well as supporting mechanical processing plants and explosives. Make full use of South Africa's advantages in mineral resources and human resources, and develop Cape Town into the second shipbuilding, metallurgical and machinery manufacturing base under the direct control of the empire in addition to Golden River City.

(To be continued.) )