On the rippling blue sea, six warships pulled apart in one line, drawing a thin white mark of water on the surface of the ocean.

On the Yangwu, Liu Buyun, Lin Taizeng, Deng Shichang and other more than a dozen of the best graduates of the Ship Administration and Sailor Academy were all concentrated on the deck at this moment.

No matter what the purpose of Liu Xian's trip to the South China Sea is, this kind of long-distance journey by sea has always been very tempering. Zuo Zongtang agreed, and Shen Baozhen stuffed more than a dozen talents into the fleet in one go.

Don't think of the Manchu officials as incompetent. On the 19th day of the first lunar month, as long as there were concessions in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and other places, the newspapers of foreigners were full of articles about the events in Borneo. Fuzhou is no exception. Moreover, Zuo Zongtang's 'intelligence' collection sources are also very extensive, and every issue of foreign newspapers in Hong Kong, Guangzhou, Shanghai and other places can be found from his governor's palace, and any useful information will be translated into Chinese and presented to him as soon as possible.

Zuo Zongtang and Shen Baozhen's 'old eyes' are not faint yet, they can be sure that Lan Fang's accident has a lot to do with Liu Xian, otherwise why did Liu Xian collide with the appointment he set with them a few years ago?

And as mentioned above, the voyage is very exercised. Unlike the Army, the Navy is only the first step in naval education. To become a qualified naval officer, one must have gone through an internship on a training ship. Two years ago, when Deng Shichang's batch of talents graduated, they walked out of the Shipmaster Sailor School on the front foot, and everyone boarded the "Jianwei" practice ship together on the back foot and began the sea voyage they had to experience. On that voyage, the Jianwei successively arrived in Xiamen, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Penang, which lasted four months. The sea and sky are rippling, sometimes the distant mountains are not seen for several days, sometimes the islands linger, and the yarns are intertwined. The cadets on the training ship had to endure a variety of tests. They will be piloted by instructors, and each student will follow the nautical diary section by section, measure the position of the sun and constellations, and practice operating various instruments. When it came time to return home, the trainees took turns to pilot, and the instructor carefully checked the navigation diary, and graduated after two years of ship practice. Then he directly caught up with the little devil's battle to conquer Taiwan.

Now the more than ten original graduates who have come to the Yangwu are now all officers. Their position is no longer an internship, but a real fill-in-the-period. Although because of the personnel staffed by the Yangwu itself, their workload has been reduced a lot.

"Zhengqing, what do you say about Lanfang, the changes in Borneo, and that Marquis Liu in Taiwan, how much can it have to do with it?"

Ye Fu, a native of Xin'an County, Guangzhou Prefecture, and Deng Shichang are fellow villagers, and they were admitted to the driving class of the Shipbuilding Academy at the same time, and their results were also very good. When they were students, the two were like-minded and like-minded, and became close friends. After graduation, they also had a lot of fate to serve as pipe bands in Haidongyun [at this moment, Sa Zhenbing is Deng Shichang's second mate], and there is nothing to say if they have a good relationship. In history, the two also became in-laws, and Ye Fu's son Ye Jinying married Deng Shichang's second daughter Deng Xiuchan as his wife. [Note: The Haidongyun is a small gunboat with a displacement of less than 400 tons.] In 1870, Yinggui, the governor of Fujian and Zhejiang, purchased it from foreign merchants and used it as a patrol in the Taiwan Strait. 】

Therefore, Ye Fu doesn't need to think about talking to Deng Shichang, what do you have to say.

Deng Shichang has a stern personality, and when a person with a strict personality speaks to his friends, he either tells the truth or keeps his mouth shut, and he will never be oily and slippery.

Ye Fu spoke casually to Deng Shichang, and Deng Shichang never thought about it when he talked to Ye Fu. "The lice on the bald man's head, obviously. The newspaper didn't say that Liang Luyi, the soldier who started the army, made a fortune in recent years by selling hardware goods from the Qin army. ”

"Our Liu Futai's appetite is really unusual. Acting maverick too! ”

The officials of the Manchu government and the opposition were all looking for food in the territory of the Qing Dynasty, and this one alone began to work on Vietnam as early as Guangxi, and won the Hongji Coal Mine, which is coveted by many people today.

Deng Shichang was a naval officer, and he was quite concerned about coal, especially Hongji coal, which was of high quality. Today's Hongji coal sells well all over the world, not to mention Qin Jun's own shipping company, even the Fujian shipbuilding and sailors have begun to buy coal from Hongji, and there are countless foreign ships, Hongji Coal Mine's annual income is much more than the year's fundraising of the Shipping Bureau.

"There is a way to make a fortune!" Deng Shichang thought of the warships that were being built in the dockyard of Mawei Shipyard with all his might, how good it would be if they were all shipmasters!

And Hong Kong at this time.

Governor Kennedy was on his way to Hong Kong, where he was about to sail back to the former British minister to China, Ali Kuo, to share his concerns about the events in West Borneo.

"This man is a staunch nationalist. When things got to the point where they had to be, his warships would have dared to fire at the Dutch. "As a military governor, Kennedy's character is not tough and domineering. In fact, he is very good at appeasing such soft means. After the 60s of the 19th century, the Chinese in Hong Kong increased, of course, this is also because Hong Kong has not really developed at all, and the British investment and commercial capital in Hong Kong are far from being comparable with their investment in Shanghai. [When did Hong Kong in history 'change' into the Hong Kong in the minds of future generations, if you are interested, you can check it yourself. 】

Wealthy people from the mainland continued to come to Hong Kong, and because of their skillful management, their economic power developed so much that they completely overwhelmed the Western businessmen in Hong Kong. Kennedy did not insist on denying the status of Chinese businessmen, he was very good at appeasing the Chinese, and repeatedly said that he could meet with representatives of Chinese businessmen at any time and listen to their opinions; Whenever there is a celebration in the Governor's Palace, Chinese gentry and businessmen are also invited to participate; Colonial government officials in Hong Kong were also encouraged to learn Chinese, and examination committees were set up to issue certificates to European officials who learned Chinese.

During his tenure in office, Hong Kong's development has improved significantly. However, last year, Hong Kong was swept by a typhoon, causing heavy losses. Kennedy was not the Governor of the Straits Settlements, and the events in West Borneo did not affect Hong Kong. But as a British official in charge, he was very concerned about the accident in Lanfang, West Borneo. The two British ironclads that followed the Chinese fleet were sent by Kennedy after contacting the British fleet in Hong Kong.

"The Lanfang rebels have advanced light weapons in their hands, and the caliber of the bullets is exactly the same as the homemade Remington rifles used by the Qin army. They also had a certain number of revolvers and shotguns in their hands, both of which were in the Far East, and only the Qin army had a large-scale configuration.

This qiē is all evidence, and it is all evidence of Marquis Liu's intervention in West Borneo. We must be vigilant that East Wanjin cannot be completely charged by the Marquis of Liu, which will pose a mortal threat to the whole of Borneo and to the Dutch rule in Batavia. ”

Ali Guo listened to Kennedy's words quietly, and did not show a tendency to show his attitude on his face, but asked Kennedy, "I think you have already communicated with Singapore before. What is Governor Clark's opinion? Is he willing to send out Singapore's fleet? ”

"Nope. He didn't want to! Kennedy sat down on the couch in frustration.

"Really, seriously. The China of today is no longer the China of fifteen years ago. With the exception of the border province of Yunnan and the Taiping Army, which rebelled against the government, the Chinese government has put down all civil unrest. Their armies were massively reequipped with new weapons, and they had a modern fleet, albeit incomparably weak.

The main thing is that one of them is the Marquis Liu, and the lives and failures of the Russians and the French show that the Chinese can fight. Gone are the days when one or two thousand men conquered this vast empire and made their rulers bow their heads.

The blood of the Russians, the French changed this ancient empire. They are no longer as afraid of our army as they are.

I have to be honest, I really have a little fear of the Chinese. Their army, those ordinary armies, did not need to have the combat effectiveness of Marquis Liu's army, as long as it matched the combat effectiveness of the Japanese, China was simply impossible to conquer.

So, Governor Clark's caution, I understand. ”

Kennedy waved his arms irritably, ashamed of his mood at this moment. But, to be honest, it was because of the fear of the Chinese that he wanted to firmly limit Liu Xian's development.

And that trace of fear ...... made him feel so ashamed. R1152