After this decision-making meeting, Hu Chuyuan had already made up his mind to take advantage of the situation, on the one hand, to drive a wedge between France and Russia, and to vigorously expand all kinds of contradictions between the two countries, and on the other hand, he wanted to take advantage of this situation to get Britain, Germany, and the United States to give more aid to China and squeeze the space of the Franco-Russian alliance in the international arena.

At the same time, he also had to make all-round investments in the country, complete the laying of the country's main railways as soon as possible, persuade the Manchu regime to prepare for the relocation of the capital, and then give greater support to the navy.

That night, he left Lan Jianshu alone and had a deeper discussion with Lan Jianshu about domestic naval strength and other issues.

Beginning in 1887, since the three major navies were in the hands of Hanchen, the Manchurians began to suppress naval construction, taking advantage of the internationally prevalent theory of the uselessness of large ships to suppress naval outsourcing, and only allowed the purchase of small and medium-sized warships in the Fuzhou Shipbuilding Administration and the Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau.

In the past two years alone, Fuzhou Shipyard's Mawei No. 1 and Luoyuanwan No. 2 Factories, Jiangnan Shipyard's Shanghai No. 1 Factory and Ma'anshan No. 2 Shipyard, the four naval shipyards have built a total of 57 ships, with a total displacement of 47,400 tons, 7 cruisers, 10 defense ships, 13 gunboats, 12 patrol boats, and 15 torpedo boats.

In particular, the newly produced Jiangwei-class frigates have been fully switched to nickel steel last year, which is not only supplied domestically, but also sold to the American and South Seas markets.

But if you really want to go to war with the Ayamoto Navy, the ships that can be taken out to fight on the sea are roughly the same.

In addition to the three major naval divisions, there are also six local naval divisions in China that have begun to take shape in the Yangtze River, Shandong, Zhejiang, Guangdong, Guangxi, and North Vietnam, and they are generally four or five gunboats, two or three patrol boats, one or two torpedo boats, plus one or two steel-armored defense ships, and one or two cruisers.

Because the Yangtze River Naval Division had to patrol the Yangtze River and defend Shanghai, its strength was the strongest among the small sixth divisions.

Hu Chuyuan and Lan Jianshu silently analyzed these, if they united all the naval forces to attack Beiyang alone, Beiyang would definitely be defeated, and the three fleets of Beiyang, East China Sea, and Nanyang might not be big.

The top priority at the moment is to develop the East China Sea Division as quickly as possible, to keep all newly purchased warships in the East China Sea, to fight turtle and shrink tactics in the North and South Seas, and to do everything possible to contain Tsarist Russia, France, and other countries, so that the East China Sea Division and Yue himself can fight for victory or defeat in the Yellow Sea first.

After finalizing this idea, it was already late at night, so Hu Chuyuan asked Lan Jianshu to go back first.

He couldn't sleep himself.

The night in Luoyuan Bay is cool and lively, the two docks are working overtime, the sky is starry, and the cold wind blows from the seaside, waiting for the faint smell of seawater, moistening people's cheeks.

Hu Chuyuan walked silently in the courtyard, alone, quietly looking at the sky.

At this moment, he felt a little annoyed in his heart.

Over the years, he has been working hard to strengthen military construction and contribute money and efforts, but now that he thinks about it, he still feels that he has been careless and has not noticed the great changes in the situation in the entire world.

He thought about it, thought hard, and tried to find a few tricks that could defeat the enemy.

Machine guns, gas torpedoes, steam turbines, grenades, he is already working on them.

After the American engineer Hemson Stevens Maxim invented the Maxim water-cooled machine gun, Hu Chuyuan immediately invited him to be the chief designer of the machine gun through the Oakland Military Factory, and invested funds in the development of a new supplementary surname, changing the canvas chain to a metal bullet chain, using smokeless gunpowder, and designing two types of machine gun calibers: 7.62 and 11 mm.

Because it has not been sold to the outside world, Hu Chuyuan paid Makqin one million US dollars alone to completely buy out all the patents of the gun to make up for the loss of his patent production.

On the other side, John Browning and another American firearms designer, Foss Edno, were designing two rifles, the former presiding over the design of a new rifle with a capacity of ten rounds, which was faster and more stable, and the latter was simply based on the Mauser rifle and designed a new rifle with a capacity of five rounds.

The latter is a kind of record of the former, in order to prevent the design and manufacture of both firearms from being successfully completed, Hu Chuyuan's requirements for the latter are relatively rough, and they can adapt to a wide range of processing and production, and the shooting accuracy can of course also decline a little, and the work should also be simpler, suitable for reserve soldiers and militia regiments to train troops.

As expected, the former was never completed, while the latter was basically finalized in 1887, with a small production of 2,000 animals, and the use of surnames was secretly experimented with in the Borneo Autonomous State and the Philippine Reading Army, but there were also many problems.

Hu Chuyuan bought the new patent for the 1888 Committee rifle, hoping to inspire Browning and others and refer to each other.

Actually, people are full of fun.

Inadvertently, he walked to the shore and sat on the beach, and after a while, he walked on the beach again, racking his brain in his head, thinking about what special weapons could appear in the future, and which could be born in this era.

There's no doubt about it, submarines.

He seemed to think of it all at once, and then felt so stupid that he didn't think about it until now.

But he was still quite happy in his heart, as if he had found a way to defeat the enemy, hurriedly dusted off the wet mud and sand on his clothes, and walked back quickly.

When I returned to Yamen, I felt that the night was dark and everyone had rested.

Hu Chuyuan found a pencil and eraser in his study, and used a ruler and compass to draw a submarine design.

He suddenly discovered that he still had the talent of a scientist, and in order to solve the problem of breathing and ventilation, he created a "surprisingly original" breathing tube, and in order to maintain the shape of a cigar-like streamlined drip, he adopted a double-layer shell design.

It's a pity that he is a real technician after all, fun is fun, whether it can be useful, whether it can be built is unknown.

It was already three or four o'clock in the morning, and it was estimated that everyone had slept for at least a while, so he asked someone to find Wei Han.

After looking around, he didn't find Wei Han, but found out Chen Zhaoao, who was in charge of torpedoes and shipborne artillery machinery.

Seeing Chen Zhaoao, Hu Chuyuan was quite excited, and immediately showed him his design drawings and asked, "What do you think?" ”

Chen Zhaoao looked at it carefully, and was speechless for a while.

After a while, he remembered something leisurely, and said: "In the old years, someone in the Tianjin Manufacturing Bureau had tinkered with a submarine to arrange mines, and then it was gone, and when I went to Tianjin to help them straighten out the machinery and equipment, I accidentally saw that thing." Your design is good, add a tube to ventilate. If you use a fuel engine, the horsepower is a little smaller, and it can basically be used. In the early years, the Americans and the French have done similar things, they just use batteries, the horsepower is small, not worth the big use, we may be able to play a big role. My lord, you have an idea, this two-layer shell, maybe it's interesting, or why don't I use your sketch as a foundation and redesign it? ”

Hu Chuyuan hummed happily, seemed to be in a very good mood, and said, "Calling you here is to design." By the way, if there are people in the United States who are better at doing this, let's invite them to come over and set up a separate factory in Luoyuan Bay to specialize in this submarine. ”

Chen Zhaoao thought for a while, and finally said: "My lord, the lower officials have forgotten, but the materials and newspapers are all in my place, I will go back and look through them." ”

Hu Chuyuan said "Okay", and asked him to find information, and he finally had a matter on his mind, and he fell asleep with peace of mind.

The next day, as soon as he woke up, Chen Zhaoao was waiting outside.

Hu Chuyuan freshened up a little, and while eating morning tea, he asked Chen Zhaoao: "What, have you found the information?" ”

Chen Zhaoao smiled and said: "Yes, the American engineer John Holland is a master here, we can invite him over, even if we can't invite him, we can explore it ourselves, but after all, he has ready-made experience, he has built two, many problems should be similar, he can help us avoid some detours." ”

Hu Chuyuan said: "Okay, then let you invite him, by the way, you go to visit his submarine, if possible, let's buy it back." The secret point of this thing is to do. ”

Chen Zhaoao understood that Hu Chuyuan was counting on using it in the naval battle against Russia, and he estimated that it would be too late, but he didn't dare to say it explicitly, so he nodded and went out to handle this matter.

It is one thing to ask the Americans to help, and they also have to set up a special technical team within themselves, and they must also have a special workshop and workshop, and it is estimated that the total tonnage will not exceed 300 tons, so they will temporarily choose a small dock workshop for the production of gunboats to prepare, and then build a new specialized dock in Luoyuan Bay alone.

In the past few years, Fuzhou Shipbuilding has been very rapid in the accumulation of technical personnel, and it has Wei Han, Zheng Qinglian, Chen Zhaoao, three chief engineers, in boilers, transmissions, steel plates, structures, machinery, steam engines, steam turbines and other technical specialties, as well as a large number of professionals such as Lin Yiyou, Li Shoutian, Yang Lianchen, Liang Bingnian, etc.

Zhong Juncheng, Shi Jinyong, Lu Xigui and others, who returned from studying in the United States, have also gradually grown up and become a group of new backbones.

In terms of foreign technical consultants, they are mainly Americans, but the general consultant is Bai Laoyi, who has the most experience in overall design.

Chen Zhaoao quickly set up a team for himself, transferred Li Shoutian and Yang Lianchen, and seconded Liang Puzhao, an expert in wheel power, from Zheng Qinglian, who was also transferred back from the Oakland Military Factory in the United States last year, and has a solid technical foundation.

Considering the mechanical structure and material problems, Chen Zhaoao also pulled out Lu Xigui, he has the Shang Fang Sword, Wei Han and Zheng Qinglian have no choice, watching him pull the best few people over, they can only stare dryly, fortunately, Fuzhou Shipbuilding is now not short of technical engineers.

Not to mention that there is no shortage of Fuzhou Shipbuilding, and there is no shortage of Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau.

Luo Zhenlu's level is a little worse than the three major workers of the shipyard, but the Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau mainly directly introduces ready-made designs and equipment for production, which is more than enough in terms of personnel reserves.

Because it was more difficult to borrow people from Fuzhou, they supplemented young people from Gezhi Academy and Jiangnan West School in the early days, and later, with the support of Hu Chuyuan, they established Jiangning Shipbuilding School and Shanghai Mechanical School, and also recruited better science and engineering students directly from foreign students.

In addition to the four major military shipyards of Mawei, Luoyuanwan, Shanghai, and Ma'anshan, Hu Chuyuan also invested in the Fuzhou Shipyard, the Haiphong Shipyard, the Oakland Shipyard in the United States, and last year acquired the New Jersey Shipyard and the San Diego Shipyard.

From steel to shipbuilding, he has a complete set of technology, constantly transferred, what small improvements and upgrades in one shipyard can be quickly obtained by other factories, and in mutual promotion and exchange, the shipbuilding level of China and the United States is steadily improving.

Hu Chuyuan originally wanted Chen Zhaoao to go to the United States to personally invite John Holland to participate in the submarine development work of the East China Sea Division, and take a look at the original facilities and other people's finished products, but Chen Zhaoao was really busy here.

He sent a telegram to Pfister-Delano and asked Pfister-Delano to ask John Holland, the salary was good, but he had to sign a non-disclosure agreement, the contract period must not be less than ten years, and he could only work in the three shipyards owned by the wealthy North American family when he returned to the United States.

On the Fuzhou side, he personally grasped the preparatory work for the research and production of submarines, which should not only be kept secret but also speed up, and Wei Han and Zheng Qinglian had to participate in the basic design research together.

(To be continued)