The tender for the Cullen and its successor was held over two days, with the first day being the submission of tenders by the shipyards and the second day being the direct announcement.

After the bidding results were announced, Li Chenzhong breathed a sigh of relief, and in this bidding, he made great efforts and directly quoted a low price of 480,000 yuan.

At this price, Songhu Shipyard basically does not have any room for profit, if it is considered the early dock and equipment upgrade investment, in fact, Songhu Shipyard will lose tens of thousands of dollars for this order.

But Li Chenzhong doesn't care, it's just tens of thousands of yuan, Songhu Shipyard can afford to lose, Songhu Shipyard has done good business in the past two years, and it ranks first among many shipyards in China in the field of inland waterway ships, and so many inland river and offshore ships are built every year, which is enough for Songhu Shipyard to fill these deficits.

Once the news of the Songhu Shipyard building a large-tonnage cruiser for the navy comes out, it will be more confident to participate in the bidding of other ocean-going ships in the future and compete with the three major shipyards in China.

Fang Kunbian of Tianjin Shipyard on the side was a little disappointed, the price given by Tianjin Shipyard was actually not high, only 500,000 yuan, this price, in fact, did not make much money, but there would be thought that Songhu Shipyard is so bold, would rather lose money to win this order.

"Congratulations Brother Li, this time your Songhu factory has shown its face!" Although the bid failed, Fang Kunbian was not too frustrated, the Tianjin shipyard is much richer than the Songhu shipyard, and now the slipway of the Tianjin shipyard. There is also a military ironclad ship under construction.

And the Navy's orders for warships are actually not a lot, and this time it failed. Just come back next time.

Li Chenzhong was smiling, but he was already thinking about it in his head. This time, the bid was won, but it was still necessary to control the cost and not lose too much.

However, Li Chenzhong didn't talk to Fang Kun for long, and soon a naval captain came to pick him up, saying that he was going to prepare to participate in the technical consultation meeting of the Navy Ship Administration Department.

Although the tender was passed, the military has always had strict requirements for the quality of warships, and the Songhu Shipyard is the first time to undertake large-tonnage warships, so the navy is still a little uneasy.

The technical consultation meeting of the Navy and Ship Administration Department is mainly to understand the existing equipment and technical capabilities of the shipyard, and also to understand how the shipyard is ready to upgrade the equipment in the future. When necessary, the technical department of the Navy will also give certain technical guidance to guide shipyards to upgrade their technology.

When Li Chenzhong returned to Shanghai with the contract, the Songhu Shipyard immediately launched a large-scale technical upgrade, introduced some large-scale equipment, and began formal construction on the newly built 4,000-ton dock under the supervision of the supervising representatives sent by the navy.

The detailed drawings of the warships are ready-made, and there are strict regulations on what kind of technical standards to use, and it is not as convenient as the shipyard wants.

When the contract was officially signed for the protective cruiser USS Cullen. When construction was about to begin, the 15,000-ton shipyard in the Baoshan branch of the Shanghai shipyard next door was also in the final stages of construction.

This dock, named Baoshan Branch No. 1 Dock, is the second large-scale dock of 15,000 tons in China, and the first is the No. 4 dock of Qingdao Naval Shipyard.

According to the plan, the construction of the dock should be completed in October of this year. Then, in November, the second 10,000-ton ironclad ship of the Imperial Navy will be officially built, that is, the second ship of the Chiyou class.

Compared with the British, who started construction of several 10,000-ton ironclad ships a year, the Imperial Navy was limited by military spending and the strength of domestic shipyards in this regard. Still can't do it, and it's hard to start construction a year. Because the construction period of building a 10,000-ton ironclad ship is at least three or four years old. At least four or even more than five 10,000-ton docks are needed to ensure that one ship can be started a year.

The empire's 10,000-ton docks are still very few, and only the No. 3 and No. 4 docks of the Qingdao Naval Shipyard are currently in use, which are 10,000 tons and 15,000 tons respectively.

The Baoshan No. 1 dock at the Shanghai shipyard is still under construction, and it will not be completed until October, and the 20,000-ton dock at the Guangzhou shipyard is expected to be completed after 1870.

Due to the limited slipway, and there are only three shipyards in China that can undertake the construction of 10,000-ton ironclad ships, and even the current Guangzhou shipyard is still very reluctant to do so, and it will take a few more years to upgrade the technology.

Therefore, there is no bidding for the order of 10,000-ton ironclad ships, and whoever has a slipway will build it.

At the same time, because the 10,000-ton ironclad ship is too important, some designs are often changed at any time, such as the second ship of the Chiyou class, although it is said to be similar to the Chiyou class as a whole, but in fact there are a lot of changes, the most important thing is that the tonnage has become smaller, only 9,800 tons, and some other internal designs have also changed.

So don't look at it all, some of the performance data looks the same, but there are still detailed differences internally.

The design of the Chiyou-class No. 2 ship has already been completed, and now the Shanghai shipyard has begun to prepare preliminary work according to the design drawings.

The ship has also been officially named the Fengbo, and as always, it uses ancient mythological figures as the name of the ship.

The ship is expected to be officially laid in December this year, marking the official start of the construction of the second 10,000-ton giant ship of the Imperial Navy.

In 1867, the empire actually started construction of not many warships, one 10,000-ton giant ship, two protective cruisers, one fast cruiser, and then there were a few small inland river ironclads and a number of auxiliary ships.

There is a phenomenon here that since the construction of the second Kuafu-class large ironclad ship, the Houyi, began at the end of last year, the Imperial Navy has not continued to order medium- and large-sized ironclad ships between 4,000 and 8,000 tons in the past year.

The reasons for this situation are more complicated, on the one hand, the tonnage of this kind of large ironclad ship is not small, and now it basically starts from five or six thousand tons, and there are still only three shipyards in China that can undertake the construction of this kind of warship, and now the large-tonnage docks of these three shipyards are basically running at full capacity, and there is no spare dock to undertake large ironclad ships.

Otherwise, this time the Navy would not have given an order to the Songhu shipyard for one of the two protective cruisers.

On the other hand, there is a certain disagreement within the navy about large ironclad ships between 4,000 and 8,000 tons, and there are endless debates, and there are various design plans, but they cannot reach a unified and effective opinion.

After last year, the navy formulated a classification of the grades of ironclad ships, with protection as the main feature, supplemented by naval guns, speed and other characteristics, and turned into first-class ironclad ships, second-class ironclad ships, and third-class ironclad ships. Although the tonnage of these three levels of ironclad ships is large and small, they all have thick armor and can be pulled out to fight a decisive battle, and they can fight in pits.

There is an essential difference from low-protection or unprotected warships, and under-protected warships are called cruisers in the Imperial Navy, and protective cruisers and fast cruisers are one of them.

As for the offshore and inland river ironclad ships, they are relatively special, and they are basically classified separately as offshore ironclad ships, offshore gunboats, and inland river gunboats.

The first-class ironclad ships are naturally those 10,000-ton ironclad ships, the absolute main force in the decisive battle of the fleet.

The second-class ironclad ship is weaker than the first-class ironclad ship in terms of tonnage and firepower, but it should also have a tonnage of more than 4,000 tons.

As for the third-class ironclad ship, it is a Pangu-class ironclad ship, but due to the heavy tonnage and cruiser repasting, and the Imperial Navy is gradually abandoning the small-tonnage ironclad for decisive battles and building protective or fast cruisers, so in the first five-year plan, the share of third-class ironclad ships has been replaced by cruisers.

If nothing else, the Pangu class is the last third-class ironclad ship, and there will be no follow-up ships.

The second-class ironclad ship is of great strategic importance to the Imperial Navy, and because of its importance, all parties are quite cautious.

Some people want to continue the kind of ironclad ships of more than 5,000 tons, that is, to continue to build ships like the Kuafu class, but some people also think that in addition to the 10,000-ton ironclad ships, the British also have a large number of ironclad ships of more than 6,000 tons to more than 8,000 tons, and these ironclad ships are actually not much worse than 10,000-ton ironclad ships in terms of combat effectiveness.

When the time comes, if there is a conflict with the British, will those fourth- or five-thousand-ton second-class ironclads of their own four or five thousand tons be able to hold off the six, seven, thousand-ton or even eight-thousand-ton second-class ironclad ships of the British?

Therefore, this part of the people advocates the construction of second-class ironclad ships of about 7,000 tons, and the formation of mutual cooperation with first-class ironclad ships of more than 10,000 tons, and jointly form a decisive battle fleet.

But this inevitably involves the cost of it!

No matter what the year, warships are incomparably expensive things, and under the same technical conditions, the price of warships is basically calculated according to tonnage, and the more than 1,000 tons, the more 1,000 tons of money.

Therefore, when countries cut their naval budgets, the simplest and most effective way is to directly cut the tonnage of warships, your navy wants 10,000 tons of ironclad ships, and those officials directly cut down 8,000 tons for you with a wave of their big swords.

Therefore, when discussing the design plan within the navy, it is inevitable that it will be limited by tonnage, if the tonnage is not limited, how good it is to directly build a 10,000-ton ironclad ship, and there is a need to discuss whether it is better to have 5,000 tons or 7,000 tons!

The two sides were at loggerheads, so the design had not been decided, and fortunately, there was no vacant large-tonnage slipway in the Empire, so these naval officials could continue to discuss leisurely.

Under these circumstances, in November, Rear Admiral Hu Licai, the head of the Ship Administration Department and the designer of the Chiyou-class ironclad ship, submitted a new design plan to the top of the Navy.

And after these high-ranking naval officials saw Hu Licai's rare design plan, they were silent one by one, without objection or consent!

Why?

Because they couldn't tell for a while whether Hu Licai's new design plan was good or bad! (To be continued.) )