As if ushering in the spring of the domestic shipbuilding industry, just a few days after the Ottomans left, Spain and Chile sent people to Seris to negotiate the purchase of warships.

Stimulated by the previous Spanish-American War, although Spain finally "got out unharmed" in this war, anyone with a discerning eye can see the actual difference in the combat power of the two armies. Because of this, soon after the end of the war, the Spanish political axe was waving money everywhere to buy arms in countries around the world, and among them, the navy's warships were undoubtedly Spain's preferred equipment.

In addition to the practical needs of its own colonies, the Iberian Peninsula at the end of the nineteenth century was indeed not very stable, and the purchase of warships by Spain was not intended to deter the liberals at home.

Similar to the "tastes" of the Ottomans before, the Spaniards also took a fancy to the Ryukyu-class battleships in the Ceris shipyard, but unfortunately, at this time when all other shipbuilding bases in the country were not yet fully built, the Republic currently has the only shipyard in Avalanche with the ability to build first-class battleships of this class. Except for the remaining three Ryukyu-class ships ordered by the Navy and the two ships ordered by the Ottomans, the four large slipways and a 30,000-ton dock of Avalanche Shipbuilding Heavy Industry are all in full operation, and the Ryukyu-class orders of the Spaniards have to be regrettably lined up for half a year later. In the same way, the intellectual political axe of the Ryukyu-class warships must also face this problem, but fortunately, the Jiaozhi-class cruisers favored by the intellectuals do not have this drawback, and after the initial construction, the Mawei shipyard of the Republic in Fujian Province has the ability to build ships of less than 10,000 tons.

Unlike the Avalanche Changxing Island Shipyard in Shanghai, which had just begun to be built, the shipbuilding enterprise in Mawei started construction on the basis of the former Fuzhou Shipbuilding Bureau of the Qing Dynasty. So far, Mawei has begun to undertake the task of building small-tonnage warships for the domestic navy, and this small requirement for intelligent people is naturally not a problem.

Compared with the Spanish ambition to rebuild their navy, the intellectuals were much simpler, they would not buy warships at any cost out of self-esteem and the need to swear national prestige like the suzerain, and when the neighbors of South America did not threaten it, the intellectual axe basically did not pay too much attention to the construction of their own navy. Unfortunately, the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries coincided with a period of frequent intellectual conflicts with neighboring Argentina, which, unfortunately, at the end of last month, had just imported four Geara-class heavily armored cruisers from Italy. It has to be said that this arms purchase incident in a neighboring country has severely stimulated lazy intellectuals, and when the international silver price has just fallen (intelligence is a well-known silver-producing country), Chilean political axe has issued an order for one Ryukyu-class and four Cochin-class warships to Seris.

Interestingly, I don't know if it was also stimulated by the successive purchases of ships by these two neighboring countries, and the Brazilians, who were originally "seated" in the center of Latin America, could not sit still. Almost immediately after Argentina and Chile made an order, Brazil's Congress passed a huge naval development plan that month, preparing to purchase 19 warships, including four battleships, from outside. Looking at the customers of the U.S. warships who played the sign of the master at this moment, the Republic of Seris drooled while at the same time can only watch the shipbuilders of various countries flock to feast, no way, domestic orders have already crowded the docks of various shipyards in the Republic, and when the two shipyards in Dalian and Changxing Island have not yet been built, the shipbuilding industry of Seris no longer has the ability to undertake foreign customers.

There is no production capacity, there is no order, and in the end, Chen Zeyu can only watch the orders of the Brazilian political axe being taken away by Western shipyards, except for the German Hamburg shipyard to get orders for three cruisers, the remaining dozen ships are all won by British businessmen. It is worth mentioning that the majority of them, the order for the four main battleships was finally bagged by the British Armstrong shipyard, perhaps in the previous Ottoman warship competition to learn a lesson, this time the British side in order to get the order of four Brazilian battleships to get nine out of ten actually took out their own navy just commissioned Duncan class. In the eyes of outsiders, the British Duncan-class is undoubtedly the latest type of battleship that is not inferior to the Seris Ryukyu class.

Stimulated by the launch of the first Ryukyu-class "Dreadnought" in the early Republic, the British quickly launched their own Dreadnought-class capital ship, the "Duncan", after absorbing the ideas of the Oriental all-heavy artillery design.

In terms of hull, the displacement of the Duncan-class battleship is slightly smaller than that of the Ryukyu class, with a full load displacement of 16,530 tons, a total length of 147 meters, a width of 24 meters, equipped with 5 twin 12-inch main guns, and the hull side armor is 11 inches thick. Perhaps because the country has not yet made progress in the development of steam turbines, the Duncan class equipped with a reciprocating steam propulsion system can only reach a top speed of 19.5 knots at most, which is a full four knots slower than its rival Ryukyu class.

Although after the launch of the "Intrepid", the British have been seeking steam turbine technology from the Republic, but this time Chen Zeyu did not hesitate to refuse, until now, that is, when Sino-German cooperation and exchanges earlier, Seris had helped each other a little, and the rest of the time, steam turbine power technology has always been the cutting-edge technology in the forefront of domestic secrecy.

At present, in addition to submarines, the most effective thing for the Republic Navy is the power system of each capital ship. It is no joke to let a large-tonnage battleship run faster than the cruiser of another country, and this will mean that its own naval power will have an absolute advantage in the East Asian sea, and its own capital ship can chase and kill the ships of any hostile country, even if it cannot defeat the opponent's capital ship, the speed advantage alone is enough to retreat and protect itself.

Under the influence of Chen Zeyu's butterfly wings, at the end of the 19th century, the world's navy and shipbuilding circles were subverted for the first time. While the Seris and German navies launched steam-turbine-powered warships one after another, the British, the old naval hegemon, had to increase the number of boilers on the ships one after another to minimize the gap between the power of their own ships and that of the other side. Similarly, because the welding technology of their own country has not yet been developed, for the first time, the ships built by British shipyards lagged behind neighboring Germany in hull design, and the design of the triple main ship gun has also become the best symbol to distinguish the bloodline of British and German warships. The British were forced to place the three guns in the fore main deck area in a traditional zigzag shape in order to arrange sufficient firepower in the limited longitudinal space of the warship, and it is foreseeable that this inefficient armament design would accompany every capital ship of the British Navy until the British larger tonnage battleships were put into service.

Of course, even this did not change Britain's maritime supremacy in the world, neither in terms of the gross tonnage of the navy nor in the country's shipbuilding industry, and neither Germany nor Seris could compete with the British at this time. This is evidenced by the previous Brazilian naval orders, and while the British shipyards were still able to compete for warship orders around the world while contributing to the expansion of their own navy, Ceris was limited to the capacity of their own shipyards and could only drool over it, and in fact the same problems were found in their friendly Germany. On the coastline of this Central European power, all the port shipbuilders in the Atlantic and Baltic Seas have only three domestic shipyards capable of building their latest Wechelsbach-class dreadnoughts, and in addition to the old Volkeng shipyard, only Hamburg and Kiel Port Thyssen and Germania have giant docks that can accommodate the Wechelsbach class, and in addition, the shipyards in Bremen and Königsberg can only build surface ships of less than 10,000 tons. You know, this is not the white-hot period of the Anglo-German naval warship race in ten years, and the German government has not yet invested in the expansion of its own shipbuilding enterprises on a large scale.

In fact, even more than a decade later, when the German Navy struggled to "scrape" the world's second most luxurious high seas fleet, which they were proud of, their own shipbuilders were still no match for the British.

At that time, even when every large dockyard in the German shipyards was filled with dreadnoughts under construction, they were still building capital ships far behind the British Navy. By comparison, at the end of the 19th century, the Germans had seven docks for 20,000 tons of warships and five for Seris, while their rivals, the British, had 20 shipyards, nearly twice as many as combined.

It has to be said that compared with traditional continental countries such as China and Germany, the shipbuilding industry of the British has a natural advantage in development. The narrow and irreconcilable English Channel, while keeping the British Isles on the European continent, also created a secure geopolitical form for the island nation, because the British government was able to devote all its money to the development of their own navy and shipbuilding industry without having to pay too much attention to the army.

It is precisely for this reason that although China and Germany gained a "little" advantage in shipbuilding technology during this period, the navies of both countries still coincidentally showed meticulous "respect" to Britain, a country with traditional maritime interests, in various regional disputes.

Of course, respect does not mean that the permanent surname is resigned, in fact, whether it is Seris or Germany, in the hearts of the political axes and heads of the two countries, they are always thinking about when they can beat the arrogant British Empire in front of them to the ground. At this point, the mood of the Republic of Seris is particularly prominent, considering that the British have been occupying the Hong Kong area of their country.

Hong Kong is located on the eastern coast of the Pearl River Estuary in South China, and is geographically close to the South China Sea and the Pacific Ocean, making it an important gateway to Southeast Asia. Since the eighteenth century, this area has been a necessary place for merchant ships and naval warships to enter and leave the East China Sea, and it is a natural harbor geographically, and economically Hong Kong is close to the East Asian mainland, so it has sufficient manpower and resources to develop advantages, in this regard, neither Singapore nor other British colonial ports in Southeast Asia have this advantage.

In particular, since the rise of China, the United States, and other countries along the Pacific coast, in order to maintain their own large trade in the Far East in East Asia, the British have gradually built Hong Kong into their most important and only naval base in the Far East with relatively complete facilities. In the final analysis, it is a matter of self-interest, and Hong Kong's geographical location is undoubtedly crucial to Britain's policies and interests in the Far East. With interests comes how to control, and Hong Kong is like a fulcrum for Britain to control its interests in the Far East, and its special surname is like Vladivostok in the eastern Pacific is to Tsarist Russia.

However, the speed of development of Seris is obviously beyond the expectations of this world empire, and in the face of today's Far Eastern powers, the British mentality has gradually undergone some subtle changes. Both Ceris and the British government have gradually felt this contradiction, and the issue of the ownership of the colonies of China and Britain in Hong Kong has gradually become an obstacle to the "cooperation and exchange" between the two sides, especially when the Chinese and German shipyards continue to launch new ships, this strange atmosphere has become more and more obvious......

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