During Wang Chenhao's two weeks in London, high-ranking British officials, aristocrats, and some arms dealer magnates visited him at the Qing Empire's legation in Britain, where he stayed. And the reporters of several well-known newspapers in Britain are like paparazzi blocking the door of the legation 24 hours a day, and Wang Chenhao's words and deeds will be processed and published on the front pages of the next day's newspapers.

The reason why Wang Chenhao is so famous is inseparable from his series of military, political and economic initiatives.

Military aspects. In the First Sino-Japanese Battle of the Yellow Sea, Wang Chenhao and his Jiaolong attracted great attention from European and American military experts. In particular, John Abbasnott Fisher, the Third Sea Secretary of the British Royal Navy, was eager to meet Wang Chenhao and wanted to obtain from him the surname and underwater combat concept of the Jiaolong. In this regard, Wang Chenhao politely rejected him, the secret of the Jiaolong could not be known to him anyway, because with his IQ and understanding of naval equipment, he would definitely find that the Jiaolong did not belong to this era.

However, Wang Chenhao admires Rear Admiral Fisher, who has a very far-sighted vision in naval equipment manufacturing and naval tactical concepts, for example, his current job as the Third Sea Lord's Minister in charge of auditing, equipment and logistics, and he is also the director of the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, and he is also inseparable from his participation in the related work of the Dengyun-class battleships and Haiqi-class armored cruisers.

Of course, Wang Chenhao knew about the three major things that Fisher was really famous for about the navy. First, he presided over the first real destroyer in the history of human navies, making the destroyer officially enter the naval combat sequence; Second, he presided over the design of the Intrepid battleship, a new concept battleship with a unified main gun caliber, which rewrote a milestone in the development of naval equipment; Third, he carried out an epoch-making reform of armored cruisers, and the battlecruiser that was all the rage was proposed by him.

These three contributions of Fisher were all key measures to influence the course of the navy, and Wang Chenhao even wanted to assassinate him, so that Britain would lose these three key reforms, and its position as the supremacy of the navy would certainly not be easy to maintain.

Fisher naturally didn't know Wang Chenhao's true thoughts, and now he was only curious about Wang Chenhao, and he came to visit Wang Chenhao in addition to wanting to discuss with him about naval strategy and tactics, but also wanted to take the opportunity to sell naval equipment to Wang Chenhao, so as to obtain funds to complete his design and reform of the torpedo destroyer.

Wang Chenhao also wanted to learn from Fisher about the tactics and strategic concepts of the navy, and he had always wanted to control the Beiyang Naval Division, so he urgently needed experience in this area, so the atmosphere of conversation and discussion with Fisher was very harmonious.

Fisher wanted to test Wang Chenhao's ability, so he avoided the other branches of the navy and only talked about torpedoes, torpedo boats, and torpedo destroyers, and took the current maritime situation in the English Channel as the subject of discussion, because he firmly believed that he knew this better than Wang Chenhao.

However, Fisher's abacus couldn't hit after it ran into Wang Chenhao. Because Wang Chenhao, as a military enthusiast, he has a deeper view of this aspect than Fisher.

Since mankind entered the 19th century, with the development of the hull from a wooden structure to an all-steel structure, the development of shipborne guns from front-loading smoothbore guns to rear-loading rifled guns, the development of power from oars and sails to steam power, coupled with the invention of mines, torpedoes, optical rangefinders and antennas, the development of the world's ships has entered a new stage, and the surnames of battleships, cruisers, and armored ships have been greatly improved, and they have become the protagonists of naval battlefields.

By the end of the 19th century, the torpedo had developed into a new underwater weapon that could reach speeds of more than 27 knots, so the torpedo boat, a small boat that could be used to launch torpedoes, was born in England in 1877. The threat of torpedo boats to large ships immediately attracted the attention of the navies of the world. How to deal with this kind of small, handy, fast, and extremely lethal light maritime "killer" has become a new topic that the navies of various countries urgently need to study.

Fisher's topic to Wang Chenhao was that in the current English Channel, the British and French navies both demanded control of the strait and sea supremacy, and the two navies often had military confrontations. The British Navy surpassed the French Navy in terms of tonnage and number of warships, but the French Navy vigorously developed high-speed torpedo boats and high-speed torpedoes, and used these low-cost but powerful torpedo boats to blockade the English Channel and force the British Navy to submit.

"How does Lord Wang think my Royal Navy can break this situation?"

Wang Chenhao knew that Fisher was examining him, and wanted to make the arrogant Fisher have a sense of admiration, which was extremely important for Wang Chenhao's future development in the navy, because Wang Chenhao needed a lot of advanced equipment and technology of the British Navy, and this Fisher was the key to open this door.

"Actually, I don't need to answer this question, you already have the answer in your heart. But since Your Excellency has this question, then I will talk about it. Wang Chenhao smiled slightly, and then said: "We envision building a new type of ship that can counter torpedo boats. This type of ship is larger than a torpedo boat, can carry several small-caliber rapid-fire guns, is faster than a torpedo boat, and can also fire torpedoes. In this way, when the enemy's torpedo boat attacks your large ship, this new type of ship can hunt down the enemy torpedo boat and destroy it with artillery to protect your own capital ship, and can also attack the enemy's large ship with its own torpedo. This new type of torpedo boat capture ship, which I call a destroyer, is equipped with such destroyers on a large scale, and it will have no problem dealing with the large number of torpedo boats in France. ”

Fisher was a little surprised, this problem that had plagued the British Royal Navy for seven or eight years seemed to be solved in Wang Chenhao's eyes. In fact, since 1887, for the first time, the British secretly built a new type of ship like Wang Chenhao's mouth, and immediately joined the navy to deal with the threat of a large number of torpedo boats from France and Russia. By 1892, the British Navy, under the auspices of Fisher, secretly built four more similar ships, which were internally named "Torpedo Boat Destroyers". Fisher said with a little doubt: "As far as I know, it seems that your country does not have such ships, why does this kind of destroyer from the mouth of Lord Wang seem to be made by your country?" ”

Wang Chenhao smiled secretly in his heart, this kind of thing really can't be explained to you. So he said: "Two years ago, your country conducted a trial voyage of a warship named Havok, and I think this is what I think of as a destroyer. It seems that Your Excellency is in charge of presiding, right? ”

Fisher was stunned again, secretly amazed that Wang Chenhao even knew this. But it's a secret that only a handful of people know, and it looks like it's time to tighten up internal security.

Fisher believed in science, so he did not believe that there were rumors that Wang Chenhao was a prophet, and he insisted that it was a high-ranking official within the Royal Navy who leaked the information. So Fisher didn't have to hide it from Wang Chenhao anymore, and asked for the surname to be generous and directly explained the trial situation of the Havok to Wang Chenhao.

The "Havok" has a displacement of 275 tons, a length of 56.4 meters, a width of 5.6 meters, one 12-pound and three 6-pound rapid-fire guns, and three 18-inch Fish**; The steam engine has a power of 3500-4000 horsepower and a design speed of 27 knots. The Havoc easily achieved a speed of 26 knots during its first sea trials. On the second day of sea trials, the "Havoc" easily caught up with a torpedo boat and overtook the latter, fully proving that it has the ability to catch torpedo boats, and it is also enough to compete with other surface ships.

Subsequently, Fisher expressed the hope that the Qing Imperial Navy would also be able to order such torpedo boat destroyers to deal with the threat of the Russian Navy in the Far East. Wang Chenhao thought that in order to improve the speed of the destroyer, Fisher began to experiment with the use of steam turbine technology on it, and this technology is the core power technology of the future capital ships, so Wang Chenhao agreed to purchase a batch of new torpedo boat destroyers, but asked his Shanghai Shipbuilding Heavy Industry to cooperate with the British Royal Navy Portsmouth Shipyard to develop new destroyers and share the core technology.

Where would Fisher think of Xiao Jiujiu in Wang Chenhao's heart, what he lacks now is R&D funds, so he agreed to Wang Chenhao's request.