When Lin Zhe asked Shi Yezhi to fight for Hawaii, he was already planning in his heart, once he took Hawaii, the first thing was to build Hawaii into the strongest fortress in the Pacific Ocean and crush any enemy attack.

Although Britain, France, and the United States have all recognized the strategic importance of Hawaii to a certain extent, after all, their knowledge is limited, and they cannot imagine that the United States will rise rapidly in a few decades and become the number one power in the world.

And when the time comes, Hawaii will be the bridgehead to contain the powerful United States from entering the Pacific Ocean!

Americans probably can't imagine that they will be so awesome in a few decades, and as for Britain and France, this Hawaii does not have much vital interest in them.

Otherwise, Britain, France, and other countries would not sit idly by and watch the United States and Japan compete for Hawaii, and then let the United States annex Hawaii.

If the British thought Hawaii was important enough to be strong in the nineteenth century, he could take ten Hawaii if he wanted to, and it would be impossible for the Americans to take them.

As for France, it is a weak heart, the French presence in the Pacific has always been very weak, and now they cannot even take Vietnam in Southeast Asia, and it is simply impossible to have enough strength to set foot in a more distant Hawaii.

Others don't pay attention to it or don't care, but Lin Zhe won't be like this, in the past, the empire was powerless, and when there were no large ironclad ships in service before, the imperial navy only had a few wooden cruisers, and even its own sea frontier could not complete effective cruises.

Now the power of the Imperial Navy is not very strong, though. However, with the commissioning of several ironclad ships in a row, a certain self-protection capability has been formed.

Until December 1865. The number of medium and large ironclad ships already in service in the Imperial Navy has reached eight.

Among them, there are four offshore ironclad ships, and two are 1,800-ton female snail class ships. Two Zhenguang-class gunboats of 450 tons, and Jining-class gunboats of 150 tons are not counted.

The ocean-going ironclad ships have three Pangu-class ships of 2,400 tons, and another Pangu-class ironclad ship has been launched, and it is expected that it will be able to complete outfitting for sea trials and service in early 1866.

The Yandi ironclad ship, which was built in 1863, was also outfitted in November, and is currently undergoing sea trials, and is expected to be officially commissioned at the end of the month.

Because this is a 4,000-ton ironclad ship, equipped with up to 16 150-mm breech-loading guns, the firepower is far greater than that of the Pangu-class ironclad ship. In terms of power system, it still uses sail steam hybrid.

However, it is equipped with the largest steam engine that the current empire can with, a horizontal reciprocating steam engine with four coal-fired boilers, single-shaft propulsion, and a maximum power of 2,300 horsepower.

Such a huge steam engine, coupled with the assistance provided by the sails, was enough to propel this huge 4,000-ton warship to run fifteen knots, which was about the same speed as a major British ironclad.

In terms of protection, the current mainstream hybrid armor is adopted. That is, a mixed pattern of wrought iron and teak, the armor is up to one hundred and twenty mm thick, the inner village planks are four hundred mm thick, and the bulkheads are also one hundred and twenty mm.

This level of protection. In fact, it is already comparable to those 9,000-ton and 10,000-ton ironclad ships in Britain.

The perfect combination of firepower, protection, speed. Let this ironclad have almost all the characteristics of the capital ships of this era, and its actual combat effectiveness will not be worse than a couple of five or six thousand tons of ironclad ships of the British.

Of course. An increase in performance also means an increase in price.

The purchase price of the Yandi was as high as more than 900,000 yuan, equivalent to about 200,000 pounds. Much more expensive than other battleships of the same tonnage in the world.

The British built more than 6,000 tons of defense-class ironclads, and their construction of ships was only 250,000 pounds.

It can be seen from this that in the process of building high-tech industrial products such as ironclad ships, countries with imperfect industrial technology often have more expensive costs than Britain, a first-class country with a complete industrial system and mature technology.

From the 19th century to the middle of the 20th century, the cost of building ships for the British has always remained at a relatively low level, whether it is the United States, Germany or other countries, the cost of building ships far exceeds that of the British.

However, the cost factor is nothing for national defense, and how cheap and expensive it is will not affect the Imperial Navy's plan to purchase ironclad ships.

The second ship of the Yandi-class ironclad ship was also expected to be launched in January 1866, and it was expected to be officially commissioned in the summer of 1866.

Since the Imperial Navy was relatively satisfied with the Yandi-class ironclad ships, and at the same time, the eight-year armor ship plan was difficult, which was longer than the navy itself expected, so the navy already had a plan to continue to build the Yandi-class ironclad ships.

It is planned to build two new ironclad ships on the basis of the Yandi-class ironclad ship after optimizing the design, and whether more ironclad ships under the existing technical standards will be built in the future depends on how fast the plan of the eight-year armor ship is.

After all, it is impossible for the Navy to stop and wait for the success of the eight-year armor ship plan, and it is the Navy's established plan to start construction of two large ironclad ships every year, and it will continue to be implemented regardless of whether the eight-year armor ship plan is successful or not.

Based on the above-mentioned active and soon-to-be-commissioned ironclads, the Imperial Navy already had the most powerful maritime power in the Far East, provided that the British Indian fleet could not be matched.

At the same time, the Imperial Navy's ironclad ship program has developed very rapidly in the past two years, basically maintaining the rate of two ironclad ships in service every year.

Due to the use of pure steam power, closed turrets, large-caliber naval guns of the 'eight-year-old ship' test ship is still under construction, some of the subsystems have not been able to solve technical problems, such as the most critical large-caliber rear-loading artillery, the Royal Arms Corporation is still carrying out intensive research and development and design work, as early as next year will be able to come up with a sample gun.

In order to cooperate with the Navy's large-tonnage ironclad ship plan, the Royal Arms Corporation has invested heavily in the research and development of large-caliber naval guns, and currently designs two large-caliber naval guns, 180 mm and 230 mm, and has also launched the preliminary research and development work of larger-caliber naval guns, considering that the caliber is 250 mm or even 280 mm.

It is foreseeable that in the next two or three years, the Imperial Navy will have more ironclad ships.

This kind of sea power, especially the fleet formed by all ironclad ships, can be regarded as good among all countries in the world.

The growth of the Imperial Navy's power represented the Empire's increasing overseas interests, and in addition to normal commerce, the Empire was also actively expanding its influence in Southeast Asia such as Japan, Vietnam, and Thailand.

And now, Lin Zhe has reached out to Hawaii again!

The increase in the strength of the Imperial Navy, coupled with the outbreak of the Yuxiang Incident, prompted Lin Zhe to make up his mind to take Hawaii into his pocket.

However, how to operate, Lin Zhe just doesn't care about this aspect, or he is also powerless to intervene, so far away, Lin Zhe can't remotely command the Hawaiian task force, and can only rely on the ad-hoc decisions of front-line generals and diplomats.

And before Shi Yezhi, who was specifically in charge of Hawaiian affairs, arrived, the supreme person in charge was Navy Captain Guo Yi!

As a soldier, since Guo Yi has obtained Shi Yezhi's authorization, he will definitely not wait stupidly in the sea off Hawaii, you must know that he still wants to take the port of Honolulu, and then enter the port to replenish coal and fresh water.

The next day, when Guo Yi's 12-hour ultimatum was rejected by the Hawaiian Kingdom, Colonel Guo Yi officially ordered the Marines to force a landing in Honolulu Harbor.

And he personally commanded two battleships to provide artillery cover!

At two o'clock in the afternoon of December 3, the Hawaiian Task Force's Taiyuan and Ningbo engaged in a massive artillery bombardment of the few pitiful batteries in Honolulu Harbor, followed by a selective shelling of the harbor.

At the same time, a team of more than 200 marines also rowed a small sting, and then rushed to the land of Hawaii!

In an estate near the port of Honolulu, several foreigners were watching as two Chinese warships in the harbor shelled the Hawaiian battery, and then many small poles could be seen being put down, carrying many Chinese soldiers rushing to the beach.

"It seems that the ambitions of these Chinese are not small!" A priest with glasses and a cross on his chest looked sad: "When these Chinese come, I don't know how many people will return to the arms of the Lord because of this!" ”

There is another sentence he did not say, that is, as far as he knows, China is not a Christian country, China has always had strict regulations on the spread of foreign religions, and at present, only some designated treaty ports can build churches and preach, and at the same time, without official permission, clergy are not allowed to carry out missionary activities in the former places of churches, let alone gather in public to preach.

These policies have kept the spread of Christianity in China very slow!

Now that the Chinese have extended their influence to Hawaii, there is no doubt that this will greatly undermine his missionary work.

A middle-aged blonde man in a woolen suit on the side also sighed, he was also afraid that China's intervention in Hawaii would affect his industry in Hawaii.

He is a businessman from the United Kingdom who currently owns a large amount of land in Hawaii and grows cash crops such as sugar cane.

Yesterday, he and the priest next to him went to the Taiyuan to negotiate, although the Chinese promised not to damage the property of Britain and France, and not to endanger the lives of merchants from various countries.

But this is war after all, and it will definitely affect them if it fights!

If these Chinese really want to occupy Hawaii, where should they go when the time comes, should they sell these granges and return to England?

No matter what they thought in their hearts, they could not affect the landing operation of the Imperial Navy!

When these Marines rowed their boats and waded to land on the beach, they attacked the harbor directly! (To be continued.) )