With the sound of Huangshi's "ignition", Du Yande and the others brought the pine branch torches that had been prepared in their hands to the clay pots on the cabins and decks. Because the mixture of sulfur powder and chaff in the clay pots was mixed with some gasoline, when they put the torches into the clay pots, they heard a "coax" sound, and the flames burst out at once.

Seeing that the clay pots on these boats were all lit, Du Yande and the others jumped off the boat one by one, lit all the clay pots resting on the bottom of the boat, and then waved the torch a few times to extinguish it, and then stood around the ship.

Huang Shi saw that they were getting a little closer, so he hurriedly shouted, "Everyone stand a little longer, wait for this smoke to contain a huge poison." ”

After listening to the chief's words, everyone was naturally convinced, and hurriedly retreated several times, waiting for Huang Shi to say that it was okay before stopping, and then listened to the chief introduce to them the toxicity of sulfur, saying that the sulfur dioxide contained in the vapor formed after the combustion of sulfur is highly toxic to the human body.

These free hydrogen sulfide is a strong neurotoxicant, which has obvious irritating effect on the gastrointestinal mucosa and respiratory tract, and can cause intracellular asphyxia and tissue hypoxia, which is manifested as central nervous system symptoms and asphyxia symptoms.

Du Yande and Ma Qian couldn't fully understand these terms, but they didn't prevent them from nodding their heads while listening, and then staring closely at the sea ship that had been shrouded in bright yellow and yellow smoke.

A "squeak" sound was heard, and as Huang Shi had just predicted, it was not long before the rats on the ship could not hold on, screamed wildly, rushed out of the various gaps in the cabin, which were not usually seen by everyone, and jumped from the deck to the ground one by one.

The crowd around the ship was in a hurry, but fortunately, there were many people, and this group of rats who fled frantically suppressed it. Looking at the rats trampled into meat sauce all over the ground, Huangshi was a chill, but from the moment he was ready to buy the ship, it was a doomed fate, either by poisonous smoke or trampled to death.

"Chief, what are you doing here?" Seeing that wolf smoke was lit on this side of the beach, and the bright yellow and yellow pillars of smoke went straight into the clouds, and even the sea breeze did not blow them away, Chen Youxin and Zhang Chen also came out of the camp curiously to watch.

When Huang Shi heard the voice, he turned his head and found that it was Chen Youxin and Zhang Chen, so he explained, "We are sterilizing and disinfecting this ship." ”

"Oh." Chen Youxin and Zhang Chen nodded, they had been on this island for a few days, and they all knew that this is the head of the upper realm, and he likes a clean and hygienic environment the most, so it is reasonable to do these things.

The crowd stayed by the boat for a while, and were about to disperse. Huang Shi saw that among the piles of debris on the ground, there were actually a few pairs of fishing nets, which they threw down from the boat when he asked people to do sanitation in front of him, so he asked Chen Youxin, "By the way, Lao Chen, why do you want to pile these fishing nets on the boat, I see that your merchant ships usually don't seem to have fishing." ”

"Hehe, chief, these nets are not for fishing, and when we meet pirates at sea, hang them on both sides of the ship, so that they can prevent them from jumping."

"Oh, no wonder." Huang Shi nodded after hearing this, remembering that when fighting at sea in this era of sailing ships, when the two ships were close enough, the process of boarding the enemy's ship for white-knuckle combat from oneself and the ship through the gangplank, swing lock, or direct boarding of the ship was a gang jumping.

It's a pity that this ancient naval method of warfare began to decline with the advent of the era of giant ship cannons, and in the face of dozens of cannons on the other side, no one has the courage to play this set again, so the naval battles on both sides are to bombard at a long distance with cannons first, and then force down or simply sink.

However, in the middle of the 16th century, this gang fighting and another way of arson ships are still the absolute mainstream, and even after another 100 years, when Zheng Zhilong acted as the vanguard of the Ming Dynasty fleet in Taiwan's "Battle of Liaoluo Bay", it adopted these two combat methods, and achieved an unprecedented victory.

……

It took a whole day to smoke and disinfect the clay pot with sulfur and chaff in the method taught by the "agricultural expert" Qi Cabbage, and after all the sulfur and chaff were burned, Huangshi let the ship ventilate in the sea breeze for another week, and then carried out its second step of transformation.

First of all, Huangshi wanted to replace the sail made of bamboo strips on the sea ship, because the Chinese sail is a "hard sail", which is very different from the "soft sail" of the West. In ancient China, sails were mostly supported by multiple crossbeams, and there were also intricate sails to maneuver this kind of wing-shaped sail like dinosaur wings.

This kind of dinosaur-like winged sail is a "schooner", and the use of this "schooner" is a characteristic of most wooden sailing boats in China. Because of its excellent aerodynamic properties, the sail can rotate around the mast at almost 360 teeth, which allows the wind to be fully utilized in all directions, resulting in the most efficient propulsion. The West has never used this kind of efficient sail in history, and it was not until modern rowing design that the principle of "hard sail" in traditional Chinese sails was applied.

The so-called "hard sail", its advantage is the above mentioned comprehensive efficiency, the same unit area of the "hard sail" and "soft sail" compared with the "soft sail", the "hard sail" for the use of wind power is much greater than the "soft sail", and the same area of the "hard sail" is very easy to land. And because the "hard sail" has multiple supporting struts on the sail surface, the quality requirements for the sail surface are very low, even if it has a lot of holes.

But the "hard sail" also has its disadvantages compared to the "soft sail".

First of all, this "hard sail" is generally woven from thin bamboo strips or cattail leaves, and the cloth sail surface is rarely seen, so the "hard sail" is too heavy, and the larger the ship. The heavier the sails, the heavier the sails, and the "hard sails" of some large ships are even "impossible to move without hundreds of people". Just like when the Li family's 200-ton sea ship was hoisting its sails, seven or eight sturdy men had to go out at the same time to "ha-ya" and "ha-ya" on the side of the wooden winch, so that this "hard sail" could be raised.

The second is that when this kind of "hard sail" is lifted, the whole sail needs to be lifted, so the area of the sail cannot be too large, otherwise people can't pull it. The height of the mast should not be too high, otherwise the strength of the mast will be affected, so the area of a Chinese ship with a "hard sail" will be smaller than that of a Western ship with a "soft sail".

Therefore, the change of sail in Huangshi only changed the material of the sail, but the form of the sail was not changed. He first ripped off the original sail made of bamboo strips and replaced it with a sailing fabric called Oxford spun that he bought in modern society, which is 150 centimeters wide and weighs 120 grams per square meter, which can be said to be strong and lightweight.

In addition, the polyurethane and polyacrylate coating on the fabric, as well as the special finishing of the high-water pressure coated fabric such as waterproof, rainproof, flame retardant, antistatic, and ultraviolet protection, so the tear resistance effect is particularly good, and the weight of the sail is reduced by half at once, not more.

After changing the fabric of the sailboat, Huang Shi turned his attention to the crossbeams and struts on the original "hard sail", although these crossbeams and struts are not as thick as the mouth of a bowl like the mast, but they are also as thick as a person's arm, and the weight in them is not light.

It can be said that if the Chinese sail adopts the "cloth sail", the weight of the Western-style "longitudinal sail" of the same area is not much different, because the Western-style "longitudinal sail" only has two upper and lower crossbeams to bear the sail pressure, so it has to be very thick, and the "sail camber" it forms is mainly formed by the canvas in the wind pressure.

The Chinese sail is equivalent to dividing the cross truss into five to eight elastic braces, so that the sail surface is divided into multiple small parts, and together with the sail surface in the wind pressure to form a sail arch, and the brace requires good elasticity can not be too thick, in the wind to be able to bend, but can not break. Therefore, the combined weight of them is about the same as the two large thick beams of the Western-style "diagonal truss sail".

And the Chinese "hard sail" is the end of each strut, there is a rope for the sail, so the force is uniform and dispersed, reducing the pressure on the strut, the Chinese sail is far thinner than the western "sail" of the crossbeam, because each struts have a sail rope, so that the sail surface will not be longitudinally twisted in the wind, and the Western-style "longitudinal sail" is generally the lower crossbar sail, and the longitudinal large twist of the sail surface, so it will lose nearly one-third to one-quarter of the effective area.

Huangshi originally wanted to replace these wooden crossbeams and struts with a few aluminum alloy pipes, but when he arrived at the hardware store, he found that these pipes were very light and strong, but the elasticity was not good, so that during the use of the sail, it would be easy to break due to excessive fatigue of the metal.

Having a headache over the materials for the crossbeams and struts, Huangshi suddenly remembered the modern sailing competitions held at the London Olympics, which used "diagonal truss sails", but modern sails that combined the advantages of "Chinese struts".

It is also the application of the "Bo effort principle" when the air pressure difference is applied in the crosswind and headwind, and because of the material of modern technology and modern fluid mechanical design, its struts are very elastic, and they are passed through the sail surface, in the case of a breeze, the struts can also be deformed greater, can form an effective camber, parallel to the direction of the airflow, so that the lift of the wing surface is greater, so its efficiency is higher than that of "Western sail" and "Chinese sail".