All three fleets set off and headed for their respective areas of responsibility. Pen ~ fun ~ Pavilion www.biquge.info monsoon will rise, and the maritime chambers of commerce in Jiangsu and Zhejiang will set off one after another, and I believe that there will be results soon.

Time is already very short, and now it is June of the seventeenth year of Chongzhen, and in March next year, the Qing army will go south, and the entire Jiangnan will be ruled by foreign races.

Ren Siqi didn't think that just relying on the 2,000 infantry and more than 10,000 sailors of the Daishan Army could reverse the general trend of the world, what he could do now was to expand his strength as soon as possible and strengthen himself.

But if you want to increase your strength, you have to have someone who has money and food, and now these two thousand infantry and 10,000 sailors almost make Daishan unable to make ends meet, and the monthly expenditure of forty or fifty thousand taels of silver is a heavy burden. So you have to think about making money, so Ren Siqi hit the head of these gentry in Jiangsu and Zhejiang, and the conflict caused by canned fish and meat is just a reason.

Although the number of the new naval army is quite large, its combat effectiveness is very average, and most of the soldiers have only undergone one or two months of training, and they need to be tempered through the war in order to form combat effectiveness as soon as possible. And the battle with the maritime merchants controlled by the gentry will be the best whetstone.

In addition, the equipment of the navy is also poor, although there are hundreds of large and small warships, but there are still a few of them with artillery and strong combat power.

Not only did it take to build and buy large ships as soon as possible, but also to intensify the casting of muskets and artillery. Only when a large number of muskets and artillery are equipped on board can it have strong combat power. Otherwise, they can only rely on a large number of people and more ships to engage in broadside battles.

Although the machine tool was bought from Macao, because it was a water-powered machine, in order for it to work, a reservoir had to be built to create a drop of at least 10 meters.

The original reservoir was used to store water for irrigation, and the dam was built at the foot of the valley and simply did not provide enough drop. Under the leadership of the local guide in Daishan, the Portuguese technician who came with the machine tool ran several mountains in a few days before finding a suitable location at the southern foot of Moxin Mountain.

This is a small valley, there is a waterfall from the top of the mountain, converge into a pool, and the water in the pool then follows the rugged and steep mountain wall, forming a large waterfall with a drop of more than 20 meters, but the waterfall is very wide and the water volume is small.

According to the technician Roman's request, as long as a dam was built around the small waterhole above to narrow the width of the large waterfall flowing downward, the narrow and rapid water flow was enough to drive the machine to work.

It was just a construction of a dam tens of meters long and four or five feet high, but it was necessary to move stones and other building materials halfway up the mountain, and it took five days to complete it with the joint efforts of more than 500 Shandong immigrants mobilized by Shafu. The embankment is made of stone bricks, and the gaps are glutinous rice soup and egg whites glued, making it extremely strong.

In the course of five days, the valley below was also initially leveled, and technician Roman directed the installation of the machine. A huge shed was built with bamboo above the machine, which did not affect the work of the machine even in heavy rain.

After the machine was installed, Dutch craftsmen such as White and Bell moved their workshops here and began making the barrels of muskets.

For a musket, the most important thing is the barrel, the craftsmen of the Ming Dynasty generally use the method of rolling riveting, and the musket produced has poor air tightness and short range, in order to increase the firing range, many Ming musketeers will add more gunpowder, resulting in the phenomenon of explosion and boring from time to time.

And with a machine tool, it was possible to drive a drill bit and drill a barrel out of a round iron rod, which, according to the technician Roman, could produce six barrels a day, so that one hundred and eighty muskets could be produced per month.

The production of muskets is on the right path, and the casting of cannons is full of surprises. For months, White and other Dutch craftsmen have been trying to raise the temperature of the blast furnace and make the cannon mold, which took several months. The main reason is that Daishan is located on a desert island, and the coke needed for iron smelting and the materials and tools needed to make blast furnaces have to be purchased from the mainland, and it takes a lot of time to go back and forth.

Now that the blast furnace has finally been built, and refined copper from Japan is put into it, red copper water flows out of the waist of the blast furnace and is injected into the mold, and after cooling, the cannon blank will be created.

Then put it on the machine tool to grind the rifling, post-processing, make the gun mount, and the aiming device such as the door.

At the request of Ren Siqi, there are three kinds of artillery, one is the shore cannon placed on the dock fort or city wall, this kind of cannon has a huge caliber, the barrel is 20 meters long, and weighs 5,000 catties, which is a real giant cannon.

Last year, more than 40,000 catties of refined copper were purchased from Japan, which was only enough to make ten giant cannons.

Ren Siqi planned to install six of these ten cannons at the Gaoting Pier, and build two batteries on both sides of the pier. The firing range of this giant cannon is twenty miles, and with these six giant cannons, no one should think of the idea of hitting Daishan.

The other four were placed in Cen Gang along with two cannons procured from Macao. Now Cen Port has become the most important port of the Daishan Army, where sailing ships sail from the mainland on the other side of the river every day to smuggle raw silk, silk tea and other goods urgently needed by the Daishan Army for maritime trade.

At present, more than 3,000 loads of raw silk, more than 2,000 horses of silk, and a large number of other goods have been stored in the warehouse of the Cen Port Inspection Division, and the goods going to Japan for sea trade have been basically prepared.

With the smuggling channel of Cen Port, the sea trade of the Daishan Army no longer has to be controlled by others, and there is no longer a need to share huge profits with Liu Defu, Li Qiankuan and others, so Cen Port can be said to be the most important economic port of the Daishan Army. A detachment of infantry was stationed here for many years, and in the future, the 18th Fleet of the three fleets used Cen Harbor as its home port.

Just ten giant cannons consumed the tens of thousands of catties of refined copper purchased in Japan.

The other two types of artillery could only be cast in iron. Fortunately, the hematite purchased from Japan was of excellent quality, and after being remelted in the blast furnace, it was injected into the gun mold to create an iron cannon that was lighter than the copper cannon.

However, the toughness of iron is not as good as that of copper, and iron cannons are easy to blow up and bor. Fortunately, the gunners trained by the Daishan Army have gone through major battles and have been very experienced, so as long as they operate in accordance with the regulations, there will be no risk of explosion and boring.

Each of these iron cannons weighs more than 1,000 catties, has a slender barrel, and is installed on ships for use.

Ren Siqi plans to build twenty of these naval guns, after all, there are too few three-masted galleons that can install cannons, and it is useless to build more.

As for the third type of artillery, it is used for land warfare, and when pressed on the gun carriage, it can be drawn by mules and horses to march and fight. However, the purchase of pig iron is limited, and a large number of muskets need to be made, so this kind of artillery is not in a hurry to be made now, and a large amount of copper and iron will be purchased later!

Just when Ren Si was fully engaged in the production of artillery, the news finally came from the sea, and the fleet sent to intercept several ships bound for Japan, captured them all, and sent them back to Daishan. (To be continued.) )