Hearing that the Chinese task force had just arrived in Hawaii and was going to send troops to forcibly land in the port of Honolulu, the Kingdom of Hawaii panicked, and Britain, the United States and France, who were watching the development of the situation, also expressed strong opposition and concern.

Although Britain, France, and the United States all wanted to annex Hawaii at this time, it did not become a reality due to various realities.

The British declared their sovereignty over Hawaii early on, and the French also claimed partial sovereignty over Hawaii, but this declaration was not recognized by the outside world, let alone the Kingdom of Hawaii itself.

The United States also wanted to get involved in Hawaii very early, but because of the civil war that broke out in the United States in the past few years, it naturally did not have the energy to manage Hawaii.

At the same time, the involvement of the above three countries in Hawaii has also created a situation of competition between them, you are afraid of me, and I am on guard against you, so the Kingdom of Hawaii surrounded by strong enemies has existed to this day.

Nowadays, the Chinese also do not hesitate to cross thousands of nautical miles to Hawaii, and are menacing, with a posture of wanting to completely annex the Hawaiian Kingdom.

While this frightened the Kingdom of Hawaii, it naturally made Britain, France, and the United States maintain strong opposition!

On the evening of December 2, a British merchant and a French Catholic priest boarded the Taiyuan, the flagship of the Imperial Navy's Hawaiian Task Force.

The Taiyuan, the last wooden warship of the Empire, the No. 5 ship of the Nanjing class, began construction in early 1862, was completed at the end of 1863, and officially entered service with the First Fleet of the Imperial Navy in early 1864.

At the beginning of 1865, he was transferred to Japan's book. Become a member of the Pacific Fleet.

The ship's standard displacement is fourteen hundred tons, which is about a hundred tons more than its sister Nanjing. The extra tonnage is mainly used to increase the storage capacity of coal and fresh water in order to increase the cruising capacity of the ocean. However, there has been little change in armament and preparedness. It has two 150 mm guns and four 120 mm breech-loading guns, but it does not have a rotating turret like those ironclads.

It adopts sail-steam hybrid, equipped with a horizontal reciprocating steam engine, two coal-fired boilers, and adopts single-shaft propulsion, with an output of 1,000 horsepower, and a speed of nine knots under pure steam power. And in the case of using sail steam mixing, and the wind and water are smooth. The maximum speed can reach fifteen knots.

It was the standard fast cruiser of this era.

When the Imperial Navy was preparing to send a fleet to Hawaii, it naturally drew ships from the nearby Pacific Fleet.

With the Taiyuan as the flagship, there is also a Shaoxing-class wooden cruiser Ningbo.

The reason why the two battleships sent were wooden cruisers, and there were no large ironclad ships, was because ironclad ships were absolute capital ships for both the empire and other naval powers, and they would not be easily deployed.

All of the main ironclad ships in the Imperial Navy served in the First Fleet, stationed at home and stationed in Japan's Pacific Fleet. There were only a few wooden cruisers as the main force, and there were also a number of offshore gunboats of several hundred tons.

Among these gunboats were two small offshore ironclad gunboats, but these small offshore ironclads were not suitable for ocean voyages, as the small ironclads were purely steam-powered. Endurance is relatively limited, and it is difficult to travel thousands of nautical miles to Hawaii.

This small ironclad is the product of the full ironclad of Imperial warships, well. It can also be said to be a product of the era of comprehensive ironclad in the global navy.

Since the Imperial Navy has developed and commissioned several ironclad ships, it has mature experience in the manufacture of ironclad ships. At the same time, with the development of domestic industry, shipborne steam engines. The decline in the price of rear-loading naval guns and steel has also allowed the price of ironclad ships to be effectively controlled.

Moreover, the Imperial Navy does not have too many technical requirements for small offshore ironclad ships, and uses mature technology as much as possible, so the cost can be further reduced.

In the past two years, the Imperial Navy has built and commissioned two small ironclad ships in batches, namely the Jining-class ironclad gunboat with a displacement of 150 tons and the Zhenguang-class gunboat with a displacement of 450 tons.

The positioning of the 150-ton Jining-class gunboat is very clear, that is, instead of the Xingwu-class wooden gunboat, its combat area is scheduled to be in the inland river and offshore waters, mainly used for daily patrols, and when necessary to support the army operations in inland areas, in order to control costs, the steam engines used are all old mature steam engines, and the naval guns are also front-loading rifled guns.

Due to the cheap price, and mature technology, and due to the small tonnage, some medium-sized shipyards can be manufactured, so for many factors, the Imperial Navy placed more orders, the first batch of orders as high as four, the second batch is as high as eight, and the construction of warships in the past are concentrated in Shanghai Shipyard and Qingdao Naval Shipyard is different, the construction of this gunboat is scattered in some newly developed medium-sized shipyards in China, such as Tianjin North Shipyard, Guangzhou Shipyard, Wuhu Shipyard, Shanghai Huangpu Shipyard, etc.

The reason why these small ironclad ships with low technical requirements are ordered to these medium-sized shipyards is to support the development of the domestic shipbuilding industry, after all, it is impossible for a country's shipbuilding industry to rely on only a small number of one or two shipyards.

At present, six Jining-class gunboats have been put into service, which has taken over most of the tasks of the previous Xingwu-class gunboats, and according to the Navy's plan, the Jining-class gunboats and their modifications will be in service at least 24 or more to meet the imperial navy's huge demand for small patrol ships.

Different from the Jining-class gunboats with very small tonnage, the Zhenguang-class gunboats have a large tonnage and are also appropriately optimized for ocean-going navigation capabilities, although their combat positioning is also inland waterway.

Its combat orientation is mainly to be active in coastal waters, and it can also be dispatched to some relatively close sea areas, such as Vietnam and Japan's own waters.

Two gunboats are already in service, three more are under construction or in the pipeline, and eight are expected to be commissioned in the future master plan, which will be allocated to different local fleets.

The Pacific Fleet stationed in Japan has such a Zhenguang-class, which is the No. 2 ship, the Zhenhu.

However, although the tonnage of the Zhenguang class is larger, and the ocean-going navigation capacity is also appropriately optimized, it is still an offshore ship in the end, without sails, and the tonnage is limited, the amount of coal carried is not too much, and the endurance is relatively limited, so it cannot perform some ocean-going combat missions.

Under the circumstance that large ironclad ships have to defend domestic security, shoulder the decisive battle with the incoming fleet, cannot be dispatched at will, and it is difficult for small ironclad ships to adapt to ocean voyages, the Empire's existing eight wooden fast cruisers still undertake the main tasks of the Empire's ocean-going operations.

The Taiyuan in Hawaii today is a very clear example, not that the Imperial Navy did not have more advanced and more powerful warships, but that it was simply impossible to send them to Hawaii, thousands of nautical miles away.

However, although the Taiyuan and Ningbo are already products of old technology, they are still mainstream warships for the contemporary navy, and their performance in all aspects is not too bad, and they are enough to serve until the 70s after the 70s.

You must know that in the eighties and nineties of the nineteenth century, there were still many wooden warships in service and took on the combat mission of capital ships!

However, in today's situation in Hawaii, the role of the warship itself is not large, mainly to provide transportation and cover, because the sea power of the Hawaiian Kingdom can basically be ignored.

If the commander of the Hawaiian task force, Admiral Guo Yi, really decides to provoke a battlefield, then the main force of the war will be those 200 marines.

That night, Colonel Guo Yi had a brief conversation with the representatives of Britain and France, and invited the two to dinner together!

However, since these three men were not career diplomats, it was naturally impossible for them to conduct formal diplomatic negotiations on behalf of their respective countries, and the main thing they negotiated was that no matter how the situation changed, they hoped that the navy of the Chinese Empire would not destroy the property of British and French merchants in Hawaii, and that they did not want to be affected by the war because there were still British and French merchant ships in the port of Honolulu.

At the same time, the representatives of Britain and France once again reaffirmed the sovereignty claims of Britain and France over the Kingdom of Hawaii, accusing the Empire of invading the Kingdom of Hawaii as an infringement of their sovereignty.

Such verbal representations were of little practical significance, and they knew that verbal protests would not organize a military advance by the Chinese into Hawaii.

Because they were not professional diplomats themselves, they were just British and French businessmen in Hawaii, and private representatives elected by the residents.

Besides, even if they wanted to, they didn't have the ability to resist!

Britain and France do not have any strong military power in the Pacific waters, especially in the surrounding waters.

This is not to say that Britain and France are not strong enough, but that Hawaii is surrounded by empty seas, and the nearest military bases are thousands of kilometers away.

What is so important in Hawaii?

It is because it is isolated in the middle of the North Pacific Ocean, with no other islands around, and it is this scarcity that has led to its rapid rise in strategic importance to the extent that it can affect the situation in the entire Pacific Ocean.

It is more than 3,000 kilometers from the west coast of the United States to Hawaii, and more than 6,000 kilometers from Edo to Hawaii.

One of the very important points is that although there are islands such as Midway Island on the way from Japan to Hawaii, there is no relatively large island from Hawaii to the west coast of the United States, and if the United States rises in the future, but after losing Hawaii, their navy will not be able to penetrate deep into the waters of the Taiping Army, because they will find that there are thousands of kilometers of sea in the middle and there is no naval base that can allow them to resupply and rest.

The reason why Hawaii's strategic position is so valued by Lin Zhe is that it can contain the Americans' maritime power from penetrating deep into the Pacific Ocean.

In the event of a large-scale war between the United States and the Empire, as long as Hawaii is not lost, it will be impossible for the Americans to penetrate deep into the Pacific Ocean. (To be continued.) )

PS: There is another chapter later