The trial of the Shanghai Special Court attracted all the attention of this time, and for a time no one paid attention to the voyage of a Chinese fleet to the Americas. Pen & Fun & Pavilion www.biquge.info

After recovering the port of Arthur, the Beiyang Fleet returned to its hometown, and continued to receive new diesel warships, of which six dreadnoughts have been equipped, and the current Beiyang Navy is more powerful than the former Beiyang Navy.

But this is just hardware, as for the real combat effectiveness, even the chief of the navy, Liu Guanxiong, can't believe it.

This is an army without a military soul, a navy without the slightest sense of shame and honor, can such a navy win the Japanese Combined Fleet? It's just a joke.

But in terms of hardware alone, it is already quite impressive, with six 18,000-ton Dreadnought-class battleships as the core, 12 10,000-ton cruisers, and 24 8,000-ton to 4,000-ton fast cruisers, with a total tonnage of 340,000 tons, and a new ship.

The crew is also relatively professional, and the soldiers are all recruited from the Yantai Naval Academy and the Fuzhou Shipbuilding Academy.

Needless to say, the Fuzhou Shipbuilding Bureau has a history of several decades, and the time of the Yantai Naval Academy is relatively short.

After the end of the First Sino-Japanese War, some naval officials of the Qing government began to plan to rebuild the Beiyang Navy, and a large number of naval personnel were urgently needed. The original naval school in Beiyang, the Tianjin Naval Academy, was destroyed by the Eight-Nation Alliance.

Sa Zhenbing, a veteran of Beiyang, was ordered to choose a site to build another naval school, and after repeated considerations, he finally chose the site of the school in Yantai. At that time, the ports of Tianjin, Lushun, and Weihai, which were the Beiyang naval bases, were successively divided by the foreign powers, and among the remaining northern ports, Yantai had the best conditions. In 1902, a naval training camp was established to train soldiers, and the naval training camp was located near the East Battery, located by the sea, with dozens of rooms.

Sa Zhenbing believes that the decision to use these old barracks as the school buildings of the naval academy will not only save the operating expenses but also save the time for preparation. Sa Zhenbing also decided to use local materials and vigorously recruit local students from Shandong. In the First Sino-Japanese War, the sailors of Shandong Wendeng and Rongcheng were brave and good at fighting, which left a deep impression on Sa Zhenbing.

In the midst of difficulties, in the winter of 1903, the Yantai Maritime School was officially opened, called the Sailor School, attached to the naval training camp, and Sa Zhenbing personally formulated the "Regulations for the Establishment of the Sailor School" for the school. In order to meet the needs of the rapid production of talents, Sa Zhenbing carried out a bold reform, shortening the school period from the original five years to three years, retaining only the driving major, and specializing in training naval command officers.

In 1906, 24 naval students were sent to Japan to study, and 2 were selected to study in the United States.

With the development of Yantai Naval Academy, Sa Zhenbing gradually became the number one person in the Chinese Navy, the premier of the Nanyang Navy. At his suggestion, the Qing government decided to expand the scale of the Yantai Maritime School. In 1907, the new school of Yantai Naval Academy was built in the south of Jingouzhai Village and officially named Yantai Naval Academy.

The new school is surrounded by mountains on three sides, facing the sea in the east, about 7 miles away from Yantai Port, covering an area of more than 90 acres, and the school buildings are a combination of Chinese and Western. Sa Zhenbing attaches great importance to the construction of the new school. On the occasion of the completion of the new school, Yantai Hai School enrolled the second class of students to graduate, and Sa Zhenbing personally invigilated the examination, and also inscribed the four words "Talent Reserve Zuoji" for the school, pinning high hopes on the school.

Just like the bald brother who once started by running the Whampoa Military Academy, Sa Zhenbing became the long-awaited naval commander after the Xinhai Revolution.

But the navy has rotted to the bones, and those new cadets are not bad, but the overall organization is too poor, with the deep twilight of the old Beiyang Navy, officers at all levels are from the past Beiyang, and all bureaucratic habits are strong, and corruption is serious.

Since the last time he refused to accept the new ship, Yang Chao scolded Liu Guanxiong, and he also began to care about the navy, and then the Yantai Naval Academy contacted Sa Zhenbing, and at the same time, Liu Guanxiong was also an old man of the Beiyang Navy after all, and he was the deputy of the Jingyuan ship back then, so he finally wanted to be embarrassed.

At Yang Chao's suggestion, Sa Zhenbing began to vigorously promote the new generation of officers of the Naval Academy, gradually dismantle the old men in Beiyang, renovate the naval structure, imitate the navies of Britain, the United States, Japan and other countries, conduct independent financial audits, and put an end to the situation of deductions.

However, they are still far behind the Japanese Navy, and these officers are okay in terms of technical ability alone, but they lack experience, and they hardly have any experience in naval warfare, and they cannot defeat the Japanese with a sharp spirit.

Therefore, Yang Chao often took out Shandong's funds to fund the navy for exercises, and the imperial court did not interfere, anyway, he did not let them pay for it, and Yuan Shikai couldn't take care of the navy, he was busy borrowing money to expand the army, and now the Beiyang Army has 400,000 troops, which is 100,000 more than Yang Chao's Northeast Army.

In this way, Yang Chao's influence on the navy became more and more great.

Yang Chao took the lead in contacting the Navy for this time, thinking that the United States had joined the Sino-German alliance, and Yang Chao used this as an excuse to talk with the US Navy for half a year, and decided that the two sides would conduct a joint military exercise, and the location of the military exercise would be in Hawaii.

Of course, this is Yang Chao's purpose to threaten Japan through military exercises, but it was requested by the Americans in Hawaii, but Yang Chao wants to put it in the waters north of the Philippines, just as the US imperialists often conducted exercises in the South China Sea to scare the Celestial Empire.

However, the Americans did not want to overstimulate the Japanese, so although they agreed to the joint military exercises, they finally chose to conduct the exercises in the waters off Pearl Harbor in Hawaii.

The Chinese Navy sent a fleet of four 10,000-ton heavy cruisers and eight light cruisers, with two Dreadnought-class battleships Kunlun and Taishan as the core, to set off in August and arrive in Hawaii at the end of August, where it will conduct a three-week joint exercise, followed by a goodwill visit to Brazil.

After visiting Brazil, the delegation will sail from the Atlantic side to the United States, sign an economic cooperation agreement with the United States, and then enter the Pacific Ocean through the upcoming Panama Canal.

As a joint military exercise held after the United States joined the alliance, the German fleet was naturally indispensable, but Germany did not use the Qingdao fleet, and also out of consideration not to provoke Japan, the Germans sent two 4,000-ton small ships stationed in German Guinea to participate in this exercise as a symbol.

Although only symbolic, the joint exercise attracted the attention of the world, and international newspapers followed, and for a big newspaper like Figaro, the Chinese trial was far less influential than the Triple Alliance.

This was the most powerful alliance in the Far East, the first military operation after the establishment of the Sino-American alliance. (To be continued.) )