On the fifth day after Xu Jie arrived in Italy, the Beiyang side officially signed a contract with the Italian Admiralty and shipyards for the purchase of ships, and at the same time, on the eighth day, two improved **-class light armored cruisers laid down their first keels on the slipway of the Andosal shipyard in Italy. This ship purchase plan, which has long been well known to various countries, did not cause much shock. It's just that the British Armstrong shipyard and the German Volken shipyard regretted that Beiyang, an old customer, gave up two and chose the Italian shipyard. Among them, Sir Watts of Armstrong Shipyard said that Armstrong Shipyard will prove that the new Armstrong-type 2nd Dome cruiser will surpass the two warships currently under construction at Anderdoshar Shipyard. On the one hand, they are working hard to publicize the new Beiyang warships in China in order to obtain more funds. On the other hand, Japanese diplomats represented by Shuzo Aoki, the ambassador to Britain, frequently visited the Wèn Armstrong shipyard in order to order a new type of cruiser capable of suppressing the new ships in the Beiyang.

But this is only a small shock brought to the world by the Italian shipbuilding community, which is really enough for the European powers to side, the Italian Admiralty, decided to officially start construction of a new armored cruiser with a displacement of nearly 9,000 tons in 3 months! Equipped with a new twin 10-inch turret gun, it uses the new hardened armor of Italy. And a water-tube boiler was ordered from France. It can be said that the Italians did their best to purchase equipment from abroad that they could not produce themselves. And the Minister of the Italian Admiralty, Mr. Brin, openly declared: The Italian Admiralty and the Andosal shipyard will do their best to make this new armored cruiser the most advanced warship in the world!! Moreover, the Italians also gave this new type of patrol a resounding name, naming this new warship on which the Italian government and industry had high hopes after Garibaldi, the national hero of the Italian Unification War.

The first to react was France, the French, as one of the three giants of the Mediterranean navy, (England, France, Italy, the three strongest forces in the Mediterranean, as for Austria-Hungary, everyone ignores it) to express their disdain for the Italians to use the displacement of a capital ship to build an astonishing battleship equipped with only 10-inch guns and armor less than 10 inches, but fast, and if they participate in the decisive battle of the fleet, the lethality of 10-inch guns is not enough, (after all, the French do not know about the new British 10-inch, The thickness of the armor of the 40L gun was not enough to withstand the bombardment of the 12-inch gun, and if it was used for cruising operations, because of the limited endurance, and the French believed that the Italians could only use it in the Mediterranean, and there was no need to break diplomatic relations in the ocean. So the battleship looks nondescript.

The other was the Russians, who saw the speed of the new warships, and in the eyes of the Russians, if they wanted to break out of the Baltic Sea and sail in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, they would have to face the British Royal Navy, although they could not compete with the British in strength. So the Russians decided to go the other way, didn't the Dutch and British privateer fleets make the Spaniards anxious? Today the Russians can also learn, so the Russians decided to study the battleship and said that the Russian Navy will build similar new armored cruisers that can sail for a long time in the open ocean and place them in the Far East!!

The actions of the Russians directly caused dissatisfaction among the British, and the sea lines of communication were the lifeblood of the British Empire. The French-built clipper small cannon cruiser was enough of a headache for the British, and now the Russians are still going to put large cruisers on the ocean, isn't it the life of the British? The answer of the British was simple, if some countries wanted to build a 10,000-ton cruiser and put it on the ocean, then the British would build a 13,000-ton cruiser. The British warships will have an absolute advantage in speed, firepower, defense, and by the way, in numbers. In a word, we in the Royal Navy are not afraid of you. (Historically, when the Russians built more than 10,000 tons of Rurik armored cruisers, the British Navy said to William White that price is not a problem, you can build it hard!) Then William White was not ambiguous, and directly built a first-class dome cruiser with a displacement of 14,200 tons, the Qiangsheng class, also called POWERFULL. The tonnage of this cargo is comparable to that of battleships, and the size is even more than that of battleships at that time, which is actually 164 meters long, 21.6 meters wide, and has a draft of 7.32 meters!! It has a large coal bunker that can hold 3,000 tons. It is equipped with 48 boilers, 4 vertical steam engines, and the power reaches 25,000 horsepower! The maximum speed was 22 knots, and it was armed with 234 guns, two 6-inch guns, and 12 guns, which was later increased to 16 guns! IN TERMS OF ARMOR PROTECTION, ALL GUNS ABOVE MEDIUM CALIBER HAVE ARMOR PROTECTION OF MORE THAN 100MM, AND THE DOME ARMOR IS ENOUGH TO ENSURE THAT THE CORE CABIN WILL NOT BE PENETRATED BY 8-INCH GUNS. Compared to Rurik, it is completely able to fight, run, and afford ~~. However, the cost of this ship is also quite amazing, reaching 70+ million pounds. 48 boilers burn not only coal, but also money!! As a result, this battleship, which was commissioned in 1897, entered the reserve after 1904, and the landlord's family has no room for it~~ So this obviously large and inappropriate battleship has an alias, the big white elephant!! ）…,

"Xu, it seems that the construction of the Garibaldi-class armored cruiser will cause a stir in the European naval community." Looking at the newspaper in his hand, Vittorio said with a smile. "The British even said that they would suppress the ocean-going cruisers of any country in all indicators."

"The British will do it." Xu Jie smiled slightly. "The sensitivity of the British to the Navy is definitely not something that outsiders can imagine. The British would not allow anyone to touch the lines of communication at sea. ”

"Actually, I don't think the Garibaldi class is a cruiser in the traditional sense, it weakens the range, speed, strengthens the armor and firepower, and is actually a product between a cruiser and a battleship. You can break up the battle within a certain range, and at the same time, you can also participate in fleet battles, relatively speaking, I think the Garibaldi class is more like a smaller battleship. Vittorio spoke his mind.

"A battleship of the second rank?" Xu Jie secretly couldn't help but give a thumbs up. His design was very similar to the second-class battleship Centurion built by the British. Vittorio is indeed worthy of being a master, and his positioning of the battleship is indeed very accurate.

"Yes, it's a second-class battleship, which can be completely applied to the classification of battleships in the Sail Age." Vittorio said excitedly.

"Did the Japanese do anything?" Xu Jie was not interested in entangling with Vittorio in these aspects, he was more concerned about what the Japanese were doing.

"That will have to wait for a telegram from your British friend." Vittorio said helplessly.

"I'm afraid the Japanese are in a hurry to order new warships, right?" Xu Jie muttered to himself.

There's an additional chapter to be added later today. Let's support :)