The plan is still based on the technology accumulated in the eight years of armor, and adopts important designs such as steam engines, naval guns, and enclosed turrets that will be used on the eight years of armor.

Anyway, after years of research and development, most of these subsystems have been formed, even the slowest progress of the 250 mm naval gun, the Royal Arms Company is already carrying out the final technical research, testing the existing foreign guns, if nothing else, it will be able to be manufactured and installed on the eight-year-old armor ship next year

Even if the 10,000-ton plan starts construction now, it will take at least two years to complete the hull construction, and it will take more than a year to outfit it by then, so even if the research and development progress of the Royal Arms Company's naval guns is delayed compared with the plan, it will not affect the plan of the 10,000-ton giant ship too much.

Soon, Lin Dabiao, who rushed back to Nanjing from Hong Kong, officially submitted the naval shipbuilding plan to Lin Zhe.

The first weight of this plan is naturally a 10,000-ton ironclad ship!

The design of its 10,000-ton ironclad ship has been formalized, and the design is personally led and responsible by Rear Admiral Hu Licai, Secretary for Naval Ships.

Hu Licai, this is a very cheesy name, he was not born in the navy in his early years, but a technical engineer in the Shanghai shipyard, and the foreign engineers in the shipyard were responsible for the design of many types of ships, and later as the technical representative of the Shanghai shipyard went to the British shipyard to study and study, and returned to China to replace the previous foreign engineers, and then served as the chief designer of the Shanghai shipyard.

Immediately afterwards, he was warmly invited by the Navy, and without any military experience, he was awarded the rank of Colonel of the Navy and directly served as the deputy director of the Naval Administration Department, leading the design of ironclad ships in the Navy. The two ironclad ships, the Nusnail-class and the Yandi-class, were his design works, and he was promoted to rear admiral. He held the post of Director of the Naval Administration.

This is the quintessential self-taught designer with exceptional talent. Although the academic qualifications are not as strong as those of the naval officer school's ship administration class and those naval officers who studied in Britain to learn to build ships, if you play battleship design, you rely on talent.

Now the empire is going to start construction of 10,000-ton giant ships ahead of schedule, so he naturally takes the lead, and quickly selects a few from the many alternatives designed in the past, and then lets the navy review it internally, and finally after discussion within the navy. One of the options was selected as the final option.

The standard displacement of the scheme is 10,000 and 100 tons, and it is also interesting to talk about this tonnage, the initial tonnage designed by Hu Licai was only 9,800 tons, but the tonnage of the navy generals set off this battleship was not more than 10,000 tons, so Hu Licai added 300 tons and crossed the threshold of 10,000 tons.

The battleship is 122 meters long, 18 meters wide, and has a draft of 8.5 meters, and the overall length-to-width ratio and draft are actually similar to those of the 10,000-ton ironclad ships of the British. And the length-to-width ratio of this new battleship is even larger.

Powered by pure steam, equipped with a reciprocating steam engine, single-shaft and single-propeller propulsion, in order to obtain enough horsepower to propel this huge 10,000-ton ship. It is expected to be equipped with 10 boilers, with an estimated power of 7,000 horsepower and a maximum speed of 14.5 knots.

If the cruise is carried out at an economic speed of 6.5 knots. Then the cruising range can reach two thousand nautical miles.

In terms of protection, some key parts use armor 5.5 inches thick. Most of the other areas are equipped with 4.5-inch armor.

In terms of firepower, it is expected to use up to eight 250-mm rear-loading naval guns. The barrel was twenty-five times long, and two twin turrets were placed in the bow and stern, and then one twin turrets were deployed on each side of the middle of the hull, and the four turrets were arranged in a diamond-shaped layout

In addition, on both sides of the hull, six guns of one hundred and fifty mm were deployed for a total of twelve!

The deployment and quantity of firepower was slightly different from that of the British Minotaur, which had four Jiumura main guns, followed by twenty-four seven-inch secondary guns.

The main guns of the Empire are of a larger caliber, but the number of secondary guns is less.

In addition, there is a very obvious difference: this battleship of the Chinese Empire has a fully enclosed main gun turret, and even the 150 mm main guns are deployed behind the breastplate armor on the side side, and the upper part of the breastplate armor is directly connected to the bridge building, so it also looks like a closed turret.

However, whether you want to or not, this mode of deployment of secondary guns is at least much stronger than that of the open deck.

In the design of this battleship, the Imperial Navy can be said to have made a comprehensive trade-off, first of all, the hull, because the design of this battleship was originally intended to be used for fleet decisive battles, so the speed must not be as low as that of offshore warships, and the minimum requirement is to reach fourteen knots, which cannot be worse than the 10,000-ton ironclad ships of the British.

The same is true for protection, as the caliber of the guns is further increased, it is necessary to increase the thickness of the armor, for which the final armor thickness of 5.5 inches is used, and in some secondary areas it is 4.5 inches.

This armor thickness is enough to handle most of the current naval guns, and those under eight inches are basically powerless against armor of this thickness.

In terms of the deployment of firepower, it was also a trade-off, originally intended to be equipped with four ten-inch main guns and twenty-four 180 mm side side guns, but the previous naval battle at the mouth of the Pearl River has proved that whether it is a six-inch or seven-inch rear-loading rifled gun, it cannot effectively penetrate the existing four-point five-inch armor, not to mention the five-inch or even thicker armor in the future, which is currently only more than two hundred millimeters. Even 250 mm is a larger caliber gun that can effectively penetrate the heavy armor of the current ironclad ships.

Therefore, the shipmaster quickly abandoned these 180 mm secondary guns, and then changed the gun layout, directly increasing the number of 250 mm to as many as eight, and adopted a diamond-shaped layout. If this kind of naval gun layout is only based on appearance, it is a full-heavy artillery battleship in the dreadnought era.

But in fact, this is just a full-weight artillery on the surface, because in the absence of a centralized fire control system, the so-called full-weight artillery is an empty phrase and does not make much sense.

This 10,000-ton giant ship designed by the Imperial Navy has strong traces of the British 10,000-ton ironclad ship in design, especially in the hull design and the Minotaur-class ironclad ship, but in terms of firepower layout, it is different from contemporary warships, which is relatively unique, with a strong style of the dreadnought era.

The reason for this result is that small-caliber naval guns are useless, and the navy wants to deploy as many large-caliber naval guns as possible, but too many will not work, too many guns are too heavy, the center of gravity is unstable, and in order to maintain the center of gravity, the freeboard must be lowered.

Even with the deployment of eight 250-millimeter guns, the freeboard of this 10,000-ton battleship is still lower than that of the British's one-vote ironclad ship, which will definitely affect the ocean-going seaworthiness.

If this kind of 10,000-ton giant ship is placed in the history of the development of the world's navy, it does not have much practical significance, and it does not have the title of the world's first.

This 10,000-ton giant ship is the most powerful warship ever built for the Imperial Navy under the current technical conditions!

To operate such a huge battleship, at least eight hundred naval officers and sailors are needed!

At the same time, the construction of such a huge warship required as much as 2.2 million yen, which is equivalent to about 480,000 pounds according to today's ratio of silver and gold.

And this cost does not include the initial investment in the 10,000-ton dock, new large-caliber naval guns, new steam engines, closed turret R & D investment, because these R & D funds were paid in advance during the construction of the eight-year test ship, otherwise, the eight-year ship plan of only 5,000 tons will cost the navy as much as 1.4 million yuan, which is a full 500,000 yuan more than the 4,000-ton Yandi class, and the reason why the cost is so expensive is that although the construction cost is not much, More of them are R&D funds for various subsystems.

If such a huge amount of shipbuilding funds were to be seen by the Cabinet or the Army, they would probably have to shout about the Navy's losers.

In fact, the navy and several major domestic enterprises have begun to prepare a few years ago, and the two large docks built by the Qingdao Navy Shipyard are 10,000 tons, and the other is larger, reaching 15,000 tons.

Linde Machinery Company's shipborne steam engine research and development has not stopped, as the only one of the largest shipborne steam engine suppliers in China, Linde Machinery Company has accumulated enough experience, but also has enough funds for them to research and development, now they are building ordinary steam engines, but they are also trying to catch up with the latest trend of steam engine technology, at present they even have a three-expansion steam engine to carry out preliminary theoretical research.

This has been prepared for so many years, it can be said that the whole empire is already half ready, and it is not impossible to create this gritted teeth!

In the previous Pearl River Estuary Navy, the Imperial Navy was stimulated by the two large ironclad ships of the British, and even more frightened by the existing 10,000-ton ironclad ships of the British, so they hurriedly put forward the plan of building 10,000-ton ironclad ships in advance.

In this regard, Lin Zhe also felt that although the time was still early, it was not without benefit to start doing it earlier, at least he could have more time to solve any problems he encountered in the future.

Therefore, Lin Zhe happily approved the navy's shipbuilding plan, and personally drafted the name of the 10,000-ton ironclad ship that was expected to start construction.

This time, the name of the ship is still chosen from ancient mythology, with the word 'Chiyou' as the name of the ship, inheriting the tradition of the ironclad ships in the Imperial Navy using mythological characters as the name of the ship.

The Chiyou was to begin construction in three months, that is, in July 1866 at the No. 4 dock of the Qingdao Naval Shipyard, the only 15,000-ton dock in the country, and was expected to complete the hull construction and launch by December 1868, and the completion and commissioning were scheduled for 1870.

In other words, after 1870, the Chinese Empire will get the first 10,000-ton steel giant ship in Chinese history, and the Chinese Imperial Navy will get rid of its current weak naval status and truly become a strong maritime force. (To be continued.) )