Looking at Li Gang's angry words, Cohen and the other Dutch dispelled the idea of inspecting the battleship without sails.

Li Guo's direct refusal to them was quite correct, because it was a military secret, because the ship was broken.

Li Guo's new warship without sails is, to put it bluntly, a steam engine ship.

Li Guo proposed the idea of using a steam engine to drive the ship forward. In fact, it was only a few decades before the original plane. In 1690, the French Denis. Baban proposed the idea of using a steam engine as a power to propel ships, but there was no practical steam engine at the time, so the idea could not be realized.

And Li Guo built a steam engine ship, more than a hundred years earlier than the original time and space. In 1769, the French inventor Joffrey put a steam engine on board. However, the steam engine was rudimentary and cumbersome, and it was driven by a set of ordinary wooden oars, and its speed was very slow, which failed to show the superiority of a motor ship. In 1783, Joffrey built the world's first steamer, the Poroscafi, but after 30 minutes of sailing, the ship's steam boiler exploded.

And in 1807, the American mechanical engineer Robert Brown, known as the "father of steamships", was borne. Fulton designed the steamship Clermont, which was the world's first strictly steam steamship with stable and reliable performance.

The earliest idea of propelling ships with a steam engine was to use a steam engine to drive a pulp wheel instead of manual rowing. As early as Roman times, there were ships in Europe that drove paddle wheels with human and animal power (horses and oxen). During the Tang and Song dynasties in China, ships with pulp wheels as propellers were also built many times, called "car ships". The effect of these "vehicles and ships" is not ideal, because the human and animal power are limited. It can't go far, so it can't be popularized.

Steam engine ships are not affected by the direction of the weather winds. The speed is stable and fast, which is much better than the performance of the sailing boat at this time.

It's just that. The steam engine designed by Li Guo is correct in principle, and most of the components are reasonable, but the steam engine lacks a very important component, rubber!

Rubber is an important raw material widely used in industry. Although the gasket on the steam engine is small, its role is irreplaceable.

Song Yingxing, who had long been designated as the future leader of the Ministry of Industry, almost turned Li Guo's concept into reality. It's just that the seal on the steam engine is very bad, and the effect of using a lot of substitutes is not good. The tightness of the steam engine is not good. The performance is naturally much worse, as long as the steam engine is a little bit, the steam is white in all directions, which is very spectacular, but the energy consumption is too great.

Cohen and the other Dutch were stunned when they saw this steam engine ship, which was huge and not slow.

But they didn't know that there was a bad one in this first steam engine ship. There is no way to fight. Why? Because this steam engine ship is not even loaded with ammunition, it is purely to scare people.

There was only one thing in the huge cabin, coal! Even the soldiers on board were in the minority, and more were coal burners. Drive such a big ship. Even a very good quality steam engine has to be built very large, not to mention that the current steam engine has a burst of air leakage with pipelines, and it is even bigger.

But. The momentum of this steam-engine ship was perfect.

When Cohen and the Dutch came to Malacca, Song Yingxing personally commanded the ship. Stocked up with enough coal, and walked around in a mighty way. The Dutch were shocked.

But after bypassing Malacca, the steamer ship broke down.

The lack of sealing gaskets and cushion pads almost burned the coal in the hold, and the parts were all iron or bronze, with no soft pads in the middle, and the parts were hard to collide with each other, making the parts on the steam engine wear and tear.

What's more, Li Guo was negligent for a while, and on the design drawings, the pressure valve to relieve the pressure was forgotten to draw, and the steam on the steam engine was holding in the boiler, and the steam rushed out was lost.

As a result, the top of the boiler was blown up. Fortunately, the seal was not tight, otherwise the ship would have to be blown up and sunk.

Fortunately, a few people were not injured, and Song Yingxing sent someone to inform Li Guo quickly, while worrying about the steam engine ship.

Li Guo was also very anxious, and after arranging the affairs with the Dutch, he also hurried over.

Li Guo studied the steam engine for a long time, and thought that there was nothing wrong with the steam engine itself, as long as the pressure reducing valve was redesigned. And more importantly, there is no rubber as an accessory.

What can I do? Li Guo was also very worried. Li Guo was a physicochemical biologist in the original time and space, and he still knows the history of rubber. He estimates that there is probably no rubber in Asia now.

Although rubber was discovered early in the historical record, it was only in 1736 that France was the first in the world to report on the origin of rubber, the method of collecting latex, and the local use of rubber in South America. In 1876, the Englishman Wickham collected rubber seeds from the mouth of the Masun River in Brazil, transported them back to the Royal Botanic Gardens in England for sowing, and tried to plant them in Ceylon, Indonesia, and Singapore.

And there is no such thing in China.

But in any case, it is better to be a dead horse as a live horse doctor, and it is really impossible to look for it from various countries in Asia to see if there is rubber. Li Guo thought to himself.

So, Li Guo was frightened by an order, and it was written into notices in various languages, and people were sent to distribute it to various places in South Asia and Southeast Asia, but fortunately, the conditions in Malacca were convenient, and the news spread. The notice reads: Huaxia West Indian Ocean Company, now looking for something, this thing is the sap of the tree, the white sap! As long as anyone discovers this juice first in the local area, and can tell the number of places where this juice is produced, a reward of 1,000 taels of silver!

This is not a small reward, you must know that at that time, South and Southeast Asia were extremely barren and desolate, even the refining technology of copper coins and silver was also very low, and most of the countries there even simply gave up minting copper coins, let alone refining silver, but used the coins of the Ming Dynasty as the currency in circulation.

Therefore, people in Southeast Asia and South Asia have very little money, and a thousand taels of silver can be counted as a local rich man.

It's just that Li Guo didn't have hope for this, how could there be rubber in Asia?

After staying in Malacca for a while, seeing that the Dutch were sincere in cooperating with their West India Company, Li Guo was ready to go back to Guangxi.

In Malacca, Li Guo left Qian Duoduo and Ma Shiyao behind. Qian Duoduo was in charge of the West India Company, and in addition to being responsible for commercial operations with the Dutch, commercial facilities such as restaurants and entertainment in Malacca were also under the control of the West India Company, so Qian Duoduo was in charge of commerce.

Ma Shiyao was in charge of the garrison stationed in Malacca, and the main thing was to be ready for war at all times, and to maintain law and order in the area. These two things are not trivial, not to mention the importance of the military, but also the quality of law and order can affect the prosperity of Malacca.

Moreover, Li Guo told Ma Shiyao that although you are stationed in the army, you have to be restrained by a lot of money, because the military is to put it bluntly, it serves the government and the economy.

Ma Shiyao nodded, and prepared an extremely sumptuous seafood meal with Qian Duoduo for Li Guo to practice.

Li Guo and the others ate a ditch full of trenches, and they got on the boat and left satisfied.

The huge steam-engine ship was dragged downwind by several galleons, moving very slowly. Li Guo was upset when he looked at it.

After a short journey, the Tiger warships of Malacca quickly caught up, and on the bow of the ship, the flag-bearers told them to stop. And Ma Shiyao and Qian Duoduo were rowing at the bow of the boat. As the boat got closer and closer, Li Guo saw Ma Shiyao holding a bowl in his hand, shouting loudly.

As the sea breeze drifted by, Li Guo faintly heard "tree sap!" Sap! Rubber, rubber! ”

Li Guo was clever, jumped up on the ground, and shouted loudly, "Stop the boat!" Stop the boat! (To be continued......)