Within a few days, Zhu Youzhen convened a military meeting of the Generalissimo's Office and issued a decree that Liu Kongzhao should preside over the reform of the navy.

The first item of the reform was to recruit the first batch of naval officers and students from the original navy and the soldiers of the guards and the officers and men of the guards in various places.

According to the rules, starting from the first of the following month.

The Daming Ship Administration Bureau will accept the registration of officers and soldiers from various military systems of the Ming Dynasty, including the soldiers of the Guards, and these officers and soldiers will be selected for a unified examination after registration.

The examiners are composed of Ma Shiying, Liu Kongzhao, Zheng Zhibao, Zheng Hongkui, and Gu San Mazi, the chief examiner is Ma Shiying, and the deputy examiners are Liu Kongzhao and Zheng Zhibao.

Later, because of the consideration that the folk may still have unused talents, they also accepted the folk examination.

As for the content of the exam, it was agreed upon by the examiners and submitted to Zhu Youzhen for approval, which is nothing more than culture, water experience and physical fitness.

Although the content is simple, it is not difficult, and I am afraid that a single culture will be able to brush many people at that time.

But despite this, hundreds of thousands of people continued to sign up for the imperial examinations after learning that they would be conferred official positions after graduation and that they would be able to participate in the imperial examinations like the officers and soldiers of the Guards.

However, in accordance with the principle of excellence, only 500 officers and students were admitted in the first phase of enrollment.

When the examiners had screened all the candidates and left only 500 candidates, they were basically people who had both cultural foundation and combat experience, and even water combat experience.

Among them are mainly military attaches from the former Nanjing Navy and soldiers with better water in the Guards, as well as people from the Zheng family and the Gu family.

There are also some Jinyi guards secretly sent by Zhu Youzhen to participate.

Although they each became naval officers of the Ming Ship Administration Bureau, their backgrounds were different.

But they all have one thing in common, that is, the current Ming Dynasty has the most potential to train outstanding naval officers.

In this selection process, Zheng Sen, who had changed his name to Zheng Chenggong, had already begun to conduct militarized training and further cultural training in a battalion of 100 instructors from the fifty naval combat backbones sent by his father to assist the imperial court, the naval combat backbone sent by Gu San Mazi, and the military attachés in the imperial court who had the ability to fight water.

Zhu Youzhen will also occasionally give lectures and do ideological education, and he will also come to observe them.

In short, Daming's naval training is finally on the agenda.

With officers, it is possible to begin recruiting new soldiers, and the original navy will be transferred to the local area to serve as officers and men of the guard, and those who have meritorious service can be promoted, those who have no merit can be leveled up, and those who have done so can be demoted to commoners.

There are even many who have been directly transferred to local civil servants, serving as local officials, and also breaking the gentry's control over the grassroots.

All this is presided over by Ma Shiying, the secretary of the Ministry of War, and it is not hard work.

In order to praise him, Zhu Youzhen also specially crowned him with the title of prince and taibao.

The establishment of the Daming Ship Administration Bureau and the professional training of naval officers were only the first steps taken by Zhu Youzhen to strengthen the navy.

In the future, he has more policies to implement gradually, but a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, and now he can only let Zheng Chenggong train the instructor battalion into a qualified officer.

Although the personnel of these instructor battalions are all experts in naval warfare and have rich experience, their cultural foundation and military quality are still very weak, and they have not received professional training.

He did not have a deep understanding of the Department of Navigation and Engineering and the natural sciences, and he mostly relied on his personal experience to operate artillery and command warships.

Now that they have come to the Daming Ship Administration, the first step is naturally to understand the basic military etiquette, starting from learning to dress and salute and basic queue training.

Then, Zhu Youzhen also asked Zheng Zhibao, a literati with experience in naval warfare, to compile textbooks such as "Navigation Chronicles," "Naval Warfare Command Course," and "Naval Warfare Weapons Operation Training Manual."

It is important to complete the compilation before the new students enroll, and let the 50 Zheng Jiabu who are about to become instructors familiarize themselves with the textbook and propose revisions.

There were still many illiterate people in the instructor camp, so it was not easy for Zheng Chenggong to enable them to possess the basic military qualities of the officers and soldiers of the Guards and the basic cultural foundation, that is, literacy and writing skills, in just a few months.

He now basically conducts queue training for this instructor camp during the day and cultural popularization at night, and the teaching material is the simplest "Three Character Classic".

Therefore, this became a miracle at the time.

The first sentence of reading in the classroom of the entire Daming Ship Administration Bureau is not any theoretical knowledge of naval warfare, but "the beginning of man, the nature is good", Rao is the Ministry of Rites Shangshu Liu Zongzhou also praised it after passing through the Ming Ship Administration Bureau, thinking that His Majesty's move is to promote the way of education, so that the reckless Haikou learning culture undoubtedly opens the door to learning.

The people in this instructor camp originally had quite complaints, but fortunately, they all knew that Zheng Chenggong was the eldest young master of the Zheng family, and he was given a name by His Majesty, and he was still from the Guards, so he didn't dare to make a mistake, and he had to listen to Zheng Chenggong's words, and he trained as he pleased, and he obediently learned etiquette and literacy.

Zheng Chenggong was a famous talent, and he was also a disciple of Qian Qianyi back then, and his literary literacy was not low, and he had long hated iron and steel for his own subordinates who only knew how to plunder money and rob the people, and now he took this opportunity to secretly vow to do his best to temper these instructor camp people into regular officers with strict military discipline, good work style, and clear knowledge.

All of these instructors have experience in naval warfare, and many of them have a certain cultural foundation, so after one month of basic training, they basically ended their training and began to participate in the work of arranging naval warfare teaching.

Naval warfare involves the comprehensive command of ships, navigation technology, maritime artillery operation technology, ship manufacturing and repair technology, as well as the daily management and maintenance of ships and landing operations.

Zheng Chenggong and Zheng Hongkui began to divide into six sections according to the different specialties of the instructors in each instructor battalion, namely, the Ship Integrated Command Section, the Navigation Section, the Maritime Weapons Section, the Ship Manufacturing and Repair Section, the Ship Daily Management and Maintenance Section, and the Maritime and Land Operations Section.

Each subject is divided into about 15 to 20 instructors, and the instructors of each subject continue to compile textbooks based on their own experience with Zheng Zhibao, and even basic natural science general knowledge textbooks.

For example, how to distinguish between east and west, north and south, how to calculate the speed of a ship, etc.

After listening to the report of the Daming Shipmaster Bureau on training the navy, Zhu Youzhen felt more and more that the imperial national education lacked natural science, because he found that many of the textbooks compiled by the Daming Shipmaster Bureau were actually the most basic mathematics popularization courses.

However, changing the educational foundation is not something that happens overnight, and Zhu Youzhen can only use the opportunity of running a military academy to let the army start to establish a natural science foundation one step ahead.

(End of chapter)