Yu Shengjun's small treasury is limited, and he smashed 50,000 taels of silver to buy ships and guns at once, which is a challenge for Yu Shengjun's small treasury.

Yu Shengjun's current military spending is huge, and the military expenditure he receives from all sides every month is only barely enough for daily expenses, and the spending will increase sharply during the war, where will the money come from? can only be spent from the small treasury, but after some time ago to expand the army, replenish ordnance and other expenses, at present, Yu Shengjun's small treasury has only more than 300,000 taels of silver left.

Now take out another fifty or sixty thousand taels of silver to expand the sailor battalion, which makes Lin Zhe hesitate a little, in case Yu Shengjun faces a large-scale war in the future, the war funds required can be more, and these two or three hundred thousand taels of silver are not enough to spend for a long time.

But looking at the dense Jiangnan water network and the Yangtze River on the map, Lin Zhe gritted his teeth and approved the slip to buy these two ships.

The water network in the south of the Yangtze River is dense, if Yu Shengjun's army does not have the cooperation of the water division, the future operation will be in some disadvantageous position, if those small rivers in the inland area can barely overcome it, it is a big deal to temporarily recruit small boats to transport and fight during the battle, although it is troublesome but the problem will not be too big.

However, in the areas along the Yangtze River, the army units that rely solely on Yu Sheng's army will fall into great passivity, if the enemy has a naval division and their own fleet can defeat or stop them, then the enemy army can go down the river at any time, and if they want to land and fight there, they will land and fight there, then their Yu Shengjun will not be able to withstand such a passive battle even if they can fight again.

Regardless of whether Yu Shengjun wants to fight with the main force of the Taiping Army or the main force of the Qing Army, then the main battlefield is actually around both sides of the Yangtze River, so a professional naval fleet is indispensable for Yu Shengjun.

Considering these factors, Lin Zhecai gritted his teeth and still took out the money to buy the two semi-armed merchant ships despite the shortage of military spending.

After buying these two merchant ships, their original names were naturally unusable, Lin Zhe waved his pen and directly named the 820-ton sail, steam paddlewheel hybrid merchant ship Zhensong, meaning to guard Songjiang Mansion; The 420-ton sail merchant ship was named Zhenshao, which naturally meant to guard Shaoxing Mansion.

The names of these two ships are closely related to Yu Shengjun himself, Shaoxing is Yu Shengjun's hometown, and the Shanghai county town and business area in Songjiang Mansion are Yu Shengjun's current root bases, so it is not surprising to use Zhensong and Zhenshao.

At the same time, because these two ships were only merchant ships in the past, although there were some guns, but only a few old guns, Lin Zhe specially allocated a sum of silver to purchase guns to belong to these two ships.

Although the 12-pounder guns used by the army are not easy to find on the ground in the Far East, it is very easy to find naval guns, and the great powers, especially the British, have more warships and armed merchant ships in the Far East.

Lin Zhe paid a lot of money, and within a few days he bought two 24-pound cannons, 14 12-pounder cannons, and eight 6-pounder cannons, in addition to four 32-pounder short-barreled mortars, some of which were taken down from some armed merchant ships, and some of which were even taken down from other warships.

This batch of artillery, together with some of the guns that came with the purchase of the ship, finally turned the Zhensong and Zhenshao from semi-armed merchant ships into semi-professional warships.

The Zhensong, which had been repaired and equipped with a large number of guns, was equipped with two 24-pounder cannons, two 32-pounder short-barreled mortars, twelve twelve-pounder cannons, and seven six-pounder guns.

The Zhenshao was equipped with two 32-pounder short-barreled mortars, ten 12-pounder cannons, and six 6-pounder cannons.

Combined, the two ships had the firepower of four 32-pounder short-barreled mortars, two 24-pounder cannons, 22 12-pounder cannons, and thirteen 6-pounder guns.

Although this firepower is not as good as the firepower of any professional warship of the British Navy, it is powerful enough for other naval divisions in the country, and the firepower of these two ships completely overwhelms the four artillery batteries of Yu Shengjun.

Looking at the many guns on these two half-hung battleships, which made several artillery officers of Yu Shengjun saliva a place, Fu Linyang even said to Lin Zhe, can you move some of the ship's guns for their artillery?

Lin Zhe was speechless about this, these are naval guns, not the army wants to use them, especially those long-barreled, large-caliber cannons, the weight is far more than the field guns used by the army, even if it is the same twelve-pounder gun, the weight of the two is very different.

And these naval guns don't even have gun mount wheels, really give your artillery company, how many horses are you going to use to pull these dead and heavy naval guns? Do you want to have the power!

But Fu Linyang's mention made him have another idea, although it is definitely not possible to move the naval guns down as field guns, but when holding the fortress or attacking the enemy's fortress city, it should still be feasible to move the naval guns down and use them fixedly, especially the thirty-two-pound short-barreled mortar cannon, which is not heavy, although the range is not good, but the power is fierce enough, and it will be a siege weapon at that time.

When Fu Linyang was thinking about how to move the naval guns to land, he didn't know that Lin Dabiao, who had been targeted by the artillery company, was full of red light recently, not only trained the soldiers who had come from the original infantry profession to be familiar with the two warships, but also recruited many sailors to join the army.

As China's largest trading port, Shanghai is not only full of foreign ships and foreigners, but also Chinese businessmen and Chinese ships.

Regardless of whether it is a foreign sailor or a Chinese sailor, as long as you are willing to spend money to recruit so many people to apply, and contemporary ships are at the intersection of sails and steam, and many ships are sails and steam hybrids, so you have to find a sailor who knows how to operate a steam engine.

Because the Zhensong is a warship with a hybrid of sails and steam paddle wheels, there are no technical officers who know how to practice steam engines in the sailor battalion, and the ordinary sailors recruited only understand a general operation, but the maintenance work requires professional and technical personnel.

In addition, we also recruit technical personnel with high salaries.

For these technical personnel seconded from the Jianghai Patrol Police Department and openly recruited from the outside world, Lin Zhe gave them a great independent choice: those who are willing to join the army will be awarded the corresponding military ranks, among which the key technical personnel will be awarded the rank of officer, and those who are not willing to join the army will be allowed to give them a high salary to impart relevant knowledge.

To this end, after Lin Dabiao reported to Lin Zhe and obtained approval, he set up the Yu Shengjun Sailor School, and hired technicians to teach steam engines, navigation, gunnery and even shipbuilding and other related content.

said that it was pocket money, but it was not a lot, at least much more than a group of officers in Yu Shengjun's army, and those few active British naval officers who casually found some excuse to take leave to attend a ten-day and half-month class could get more than a hundred taels of silver, which was more than fighting and robbing!

At the beginning of the army, the officers and sailors of the sailor battalion were a group of landlubbers transferred from the army, let alone control the ships, and they could not even swim. Now, months later, it is possible to maneuver ships out of port and offshore sailing.

Although its navigation and artillery skills are still quite far from the professional navy, they are still much stronger than those more unprofessional inland water divisions in China.

When Lin Zhe was busy with the affairs of the water master, he received a letter from the old lady of the Lin family in Yuyao in late April of the Western calendar.

This letter is different from the letter sent by the old lady of the Lin family in the past, in addition to asking him to pay attention to his body and pay attention to safety as always, he also said that the Lin family firm has raised a huge amount of money and is ready to expand the scale of the machine and silk reeling factory, from the existing scale of 500 workers to the scale of 1,500 people.

Due to the huge investment, the Lin family even sold some non-core industries to raise funds for the construction of the factory, it is precisely because of the huge investment, so the old lady of the Lin family asked Lin Zhe to urge the Shanghai branch of the Lin family not to let the people of the Shanghai branch slack off, after all, this is an investment of more than 100,000 taels of silver, once the mistake is a bone break for the Lin family.

Lin Zhe still admires his titular mother, this old lady's strategic vision is quite good, and she is decisive and resolute, Lin Zhe knew this from the time she supported Lin Zhe to organize her own group training, and now she is even more touched.

Affected by the continuous negative impact of the war between the Taiping Army and the Qing Army, many of the Lin family's businesses have shrunk sharply, not to mention some non-core industries, and raw silk, which is the core industry, has also been hit hard, and the Lin family has been losing money in the past two years.

Now seeing the lucrative profit prospects of the machine qì silk reeling factory, Mrs. Lin decisively sold many non-core industries and raised up to 100,000 taels of cash to expand the machine qì silk reeling factory, trying to reverse the current situation of Lin's firm continuing to lose money.

Ordinary people don't have this courage, you must know that although the Lin family claims to have millions of assets, and the cash flow can also come up with hundreds of thousands of taels, but these funds are useful, you spend these funds in one go, what will you use to buy silkworm cocoons when the time comes? How do you pay the salaries of the thousands of shopkeepers, men, handicraft workshop workers, and workers in the silk reeling factory who work for the Lin firm?

Therefore, it is not easy for the Lin family to squeeze out 100,000 taels to build a factory, not only to mobilize all the working capital that can be used, but also to sell many industries to get together.

For Mrs. Lin's choice, Lin Zhe is naturally supportive, the future of the raw silk industry is already the world of the machine reeling silk factory, those handicraft workshops face the competition of the machine reeling silk factory will die quickly, if the Lin family can seize this opportunity and invest heavily in the machine reeling silk factory, then the future development prospects are considerable.

In addition, the Lin family wants to invest heavily in the business zone to build a factory, which is also a good thing for the trade zone, the machine qì silk reeling factory has always been the main support industry in the trade zone, for which Lin Zhe even let the industrial and commercial department lead, prepare for the establishment of the trade zone factory silk guild, and strive to push the factory silk to the foreign market at the same time, but also to the domestic market, and stipulate the quality level of the factory silk, guide the manufacturers to produce better quality of the silk, to give the manufacturers a certain technical and sales channel support.

Therefore, for the family to invest heavily in the machine qì silk reeling factory in the business area, without the instructions of Mrs. Lin, he will pay attention to it and give it some support.

Continue to read the letter, in addition to saying that he should take care of the expansion of his own machine qì silk reeling factory, at the end of the letter, Mrs. Lin also said that the filial piety of the daughter of the Chen family in Shanyin is coming to an end, and she has agreed on a marriage date with the Chen family, and is ready to let Lin Zhe and the daughter of the Chen family get married!