In the Nanjing Admiralty Building, there are all naval officers wearing navy blue regular uniforms or white naval uniforms, and colonel-level officers who are difficult to see at ordinary times can be seen at a glance.

As the base camp of the Imperial Navy, it is natural that a large number of naval officers are gathered.

In a large conference room on the third floor of this building, there was a crowd of twenty or thirty people sitting in it, not talking to each other.

These people are different from the naval officers outside, they are not wearing military uniforms, but wearing suits or Chinese uniforms, some old and some young, these people are executives of those large shipyards in China, and they are gathered here to participate in the upcoming tender for the navy's ironclad ships.

"Brother Li, your Songhu factory has been amazing in the past two years, I heard that you just won the order for the two river passenger ships of the Royal Shipping last month, this time you came over, is it possible that you are planning to really set foot in the field of warships!" A middle-aged man in a suit, about forty years old, was whispering to a middle-aged man in a Chinese costume next to him.

The middle-aged man surnamed Li smiled: "There, there, our Songhu factory is still weak, compared with your Tianjin shipbuilding, it is a small thing, you won the order of the 5,000-ton luxury cruise ship of Nanyang Shipping at the beginning of the year, only with this order, it is much more profitable than we are tired and tired to build a few ships!" ”

"There is money to be made there, you don't know it, in addition to the Shanghai Factory, the Navy Shipyard and the Guangzhou Shipyard, the three major factories, if the other few want to win the order of this kind of large cruise ship, which one is not a loss of money and make money!" Fang Kunbian, the general manager of Tianjin Shipyard, said this. It's all a sigh.

Although there are many domestic shipyards, the technical gap is still relatively large. The Shanghai Shipyard is second to none, and the Qingdao Naval Shipyard, which is also directly subordinate to the Navy, is not bad, and the Guangzhou Shipyard can be regarded as the third.

These three shipyards. It has almost all the construction tasks of large warships in China, and at the same time, due to its strong technology, the private ships built are also of excellent quality, which is not much worse than similar foreign products.

In contrast, other shipyards in China are much worse, Tianjin Shipyard is the first private shipyard in China to enter the field of warships, but it has not been able to meet the strict quality requirements of the military, and has not been able to obtain real large orders, and only undertook orders for a few offshore gunboats in the early years. However, since the Navy officially implemented the first phase of the Five-Year Plan in 1866, a large number of warship orders have flocked to major shipyards, and at the same time, the factors that support domestic shipyards have also relaxed certain standards, as long as the quality of warships is passed, then the Navy does not mind the price being more expensive, so as to ensure that when small and medium-sized ships first set foot in the field of large warships, they will not lose too much money.

Supporting this east wind, Tianjin Shipyard at the beginning of last year and this year. In two cities in a row, they received orders for a protective cruiser and a small ironclad ship, and with these two orders, they became the three major shipyards. The fourth shipyard, which can build ironclad ships with a displacement of more than four thousand tons, established its status as the fourth largest shipyard in the country.

With this status, he was able to secure an order for the 5,000-ton luxury cruise ship of the lucrative Nanyang Shipping Company.

Compared with the order for warships. Orders for luxury cruises are what really make money!

In addition to the three major shipyards in China, basically other shipyards undertake the construction of warships. Because of the need for new docks, the introduction of new equipment, and the upgrading of technology. This series of investments can easily cause a sharp increase in the construction cost of shipyards, so when small and medium-sized shipyards first set foot in the field of warships, at most they will maintain a state of small profits, and many times, it is very good to build a warship without losing money.

Just like Songhu Shipyard, they are preparing to build a large warship for the first time, and the technical requirements of the warship are too high, if this order is really accepted, Songhu Shipyard will have to spend a lot of money to upgrade the technology, which will lead to a very high cost.

However, it still has to compete with other shipyards in China, and it is very difficult to ensure that the price is lower than that of other shipyards.

The Songhu Shipyard came to participate in the bidding this time with the idea of making money at a loss.

They don't expect to make money on orders for this warship, they are even ready to lose money, they just want fame.

A shipyard capable of building large warships and a shipyard that can only build inland waterway vessels are very different in the eyes of outsiders.

Why is the price given by Songhu Shipyard for passenger ships of the same tonnage and performance nearly one percent lower than that of Shanghai Shipyard, but why do those shipping companies still choose Shanghai Shipyard without hesitation?

Because they can't trust the Songhu Shipyard!

This is not only the case with the Songhu Shipyard, but also with several other private shipyards.

But how to say it, the profits from building warships are huge, and once they can get off to a smooth start, the profits in the future will be a lot, and the orders of the domestic navy are not bad, and the price is not high.

But if it is a foreign trade order, the profit is not a few more than a dozen percentage points, but at least double the profit.

The Shanghai Shipyard undertook a small ironclad ship ordered by the Imperial Vietnamese Navy, with a displacement of only 800 tons, and was armed with front-loading rifled guns, and the price was naturally not too expensive, but the Shanghai Shipyard made a profit of more than 200 percent in it.

Therefore, even if the road ahead is extremely difficult, but it still can't stop the enthusiasm of these private shipyards in China to build warships, those giant ships of more than six or seven thousand tons are not qualified to participate, but some medium-sized and below ironclad ships, if they are ruthless and grit their teeth to upgrade equipment, they can still participate in this game.

With the progress of the industrial revolution, especially in recent years, the rapid development of steel technology in the world, the steel production of various countries has increased again and again, and the tonnage of various types of ships has also increased.

After the tonnage of warships exceeded 10,000 tons, some civilian ships were also moving towards larger and larger ships, which were represented by ocean-going luxury cruise ships in the early years. A passenger ship of two or three thousand tons is considered to be top-notch, but now it is a cruise ship running international ocean routes. Three thousand tons is the minimum standard, and four or five thousand tons is the main force. There are even large luxury cruise ships of seven or eight thousand tons.

It was at this time that the blue ribbon race on the other side of the Atlantic arose, and it became more and more intense.

Needless to say, the three major shipyards, especially the Shanghai Shipyard and the Qingdao Naval Shipyard, their mission is to build larger and more advanced warships for the Navy, basically aiming at the most advanced technology in the world.

And other shipyards in the country are also catching up closely. In addition, the empire's shipping industry has developed in recent years, so that the shipbuilding industry is also unprecedentedly prosperous, and basically every shipyard can obtain huge profits.

With sufficient profits, they will carry out technological upgrades, introduce more and more advanced equipment, and expand larger and more shipyards.

For example, the dockyard of more than 4,000 tons was only available to Shanghai shipyards in the early years. Later, it was the Navy Shipyard, and then the Guangzhou Shipyard.

And when the above-mentioned three major shipyards are moving towards a dock of 10,000 tons or even 15,000 tons, other private shipyards in China are also rising up a trend of building docks of 4,000 or 5,000 tons, which is not to say that they are competing for orders for warships. But because now that technology has advanced, those shipping companies are also demanding more and more new ships.

The past few years have been a major opportunity for the development of the empire's shipbuilding industry with unprecedented profits. However, everyone knows that this opportunity cannot last forever, perhaps for a few years. The domestic demand for new ships will gradually decline, and the shipyards will inevitably experience a large-scale reshuffle.

Those don't have core technology. It's hard for a shipyard that's not big enough to survive.

And if you want to build a shipbuilding industry to continue to develop, there is nothing more reliable than hugging the thighs of the navy, even if the shipyard can't survive in the economic crisis, the navy will issue orders for warships on schedule in order to maintain the manufacturing capacity of domestic warships, so as to ensure that the shipyard will not go bankrupt and there will be a technical fault.

When Li Chenzhong of the Songhu Shipyard and Fang Kunbian, general manager of the Tianjin Shipyard, were talking, several high-ranking naval officials were also talking next door to the conference room.

One of these people was Rear Admiral Xu Duowen, deputy director of the Navy's Ship Administration, Colonel Zhou Jiwen, chief of the shipbuilding section, and Rear Admiral Cao Jiapei, director of the Navy's Ordnance Department.

Among these three, Xu Duowen, deputy director of the Ship Administration Department, is in charge of the daily affairs of the Ship Administration Department, because Hu Licai, director of the Ship Administration Department, is a typical technical general, and his talent is all in the design of warships, and he neither understands nor cares about some bureaucratic and administrative affairs.

Hu Licai is in charge of the design of warships, so such a large pool of spies in the Ministry of Naval Affairs can only be handed over to the deputy minister to be responsible, for this reason, the Navy is specially transferred from the Ministry of Military Affairs of the Navy Xu Duowen to the Ministry of Naval Affairs, this person does not understand technical work, but he is very proficient in internal affairs, and this person's positioning is basically to replace Hu Licai to deal with the internal affairs of the Ministry of Shipping.

Colonel Zhou Jiwen, the chief of the shipbuilding section, is a new generation of warship designers emerging in the navy, who was born in a professional class, graduated from the naval officer academy in his early years, and later went to the United Kingdom to study ship administration affairs, and after returning to China, he entered the ship administration department, and stayed in the gun and engineering department of the ship administration department, and then transferred to the shipbuilding department and officially began his warship design career.

His first work was officially adopted by the Navy, that is, an offshore gunboat that the Navy tried to build in 1865, specifically for port defense and coastal patrol tasks.

Immediately afterwards, he cooperated with two other colleagues to design a second-class ironclad ship, although this design was not adopted by the navy in the end, but it was appreciated by Hu Licai, and then cooperated with Hu Licai to join the design of the 10,000-ton ironclad ship, ready to improve the design of the existing 10,000-ton ironclad ship, and provide a better design scheme for the subsequent 10,000-ton ironclad ships.

In addition, in early 1867, he proposed a plan for a medium-sized ironclad ship of 3,000 tons, and called it a 'protective cruiser'.

Protective cruisers, as the name suggests, are cruisers with protective capabilities!

In the design scheme, the new cruiser is no longer as comprehensive and balanced as the previous ironclad ships, but pays attention to endurance and adaptability to the ocean, and pays attention to speed, as for the firepower of its own armor can be appropriately reduced, mainly used for ocean cruising, in the depths of the ocean to reflect the existence of the Imperial Navy. Defend the Empire's overseas interests.

It is clear from the beginning that this kind of cruiser starts from the design positioning. There are many surprises from many previous warships of the Imperial Navy, this is not a battleship for decisive battles. Not even a battleship for defense.

Its firepower and armor may not be very strong, but it reflects the active strategic thinking of the Imperial Navy to advance into the depths of the ocean, fighting for the protection of many overseas interests beyond Hawaii, Alaska, and the First Island Chain.

After discussions at the top of the Navy, the design was formally adopted and included in the original plan for twelve third-class ironclad ships.

In a purely technical department like the Ship Administration Department, seniority, age and nothing matter, only talent is the only criterion for promotion, so Zhou Jiwen has served as deputy section chief from an ordinary section member in just a few years. and then to the current section chief, the military academy has also soared to the rank of colonel, becoming the second only warship designer in the navy after Hu Licai.

The concept of the protective cruiser he proposed, this concept does not mean the form of armor, and the dome cruiser of later generations is not the same type of concept, the concept of the protective cruiser is very simple, essentially a cruiser, but only with a certain amount of armor protection, as for the protection method is to use the dome armor or the armor box or the key protection does not matter.

The concept of a protective cruiser is comparable to that of a battleship and a fast cruiser. It is mainly the conceptual distinction of use, not the distinction of specific performance and technology.

Colonel Zhou Jiwen's protective cruiser scheme was designed with a very simple and pure goal, that is, to maintain the presence of the Imperial Navy in the open ocean. This is especially true in the waters of the Central Pacific Ocean near Hawaii, Alaska or Japan, as well as in the South China Sea.

The above-mentioned sea areas are basically those ironclad ships used in decisive battles that cannot go, and contemporary decisive ironclad ships are limited by technical conditions. The basic range can only be maintained at about 2,000 nautical miles, and few can exceed 3,000 nautical miles. That is, its combat radius is basically less than 1,500 nautical miles. Not even a thousand nautical miles.

On weekdays, I can only wander around my own naval port, and I can't go to the depths of the ocean.

But the empire has developed to the present, and there are many overseas interests that need to be protected, not to mention the rest, Hawaii alone is enough to give the imperial navy a headache.

For the past two years, the Imperial Navy had to rely on a few old wooden-hulled sail cruisers to maintain its naval presence in Hawaii, in addition to towing a few small ironclads to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, as harbor guards.

However, this was naturally unable to meet the increasing demand of the Imperial Navy for ocean-going ships.

Therefore, it is not unreasonable for the Navy to take a fancy to Zhou Jiwen's protective cruiser, but it has a realistic strategic need.

This protective cruiser, the navy's internal code name is 'Cullen', continuing the tradition of using the name of the domestic city for the cruiser in the past, this code name is actually the predetermined name of the first ship, and it is not surprising that it will be the class name.

The Cullen-class protective cruiser, designed with a standard tonnage of 3,200 tons, adopts an iron-ribbed wooden hull, and the outer layer will be laid with a relatively thin layer of wrought iron armor, only 1.5 inches, which is mainly used to resist grenades. In the key part, it is gradually thickened, and the thickest part reaches 4.5 inches.

The power adopts sail steam hybrid, and the ship once again returns to the steam sail hybrid mode, which also shows the Imperial Navy's entanglement with steam power and sails.

However, without sails, the endurance of the battleship is greatly reduced, which is difficult to accept for the Cullen class, which is booked to be active in the depths of the ocean, so the navy has to put the sails on the warship again.

The steam engine is a standard horizontal reciprocating steam engine with two coal-fired boilers, with a maximum power of 1,800 horsepower and a maximum speed of 16 knots under pure steam power.

On both sides of the central gun gallery, a total of eight 150-mm secondary guns are deployed, and a total of four single-mounted 80-mm rear-loading guns are also deployed on the front and rear of the hull.

In the hull design, the most popular ramming angle of the year has been added.

And the ship, as an ocean-going cruiser,

Its endurance is the key, and the ship has a cruising range of up to 4,500 nautical miles under pure steam power. With the addition of sail assistance, the ship was enough to sail from Tokyo, Japan, and then reach Hawaii without going through a supply of coal.

And today, those shipyard executives who came to participate in the bidding are competing for orders for the Cullen and its follow-on ships! (To be continued.) )