Most of them were the British Mediterranean fleet, and in previous negotiations between China and Britain, the British Royal Navy would also send ships to join the delegation after the arrival of the Imperial fleet in the Mediterranean, and then accompany the tour of various countries in Europe, and conduct military exchanges on the way.

This is also the main content of the exchange between the Chinese and British navies, starting from Alexandria in the Mediterranean, the Chinese and British navies will carry out exchange activities for up to three months.

With the exception of the British, ships from other countries were generally relatively few.

However, no matter what kind of ships, the number of ships added up is quite large, and most of them are here to spy on military intelligence.

Subsequently, the fleet of the prince's visiting delegation entered Alexandria and conducted military exchanges with the British Mediterranean fleet.

At the time of this exchange, the Admirals of the Empire were very interested in the training mode of the British, gunnery training and other items, but the British were very interested in the Empire's Yandi-class battleships and an armored cruiser that came with them.

"Their main cannon is smaller than our monarch level, but the length of the body tube is obviously much longer, the length of this body tube is probably thirty-five times the caliber, and the power is probably not worse than our monarch level fourteen-inch main gun!"

A colonel of the British Royal Navy looked at the two Yandi-class battleships moored at the dock, and at the same time took out the British's own Sovereign-class first-class battleships for comparison.

Since learning that the Chinese had launched an epoch-making warship in 1888, the British accelerated the design of the Sovereign that year, and absorbed some of the characteristics of the Yandi class in the final design, and the Sovereign officially started construction that year, and by this year, the Sovereign had officially entered service and served as the flagship of the Straits Fleet.

At that time, Xingxing was stimulated by the Imperial Yandi-class battleships, and the British placed an order for eight Sovereign-class battleships in one go, and the construction speed was quite fast.

However, when the British started construction of eight Sovereign-class battleships in one go, it was actually in 1890, six years after the construction of the first Yandi-class battleship began.

The empire has already started the construction of the second dreadnought battleship, and this former dreadnought battleship is even larger, it uses a 300 mm 40 times caliber main gun, more powerful firepower, thicker armor protection, greater power, and of course, the tonnage is also larger, its design displacement is 15,000 tons, and the full load displacement has exceeded 16,000 tons.

This Houyi-class battleship can be regarded as an improved version of the Yandi-class battleship, equipped with a more powerful main gun, and the armor thickness has also been thickened, but the basic design basically follows the design of the Yandi-class battleship.

After all, the design of the battleship is already a very typical design of a modern pre-dreadnought battleship, and it is too difficult to change it significantly.

Three Houyi-class battleships had already been launched, with the earliest one expected to be commissioned in 1894, two years later.

It is worth noting that since the beginning of the Yandi-class battleships, the empire no longer forcibly follows the basic principle of starting one capital ship every year, mainly because the battleship construction work that has been stagnant for several years in the contemporary era has led to the retirement of several battleships of the imperial navy at the same time in a certain year, which means that several battleships need to be replenished at the same time in a certain year.

In addition, after entering 1888, in order to cope with the world situation, the empire also increased the expansion of the navy, requiring the Royal Navy to maintain a main fleet of more than 20 ships under eight years old.

The so-called concept of capital ships, that is, battleships and armored cruisers.

To maintain a fleet of 20 ships under eight years old means that 20 new capital ships will be commissioned in eight years, so as to be able to maintain this huge fleet.

This means that an average of 2.5 capital ships are built and commissioned every year.

Just like the Yandi-class battleships, four ships were started in one go, and three armored cruisers were started at the same time.

After entering 1890, the empire also started the construction of three Houyi-class battleships in one go, and this year an additional order was added, and construction will also start this year, which has led to the number of Houyi-class battleships will reach four.

Together with the four Houyi-class and the four Yandi-class, these eight battleships will become the new main battleships of the post-1894 Empire.

In 1892, almost all the world's navies had fully entered the era of pre-dreadnought battleships, so it was normal for countries to pay close attention to the Empire's Yandi-class battleships.

The Imperial Navy is also willing to take this opportunity to conduct technical exchanges with the navies of various countries in the world, after all, playing this kind of thing in the navy, although secrecy is very important, but it is still not possible to do it behind closed doors, and it is necessary to open your eyes and pay attention to the development of other countries.

However, exchanges are exchanges, and the purpose of the Imperial Navy's visit to Europe and the United States this time is not as simple as exchanges, but the most important thing is to give the Imperial Prince Lin a strong momentum and escort the Imperial Prince to visit various countries.

In the winter and December of 1892, after visiting Constantinople in Ottoman Turkey, Athens in Greece, and Rome in Italy, and then visiting the port of Barcelona in Spain, Lin Lian exchanged views with the Spanish side on the security and competition of Chinese in the Philippines.

However, Lin Yan did not accept the invitation of the Spaniards and took the train to their capital Madrid, and the schedule of the prince and his party was very intense, and there was not so much time to waste on Spain, a small country that had ended.

After bypassing the Strait of Gibraltar at the western end of the Mediterranean, the visiting fleet headed north along the Atlantic Ocean and then headed straight for London, where he would go to Paris, Berlin, and St. Petersburg.

After Lin had made a circle around Europe, the visiting fleet began a long journey across the Atlantic to New York, USA.

When Lin Yan arrived in the United States, he also stayed in New York for a few days, and when he saw the city, Lin Yan was also very surprised.

He always thought that Shanghai's development speed was fast enough, but he didn't expect that New York's development speed was even faster, and the high-rise buildings in Manhattan, New York, were even more and taller than Shanghai.

Shanghai as the empire's premier big city, all kinds of high-rise buildings are innumerable, its 1890 completion of the Shanghai commercial building, with 18 floors, plus the spire, the height reached 98 meters, when the completion of the new generation of the empire of the new generation of landmarks, but compared with New York 20 floors, 106 meters and 4 meters high world building, is still slightly inferior.

After entering the 80s, in order to alleviate the shortage of land in Shanghai, coupled with the emergence of elevators, the number of high-rise buildings increased, and there were very few six-storey buildings in the past.

However, after the emergence of elevators, coupled with the development of steel technology, coupled with the shortage of land in large cities, the development of high-rise buildings has been rapid, and a number of high-rise buildings with more than ten floors have appeared in Shanghai after the eighties.

Contemporary Shanghai and Chicago and New York in the United States have become typical representatives of high-rise buildings!

In order to compete for the title of the world's tallest building, the Bund Hotel has formed a joint venture with a number of banks and enterprises, especially the Royal Bank, the Bank of Communications, the North China Commercial Bank and other owners who are not short of money, to build a super high-rise building, which will serve as the headquarters of several large enterprises and the new hotel of the Bund Hotel.

The building, named on the Bund, is expected to reach a height of 26 storeys and a total height of more than 150 meters.

Stepping on the streets of New York, the impact on Lin is that this is simply another copy of Shanghai, and there are too many similarities between New York and Shanghai.

The most obvious feature is that it smells of money!

New York is home to a large number of American financial institutions, and the same is true of Shanghai, where the financial capital concentrated and controlled accounts for more than 90 percent of the financial capital of the empire and even the entire Far East.

As early as the 60s, Shanghai became the largest financial and industrial center in Asia, and now in the 90s, it is among the world's three major financial centers, along with New York and London.

After staying in New York for three days, Lin Lian and his entourage went to Washington, but this time it was not a simple visit, this time Lin Lian would actually hold negotiations on many issues between China and the United States.

And Lin Yan was also burdened with the task personally assigned by Lin Zhe, that is, to try to reach a final agreement with the Americans on the Spanish issue and join forces to wage war against Spain.

Since 1882, when the empire and the United States tried to reach an agreement, the two sides did not reach an agreement due to many problems, but the ambitions of the two countries for Cuba and the Philippines have not disappeared, on the contrary, as the economic power of the two countries has grown, this greed has grown.

After arriving in Washington, although Lin Lian had been carrying out some superficially open activities in the past few days, in fact, many members of the delegation's entourage, especially Foreign Minister Zuo Congdian, had already conducted many secret negotiations with the Americans.

"On the issue of Guam, the local side will never back down, but on Wake Island, we are willing to make certain concessions!" The biggest disagreement between the empire and the Americans now is the post-war spoils.

The Americans were not satisfied with only one Cuba after the war, and they also wanted to be able to acquire a large number of Pacific islands, and the Philippines did not need to think about it, but Guam, an island that could be used as a naval base, was what they wanted very much.

However, the empire has long regarded the Central and Western Pacific as the empire's backyard, so it will tolerate the entry of the United States, so it is resolutely opposed.

In addition to the postwar divergence of interests, the Americans said that their navy was still expanding, and they hoped that the empire would delay operations for several years, preferably until around 1900, that is, until a large number of American dreadnought battleships were completed and put into service.

However, the Empire insisted on acting as soon as possible!

The reason for the disagreement in the timing of operations between the two countries is that the two navies are expanding at different rates.

The Imperial Navy began commissioning its first dreadnought, the Yandi, in 1888, and now has four dreadnoughts, and if you wait until 1894, this number will increase to more than six.

At that time, the main potential opponents of the Imperial Navy, their number of former dreadnought battleships is probably the same number, maybe there will be two or three more, but the British also have a larger territory, and it is very rare that they can draw half of the new warships to fight the Empire.

However, if it is delayed after 1900, with the shipbuilding strength that the British feared, the number of dreadnought battleships in front of them may be two or even more than three times that of the same class of warships in the Empire.

That is, the longer it dragged on, the more confident the British would be to intervene, and the more detrimental it would be to the Reich.

But the Americans also have their own problems, although they were influenced and stimulated by the empire, in the eighties was to expand the navy through a number of bills, but up to now, the Americans' naval strength is still too weak, there is not a single dreadnought battleship, and there are only a few traditional ironclad ships, this strength is very weak compared with the world's top navies.

They passed the Naval Expansion Act in 1889, and in the last two years they started building a number of battleships, including two of the newest former dreadnoughts, but they had to wait until they were in service, at least after 1895, and at best after 1898.

This time is actually the time when the Americans launched the Spanish-American War in history.

But the Empire doesn't want to hold on for so long! (To be continued.) )