"Wei Han, you did a good job. I gave you the position of shipbuilding director, and I didn't see the wrong person! ”

In the dock of Jiangnan Shipyard, Liu Xian stepped on the huge body of the Taishan, and he also felt a burst of excitement in his heart. This is the fifth 10,000-ton battleship built by China itself, and it is also a monument that cannot be surpassed in the history of the Navy -- it is the world's first all-heavy artillery battleship to be launched. Although it is still far from the gap of dreadnoughts.

The smile on Wei Han's face was brighter than a chrysanthemum, followed by Chen Zhaoao and Zheng Qinglian, who were smiling as brightly, and his two friends, classmates and deputies, the Naval Shipbuilding Bureau led by these three people has really made great contributions to the great strides in the development of China's naval shipbuilding industry over the years.

At noon, Liu Xian sighed and said, "Mawei Shipmaster is amazing!" ”

"Zuo Zongtang's merit is in the Qianqiu!"

The three top experts in China's warship manufacturing today all graduated from the first phase of the manufacturing class of the Fuzhou Mawei Shipbuilding School. Counting the generals and officers of the navy today, although there is no talk of the Fujian gang for a long time, the proportion of Fujian people is not ordinarily large.

Shi Qingyan, Du Chun, Wang Fuyou, and Li Zhenghui, who dominated the Qin navy in the early days, are now all veterans in the navy and are the highest-ranking people, but in fact, they have long been outdated. Not to mention organizing warships for battle, it is impossible to let them command a warship to sail away.

A group of people in the navy who can really fight and have prestige are those who graduated from the Harbour Master School and have been tempered by studying in Germany and Britain and tempered by war. A large part of the staff officers, logistics systems, and middle- and low-level officers who support the operation of warships are graduates of naval academies in Tianjin, Fuzhou, Qingdao, and other countries. These people come from all over the world. I don't want to be like the original shipmaster and sailor, and the soldiers and officers are all from Fujian. Naturally, it cannot form a 'system', and forces like the Fujian Gang, which have a clear geographical division, have no soil in the navy at all.

The so-called Fujian gang and Guangdong gang. In the current Chinese Navy does not exist at all. In a few years, after Deng Shichang, Fang Boqian, Xu Shoushan, Sa Zhenbing, and other old people have retreated, the entire Chinese Navy will contain people from all over the country, and there will be no geographical distinction.

The next day, the launching ceremony was held. The whole shipyard is immersed in the joy of the festival, the bustling crowd gathers around the shipyard, the slipway has long been draped in red and colored, and even the large gantry crane is also dressed in full costume.

The right side of the slipway. The temporary rostrum is also decorated with flowers and green grass, two large hydrogen balloons are raised on the left and right, and red silk with large characters is hung below, which is grand and gorgeous. Above the rostrum, in gold letters on a red background, it reads: Launching ceremony of the battleship Taishan. On one side of the rostrum, the hull of the huge battleship Tarzan on the slipway was decorated with red satin and flower ribbons, especially the bow of the ship, where a huge flower plate was suspended in the center of the red satin. The colorful flags corresponding to the venue below are like clouds, and the gongs and drums are noisy. The festive atmosphere burns everyone's passion like a fire!

The bottle tossing is to be carried out. As a student, there is no need to be different in this regard, even if the national conditions are different. The "bottle throwing" and the hymns of praying for the ship have not only been inherited by China without change. and gave up the previous dragon king, and it is rare to make concessions on gender, and it is still done by women.

Liu Xian did not let the accompanying concubine come forward. The shipbuilding bureau also made such a request around the bend, but Liu Xian refused. Wei Han and the others asked Du Chun's wife to come forward. "Battleship No. 5, today I will name you the battleship 'Taishan'. I wish you peace and security in the future, and dedicate your greatest strength to the safety of the motherland's 30,000 miles of sea frontier. ”

There was a round of applause from the audience, Du Shi walked to the front of the champagne under the guidance of the master of ceremonies, picked up the small axe, and waved it lightly in front of him, the axe fell down the rope and broke, and the champagne bottle fell high on the bow of the ship. The red silk cloth fell immediately, the flower plate fell, and the three strong characters of "Taishan" were obvious to the world!

The marching band played the national anthem in unison. With the sound of the national anthem, the hull of the ship began to slowly slide into the sparkling waters of the Huangpu River. At this time, the ceremony entered a climax, with thunderous applause, gongs and drums, and firecrackers, and the lion dance and dragon lanterns that had just retreated to the side flew again. The surrounding workers have put their own preparations of three animals, wine and other tributes into the Huangpu River, offering their heartfelt wishes. This is the power of tradition, which has been passed down with tacit consent for more than ten years.

In this boiling shipyard, the Taishan succeeded in stabilizing the groundwater, and China took another solemn and powerful step towards the ocean.

On the rostrum, Liu Xian was chatting and laughing with everyone, and when he was chatting happily, an attendant squeezed in from outside, his face was a little ugly. Seeing that there were many people around, the attendant's eyes flashed, and he said to Liu Xian: "Your Majesty, I just received news from the Middle East, should we go to other places to say?" ”

Liu Xian didn't know what was going on in the Middle East, but looking at the appearance of the attendant, he knew that the news was definitely not good. followed to the side, and the people around him also got out of the way with interest, His Majesty, who should know, will naturally let them know, what should not be known, at least not now, if they listen to it, the consequences will be troublesome!

"What's wrong with the Middle East? The tribal armaments on the Arabian Peninsula have not been suppressed by the Ottoman Empire? "Since the end of the auction, a large number of Western exploration teams and oil workers have come to the peninsula and the two river basins, and soon oil wells have been developed everywhere, and the name of the Middle East's 'oil sea' has been completely put on the head. At the end of last month, the tribal armed forces on the peninsula frequently made trouble, and Westerners frequently crossed the 'legal' oil development zones and 'advanced' to other places. However, the two river basins are still stable, and the troublemakers are on the peninsula.

"Did Britain and France officially intervene?" Although there are many powerful and small powers in Europe, Britain and France have the most say in the Middle East. Liu Xian can only speculate like this.

"The Europeans organized mercenaries to support the tribal forces. The news was tight, and I didn't hear a word of wind before. Until the day before yesterday, the Ottoman army had a major battle with the combined tribal forces in Hail, in the northern part of the Najd Plateau. The 4,000 Ottoman troops were completely defeated by 17,000 tribal forces and 2,000 mercenaries, suffering heavy losses. Ali Pasha, the Ottoman governor stationed in the Arabian Peninsula, was severely wounded by artillery fire and his fate was uncertain. "It was only when this war was officially launched that the military intelligence in the Middle East discovered the existence of 'European mercenaries'.

Liu Xian's face was slightly gloomy, and Hail was quite close to Kuwait.

"What about the losses of the clan forces and mercenaries?"

"In total, the losses were less than a thousand people. Among them, the mercenary forces suffered more than three or four hundred casualties. The defeat at the Battle of Hail and the heavy wounding of Ali Pasha discouraged the Ottoman army, and they decided to abandon the northeastern part of the Najd Plateau and retreat to Rice in the east. He also sent an invitation to our Kuwaiti garrison, hoping that our troops would be stationed in Haf'abayne to defend the northern coast of the peninsula. ”

"It's too unpalatable." Liu Xian thought about the discovery of oil in the Middle East, and it would have to wait a year or two, when Britain and France saw huge interests, so they could not bear to provoke a war between the local Arab forces against the Ottoman Sultan. Unexpectedly, only three or four months had passed since the auction, and this group of people couldn't help but pounce.

"A battalion was assigned to be stationed in Haf-Abatin. Send a telegram to Istanbul asking the Ottoman government to extinguish the resistance on the peninsula as soon as possible. Tell them that the longer this revolt continues, the greater the impact on the next batch of development rights auctions. "Fortunately, China's exploration personnel are concentrated in Kuwait and the periphery of the Persian Gulf, and there is no one in the Arabian Peninsula, otherwise more than a month of chaos, and the Arabs are instigated by Britain, France and other European countries, if the exploration team is caught by them, I don't know what kind of 'treatment' it will receive!

This defeat of the Ottoman government forces in the Middle East is simply a shot in the arm for the tribal forces of the entire peninsula. The arrogance of these tribes' armed forces will be even more arrogant, and their ambitions will be even higher.

Although there will be infighting among them, such as the Aziz family and the Rashid family, these two sides are mortal enemies. The latter family's greatest wealth in the sphere of influence, the Riyadh oil fields, and Riyadh, one of the largest cities on the peninsula, belonged to the Aziz family decades ago.

The current patriarch of the Aziz family, Abdul. Aziz's father, Abdul. Rahman was the emir of the Najd region, where Riyadh is located. Later, due to the invasion of the Rashid family, he was forced into exile in Kuwait.

When the Ottoman army made a comeback and swept Kuwait, Abdul. Aziz also left the sanctuary with the Kuwaiti Sabah family.

If only the Ottoman army at that time could have co-opted Abdul a little. Aziz, certainly, after that the march of the Ottoman army over the Arabian Peninsula will become more 'legitimate'. But Istanbul, which wants to devour everything, will not knock on the down-and-out Abdul with his eyes. Aziz. The Ottoman army used its formidable strength to reassert its sovereignty in the Arabian Peninsula like a march. It also pushed almost all the local Arab aristocracy and tribal forces to their own opposite.

Britain and France were able to provoke bilateral strife so quickly, first, the people of the peninsula were well aware of the strength of Britain and France and other European powers; Second, the decline of Turkey is well known; The third is that Turkey has completely extracted the benefits of oil. Seven million pounds went all to Istanbul, Abdul. Even if Hamid II had given a million pounds to these tribes and local nobles, the resistance of the peninsula would not have been so strong and cohesive!

But the simple mercenary and tribal joint armament, Liu Xian is not worried. The Ottoman Empire now has a modern army of more than 500,000 people, and it is still easy to flatten a peninsula. What the Ottomans really feared was that Britain and France would take the opportunity to intervene...... (To be continued......)