After Hu Chuyuan returned to London, through the planning of RS Butterfield, some British media began to focus on Hu Chuyuan's purchase of Belize House, and declared that Hu Chuyuan was the richest man in Asia, and he was also a shipping official of the Qing court, and had the status of "knight" of the Qing Dynasty.

According to the Times, as a trader who monopolizes the world's silk industry, plus the salt, sugar and other food retail industries, Hu Chuyuan earns as much as 2 million pounds a year.

Even in the UK, this is a very staggering amount, and if the British at this time can have a million-pound fortune, it is equivalent to a billionaire 130 years later, which is quite rare and rare.

What about Hu Chuyuan?

Isn't it staggering that he has a personal fortune of £10 million and a steady income of £2 million a year?

All of a sudden, the whole of London, and even the whole of Europe, began to talk about Hu Chuyuan, and his special title "hoosir" also resounded all over Europe, as if he was called by this name.

This was really just the beginning, and The Times soon went on to reveal an even more startling news that Hu Chuyuan would privately buy an ironclad ship under construction at the Samudabros shipyard in London.

Hu Chuyuan's reason is very sufficient, because he often has to go in and out of the Strait of Malacca and the waters of the South Seas, and piracy activities in this area are particularly rampant, so he wants to buy a warship and transform it into a passenger ship for his private sea trips, so that he can travel between Europe and the United States.

The two ironclads currently under construction at the Samudabros shipyard and the first ironclad ship, the Fuso, are sister ships, belonging to the second-class waist gun room ironclad ships, with a displacement tonnage of 3,777 tons, with hybrid sails, guns arranged on both sides of the ship's side, and four 240mm main guns in the center of the ship's waist.

If he wants to buy warships in the name of a private person with the British, Hu Chuyuan must go through the approval of the British Admiralty, which is almost impossible.

Even so, the British media are frantically tracking and reporting on the incident.

Hu Chuyuan left Zheng Qinglian, Lin Yiyou, and Yang Lianchen in Britain to handle the purchase of warships together with Ye Fu, Deng Shichang, and Hua Yufang, while he himself, accompanied by Wu Shuzhen, RS Butterfield, and Zheng Xitai, constantly got acquainted with British business people and some celebrities in the British cultural circles.

Direct contact with the British aristocracy and political class is Hu Chuyuan's goal, but it is a bit difficult.

So, he first got to know the business people in London, as well as the celebrities in the cultural world, including Thomas Henry Huxley, Charles Darwin, Thomas Carlyle and others.

Through the introduction of Thomas Henry Huxley, Hu Chuyuan further got to know some special people of the "Royal Society for the Promotion of Natural Knowledge in London", and decided to fund 50,000 pounds a year to sponsor the research of the Royal Society in natural sciences and medicine.

This decision made Hu Chuyuan quickly gain peculiar admiration in London, and in fact, Hu Chuyuan's existence felt like a fish in the throat to the British, especially the Londoners who considered themselves incomparably noble.

In their fixed thinking, the Chinese should be poor, ignorant and backward, an inferior nation, but why are they so rich?

Hu Chuyuan is not ordinary rich!

There are even media reports that Hu Chuyuan hired an American Irishman as a housekeeper with a monthly salary of up to 500 pounds.

In the UK, a monthly salary of £70 is considered a very good middle class.

After Hu Chuyuan sponsored the Royal Society with a high amount of money and became an honorary member, people's feelings about him seemed to change suddenly.

Hu Chuyuan was very good at dealing with the British at this time.

In the subsequent events of the Royal Society, Hu Chuyuan successively got to know the aristocratic banker Sir John Brooke and the British Navy Captain John Abbasnot Fischer, who were also honorary members.

It can be said that John Fischer himself wanted to know Hu Chuyuan, as he had participated in the Second Opium War in the capture of Canton and the attack on the Dagukou Fort, the latter being the only major defeat of the British navy in the entire nineteenth century.

Born into a naval family in Ceylon, John Fischer became a sailor in the Royal Navy at the age of 13, fought in the Crimean War at the age of 15 and in the Second Opium War at the age of 16.

In 1874, at the age of 33, he was promoted to Captain of the Royal Navy.

At the same time, he is currently the most proficient in torpedo tactics in the British Navy, and is also responsible for torpedo tactical training in the Royal Navy.

At this time in Britain, he was already the most famous young officer, and expectations were extremely high. In fact, it was his later efforts to reform that enabled the British Navy to maintain a long-lasting advantage over Germany.

It's a genius.

Although he had been an aggressor and was very likely to be the strongest opponent in the future, Hu Chuyuan still desperately needed his help and needed to reach an agreement with the British Navy through him.

After getting to know this person preliminarily, Hu Chuyuan was like a veteran in the love field, slowly "pursuing" him, at first only intentionally or unintentionally inviting him to participate in the activities of the Royal Society on ship technology, and after becoming more familiar, he often invited him to discuss naval ideas and technologies in the new era.

Hu Chuyuan's personal charm is very strong, which is not only useful to the Chinese, but also to the British, as long as the other party no longer holds the Chinese inferiority theory to look at him, he can soon discover his wisdom and ability, and discover his value.

Hu Chuyuan and John Fischer had a very smooth relationship, and after a few weeks, the two became very special friends, and everything else could be talked about casually, as long as it was not a topic of national interest and confidentiality.

Contrary to Hu Chuyuan's expectations, John Fischer was not only willing to help him negotiate with the Admiralty, but also very happy to go to Fuzhou Ship Administration to engage in the training and guidance of the Fujian Naval Division.

The salary does not matter, the condition is that the Admiralty wants to approve it, and Hu Chuyuan and the Qing Dynasty also want him to have enough rights for three to five years.

It's like a pie falling from the sky, or a meat bun.

With the help of John Fischer and Sir John Brooke, Hu Chuyuan successfully became acquainted with the First Sea Secretary of the British Admiralty, Asterley Cooper, as well as a number of officials of the British Liberal Party, including Sir William Gladstone, who was the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

At this time, it was already mid-February 1880, and there was no new progress in the purchase of warships, but Hu Chuyuan, in the name of his personal "hoosir", gradually had close contact with British political circles and the Admiralty.

With his vast personal wealth and influence, he has access to a depth far greater than Hurd's, let alone Kingeng's.

During this period, Sir John Brooke and John Fischer were Hu Chuyuan's most important personal friends, and they often went in and out of various social occasions in Britain together, much more beautiful than Li Fengbao, who was the minister to the five European countries at the time.

In this situation, both the British political and military circles have a deeper understanding of Hu Chuyuan, and First Sea Secretary Astrid Cooper bluntly said that if we want to deal more closely with the Chinese, "thebestway" is hoosir.

With the gradual continuation and development of this situation, by March 1880, the situation had become very favorable, and Hu Chuyuan held formal negotiations with the British Admiralty, and the speed of reaching an agreement and the favorable conditions made Li Fengbao, who was also purchasing ships for the Beiyang Naval Division, dumbfounded.

Hu Chuyuan's strategy was simple: he first told First Sea Minister Astrid Cooper that China was about to build two new fleets, one was the Beiyang Naval Division, which was highly regarded by the imperial court, and the other was the Fujian Naval Division, which was led by him and the governor of Fujian and Zhejiang.

In other words, in China's naval power and the coastal defense policy of the entire Qing Dynasty, he and the Fujian Naval Division were in an absolute weakness, and the financial allocation was only half of that of the Beiyang Naval Division.

Considering the invasion of Vietnam led by the French political axe, it is possible that the Anglo-French balancing strategy of the Fuzhou Ship Administration and the Fujian Navy Division is coming to an end...... This means that in the absence of sovereignty issues, Hu Chuyuan is happy to have the British Admiralty more involved.

On the other hand, the negotiations between the British Admiralty and the Beiyang Naval Division, Li Fengbao, the Qing Dynasty's minister to the five European countries, were extremely unsmooth.

A number of reasons contributed to the rapid birth of the "British Admiralty's Agreement on the Arms Sales and Related Cooperation of Fuzhou Shipbuilding Administration", in which Fujian Shipbuilding will purchase four Weikang-class second-class ironclad ships and four Guangwu-class light cruisers from the British.

According to the basic requirements put forward by Hu Chuyuan, the displacement tonnage of the Weikang-class ironclad ship is between 4,500 tons and 5,000 tons, and it adopts the central ironclad design of the Inflecil ironclad ship, with a 240 mm caliber main gun, a French-style open gun emplacement, set on the bow deck, three 150 mm caliber secondary guns on each side of the ship's string, and two 150 mm caliber twin auxiliary guns installed on the stern.

The ironclad ship must be able to reach a speed of 15 knots, the cruising speed should be able to reach 10 knots, it should be fully steam-powered, no more cumbersome sails should be used, and the protective armor of key areas and conning towers should be able to withstand heavy artillery of 240 mm caliber, and the protective armor of other areas should be able to withstand 150 mm caliber guns.

Such technical requirements for him were easily attainable for the British, because the armor defense requirements of the Guard-class ironclad ships were not high, and the requirements for artillery systems and power systems were not high.

Of course, this is only the basic requirement put forward by Hu Chuyuan, that is, it must be met.

The Guangwu-class cruiser is based on the British new cruiser US, which is the earliest flat-armored protection cruiser at present, with a displacement of 2,380 tons and an average speed of 13 knots, although it does not use high-pressure ventilation technology, the maximum speed can still reach 16 knots.

Hu Chuyuan's basic requirement was to change the flat armor to dome armor, increase the boiler space, and there was no need to retain the sail system of the US-unlike the British, the cruisers of the Fujian Navy Division were only responsible for rapid sorties in the surrounding waters, and there was no need to fight across the oceans, and the cruiser itself had a very large coal load, so it was pointless to keep the sails.

At the same time, the Guangwu-class cruisers should also adopt a new artillery system, installed on the deck, protected by terraces, with twin 150 mm caliber single Armstrong new guns for the main gun, 6 secondary guns of 120 mm caliber, two torpedo launchers themselves, and carry a torpedo boat capable of reaching a speed of 16 knots.

In order to ensure the placement of torpedo boats, and at the same time to ensure the speed and armor protection, the displacement tonnage of the cruisers could be increased, but should not exceed 3,000 tons -- this was to ensure that the Fuzhou Ship Administration had the ability to copy them.

Throughout the contract and agreement, the first four ships of the Weikang and Guangwu classes had to be completed and delivered by 1882, and the last four ships were to be produced in 1884 and 1885 respectively, so that after summing up the experience of the former, the ships could be modified to produce new ships that were more in line with the conditions of the time.

At the same time, Hu Chuyuan also deliberately avoided the various problems of ship delivery that might result from the Sino-French war.

The total contract amount is about 3.36 million taels of silver, the cost of a single Weikang-class ship is 750,000 taels of silver, and the cost of a single Guangwu-class ship is 180,000 taels of silver.

The total price is still relatively high, but the British Admiralty agreed to transfer the main manufacturing technologies except for the Bo's hybrid steel armor technology to the Fuzhou Shipyard, including the ball boiler, three-expansion steam engine, breech rapid-fire gun technology proposed by Wei Han and others (the original tube-down rapid-fire gun with hydraulic technology is roughly the same as that of rapid-fire guns after 1890), maroon gunpowder and armor-piercing shell manufacturing technology, and torpedo production technology as a compensation. The Admiralty also agreed to transfer the more accessible technology of Merriam-Webster.

Of course, all the supporting facilities and machinery and equipment, including the 3,000-ton and 5,000-ton dock facilities, the 5,000-ton guide ship, the new dockyard at Mawei Harbor, the new port of Mawei, and a series of other facilities, had to be imported from Britain - they would definitely be slaughtered, but they would also have to be slaughtered.

Once the agreement is implemented, the Fuzhou Harbour Master will be able to send up to 20 technicians to train at the Royal Navy's Portsmouth shipyard, steel mill, and other warship and boilermaker factories.

During the eight years of the agreement, the Fuzhou Ship Administration and the Fujian Navy Division were allowed to send six admirals to the British Navy for internship each year, with an additional four in the first year.

All ships under the agreement will be designed by Sir Barnabey, the best British naval designer at present, and technicians from the Royal Navy's Portsmouth Shipyard will supervise the Fuzhou Harbour Yard for two years.

The British Admiralty will also send an admiral to serve as a military adviser and supervisor to the Fujian Navy Division during the validity period of the agreement, to train the generals and soldiers of the Fujian Navy Division, and to design and implement the training program of the Fujian Navy Division - the agreement has an exclusive surname, that is, France and other countries are not allowed to send military advisers to the Fujian Navy Division during the validity period of the agreement.

Privately, the Admiralty approved the sale to Hu Chuyuan of two second-class artillery room ironclad ships, "Berlai" and "Orion", which were originally to be sold to the Ottoman Empire, into armed merchant ships, for 350,000 taels of silver each, which was much lower than the price they originally wanted to sell to the Beiyang Naval Division and Yueben.

According to the plan of the British Admiralty, if the agreement is successfully implemented, the British Admiralty will have far more influence on the Fuzhou Ship Administration and the Fujian Naval Division than the French.

As for Hu Chuyuan, he also got most of the things he wanted.

With the greed of the British, the follow-up expenses must be not small, but it doesn't matter, this price is worth paying.

Almost with his personal charm, after winning the "British Admiralty's Agreement on Arms Sales and Related Cooperation with Fuzhou Shipbuilding Administration" by himself, Hu Chuyuan finally breathed a sigh of relief, and then led the team to France.

(To be continued)