For example, the No. 2 Fu ship with less than 400 materials, the amount of equipment is much more than that of the No. 1 Fu ship, which belongs to the backbone of the naval fleet, and there are smaller Haicang, winter ships, sentinel ships, and bird ships, which belong to auxiliary warships, and are mostly used as peripheral ships in the fleet, or can be regarded as assault power.

However, the No. 2 Fu ship is a commonly used ship for maritime merchants, and the amount of sea ownership is quite large, because this kind of Fu ship has excellent long-distance sailing ability, strong wind and wave resistance, strong anti-sinking ability, stable driving, and large loading capacity, so the maritime merchants in Fujian, including the maritime merchants in Guangdong, prefer to use this kind of sea ship to go to sea.

And the sea wolf through various means, now obtained a large number of such ships, in addition to a part of the merchant fleet, the rest is reserved for the sailors as the main warships, after all, the number of Feizi clippers is now more than a dozen, far from replacing the current position of this kind of lucky ships in the sailors.

Although most of these ships had been modified to carry six-pounder and twelve-pounder guns, these guns were arranged on the top open-air deck, which was greatly affected by the weather, and the problem did not need to be repeated.

Therefore, since last year, Yu Xiaotian has begun to carry out in-depth modification of this kind of Fu ship, and has transformed several medium-sized Fu ships and handed them over to the main generals of each sub-fleet.

This time, the ship he asked people to pull into the dock was larger than the ordinary No. 1 Fu ship of the official army and naval division, because this ship had three masts, and the construction was built according to the specifications of 600 materials, and the displacement of the ship could reach about 350 to 400 tons when it was fully loaded.

If this ship is placed on the sea in the future, it is really not a big ship, even if it is compared with the Galen ship that is now commonly used in Western countries and the Clark sailing ship that has been gradually eliminated, it is not a good ship.

But in this era of China's coast, but it is really a big ship, and this ship used to be Chu Cailao's ship, after the first war at the beginning of last year, was captured by the sea wolf, beaten and dragged back, but Chu Cailao changed to a bird boat to escape.

After the ship was captured by the sea wolves last year, it underwent a certain degree of repair in the shipyard, but it was not refitted at a deeper level, and it was first handed over to the merchant fleet for more than half a year, and it took a trip to Manila to bring back a lot of saltpeter and canvas.

However, after the end of last year, the ship was transferred back to the sequence of naval warships by Yu Xiaotian from the merchant fleet, and was ready to make a deep modification to make it a gunboat with strong firepower, and the ship has not been moved again on Nanri Island for several months.

This time, before being towed into the dock of Nanri Island Bunker, the ship was first sailed to Tamsui City, where it was anchored in the Tamsui River for several days to completely remove maggots from the bottom of the boat.

Speaking of this kind of ship maggot, in fact, there was no coastal China before, and this kind of ship maggot native to the Americas, mainly like to eat the wood in the sea water for a living, until the beginning of the Age of Discovery, the first by the Spanish ships to bring to the world all over the world, belonging to an alien species, the invasion of wooden sailing ships is very great.

If they were left to survive on the ship for a long time, if they didn't get it right, they would be hollowed out of the planks at the bottom of the ship, and suddenly the ship would collapse, and I don't know how many sailors would be killed in the tunnel.

But later it was discovered that as long as the wooden boat with maggots was regularly anchored in fresh water for a few days, all the maggots on the bottom of the boat would die, because this thing was a sea creature, belonging to marine shellfish, and it could not survive without salt water, and it would soon die in fresh water.

Therefore, before preparing to renovate the boat, Yu Xiaotian first sent the boat to the Tamsui River for a few days, and then returned to the Nanri Island Shipyard and dragged it into the dock.

After the dock was emptied by a watermill, the boat sat on the dock's rack, and after a few days of drying, the boatwrights began to shovel away the various sea creatures attached to the bottom of the ship, until the wooden planks on the bottom of the boat were exposed.

After the craftsman of the shipyard and Yu Xiaotian personally inspected, the shipwork of Chu Cai's old ship was still quite exquisite, and Chu Cai always used this ship as a warship, unlike the general foreign merchants when building ships, pay attention to the cost problem, in addition to the main structure of the use of hardwood, the rest of the ship's planks and other wood use cheap pine cypress, in order to reduce the cost.

In addition to the keel is the use of ironwood made in Guangdong, the ribs and bulkhead plates are all made of ironwood, many important components are also made of lychee wood, and the ship board is directly used in the teak wood transported back from Malacca and Siam in the South Seas, the overall is very strong, and the workmanship is also quite good, and the original cost must be quite high, at least several times more than the ordinary No. 2 Fu ship.

When the ship was captured, it suffered a lot of shells from Seawolves' six-pounder guns, and also hit the shells of twelve-pounder guns, but the shells of the six-pounder guns basically did not penetrate his ship's plank, but only smashed a hole in the board, and only the cannonballs of the twelve-pounder gun, which could penetrate its plank, looked badly beaten, but in fact the damage to the hull was not very serious.

After being captured before, the ship had been simply repaired once, and after careful inspection this time, Yu Xiaotian found that it was indeed a bit condescending to use this ship as a merchant ship.

So he was determined to convert this ship into a Chinese-style gunboat and give full play to the advantages of this ship.

Although the ship is made of exquisite materials, gorgeously decorated, and carved a lot of patterns in many places on the ship, after all, the overall structure of the ship is still not separated from the structure of the Chinese sailing ship, and there are still many inherent defects in the hull, which makes its carrying capacity for artillery not very strong.

Therefore, if you want to transform this ship into a gunboat, you must carry out a large-scale reinforcement from the inside out, and the first mate will increase the bearing capacity of the hull.

The ship itself was divided into eight compartments, which were divided into upper and lower levels, and the lowest compartment was used as a ballast stone, and the planks were laid on top of it, which served as a cargo hold and a living compartment for the crew, which could be used for loading cargo or for the accommodation of the personnel on board.

Yu Xiaotian and the craftsmen of the ship, after carefully observing the cabin structure, decided to add another deck to the ship, and inside the hull, add ribs to improve the bearing capacity of the hull, and at the same time add a deck as a gun deck, remove the bulkhead between the top deck, and open up the upper deck to become a through-cabin.

In this way, the ship has the compartment of the Chinese ship, and the upper deck has the through-cabin structure of the Western-style ship, which not only ensures the partition of the cabin below the waterline, maintains the advantages of the strong anti-sinking ability of the Chinese-style ship, but also makes the ship have a large cabin, which can be easily arranged and installed with various types of artillery.

And this kind of transformation, different from the early days of the deep modification of the Fu ship, the amount of work is much larger than those of the project, the consumables are also a lot larger, and due to the later transformation, the installation of ship ribs in the cabin, the construction is also much more difficult, but in order to obtain a powerful gunboat, Yu Xiaotian thinks that it is worth it.

If it was before, the sea wolf's shipyard probably did not have the ability to carry out such a large-scale renovation project, but after two years of operation, the shipyard has cultivated a group of skilled craftsmen, and when this is done again, there is no great technical difficulty, but it takes some work, but it is still a lot less effort than building a new ship.

In order to transform the ship, Yu Xiaotian and the craftsmen also carefully calculated the weight of the hull and the trimming scheme, after all, after the transformation of the ship, the center of gravity of the ship has changed greatly, and the ballast must be readjusted to ensure the safety of the ship.

Throughout the period from the end of March to the middle of April, Yu Xiaotian had to run to the boat almost every day, staying for a long time, supervising the construction progress of the ship, and also personally participating in the solution of some difficult problems and discussing solutions with the craftsmen.

Although it is very difficult to renovate this ship, but fortunately, before the start of construction, they have done relatively sufficient preparations, and also made several sets of plans in advance, so after the renovation project began, the construction progress is still quite fast, all kinds of timber in the ship's shed was prefabricated in advance, and then sent to the ship for installation.

And the craftsmanship of the craftsmen is not to be said, they can use simple tools and methods to complete quite complex work, and even in a small space, large parts can be loaded into the hull, so that Yu Xiaotian has to express his admiration, once again experience the wisdom of the ancients.

On the whole, the progress of the ship's renovation is still satisfactory to him, after more than a month, the main body of the ship's renovation project has been basically completed, after inspection, everyone believes that the overall structure of the ship has been unprecedentedly strengthened, whether it is carrying a twelve-pounder gun or a thirty-two-pounder caron gun is not a problem, and even on both sides of the sturdiest amidships, it can also carry a new twenty-four-pounder gun, this twenty-four-pounder gun is different from the previous twenty-four-pounder cannon, the gun body is shortened, The weight of the cannon was reduced by more than one-third, so that the weight of the gun was reduced to about 2,500 catties.

Such a significant weight reduction did not seriously reduce the power of the gun, but the effective range was slightly shortened, and the key is that the Seawolf currently adopts the water-cooled casting technology of the inner mold, so that the strength of the barrel of the gun has been greatly enhanced when casting, so that the thickness of the gun chamber can be reduced and the weight of the gun body can be greatly reduced when casting.

(Rushed to the hospital!) Still sleepy! ）