Shi Diwen generously took the interested Xu Xinsu to the engine room again, but this time they came out quickly, during the operation of the steam system, the soot in the engine room mixed with water vapor, coupled with the huge mechanical noise, it was really not a comfortable place. From the two-foot-wide aisle next to the engine room, through two sealed doors in the direction of the bow, you reached the second gun deck.

On this deck, ten 24-pounder guns on the left and right were arranged, all of which were equipped with the latest movable gun mounts and spring brake systems, allowing only four gunners per gun to be fully controlled. With the ship's gun windows closed, it is almost impossible to get light from the outside, so many windproof oil lamps from Haihan's specialties are used as lighting sources in the cabin. In order to prevent the oil lamps from falling onto the deck and causing a fire in the turbulent weather, the oil lamps were fixed to the cabin roof.

Xu Xinsu noticed that the cabin structure here was significantly stronger than that of the smaller "Exploration-class" warships, and there were a large number of support structures connected by steel components in the cabins, apparently to overcome the impact of these guns on the hull when they fired. The warships of the Ming army are rarely equipped with high-power artillery, one of the reasons is that the hull structure can not withstand the huge vibration when fired, for example, from the Jiajing period began to equip the large copper hair of the Ming army's naval division, because the vibration is too large to be installed on the warship, and had to drag a raft behind the warship to carry this weapon, and the effectiveness that can be played during the battle can be imagined.

Beginning in the Jiajing period in the mid-16th century, front-loading guns made of cast copper or pig iron began to appear in the southeastern coastal areas, and it is said that the word "Fa Xi" may have come from the Portuguese for field guns. Bulkiness was an obvious flaw, but its power made it difficult for the Ming army to give up, and the Ming navy used this weapon extensively as the main gun of the warship. As for the reason why the army doesn't like this thing, it's very simple, this cannon can't be used to shoot down, so it can't be used to defend the city, let alone in field battles, and it's better to use this thing than to use the same heavy but much more powerful Hongyi cannon.

Although there were many firearms equipped on the warships of the Ming army, there were very few of them that really had a long range, high accuracy and a certain lethality. Although Xu Xinsu had long known that this "Wei Signal" was equipped with a large number of artillery, when he actually entered the cabin and saw the real thing, the shocking feeling still made it difficult for him to restrain the surprised expression on his face.

Shi Diwen lost no time in showing off to Xu Xinsu: "This ship has designed a three-layer artillery deck, and a total of 52 guns of three different calibers are installed, and the sides of the ship can allow up to 24 guns to launch shelling at the same time. Lord Xu should also be able to imagine that no ship could maintain its normal sailing ability after being bombarded by so many guns at the same time at a distance of fifty to one hundred zhang. No matter how strong the ship is, we are confident that it will be completely incapacitated after five rounds of close shelling. ”

Xu Xinsu said in his heart that he could use five rounds, and it is estimated that he can survive three rounds. In the past few years, he has bought a lot of artillery from the Haihan people, and he is still very clear about the power of the Haihan artillery, and the artillery placed on this deck, he knew at a glance that it was a 24-pounder gun, not to mention that this kind of cannonball hit the wooden shipboard, even if it is a masonry of the same thickness, it can be pierced with one shot at the distance that Shi Diwen said. Although I have not personally witnessed the power of this naval gun, from past experience, even if the hit rate is only 23 out of 10, five rounds are enough to beat the target into a sieve.

However, the warships of the Ming army could not be equipped with a large number of artillery like the Haihan warships, Xu Xinsu estimated that the warships of the sailors under his command were combined, and the firepower that really came in handy was estimated to be less than these three Haihan warships - the three ships were equipped with 100 guns, and the ships under his own command were many, but the weapons on the ships were not useful. If measured by Haihan's artillery standards, what can be called "cannon" is the artillery equipped with the two warships that have recently arrived from Haihan.

However, thinking of those two ships, Xu Xinsu dispelled the idea of asking Shi Diwen for a price. The small gunboat equipped with ten guns costs tens of thousands of taels of silver, and the cannon ship equipped with more than 50 guns, and the peculiar propulsion device, I am afraid that it will quote an astronomical price.

Although Xu Xinsu drooled when he saw it, he still maintained a certain amount of sanity, knowing that this thing was not the equipment that the Ming army could afford at present. Even if the Haihan people are willing to sell it, the Fujian sailors may not be able to afford this big guy, just by looking at so many guns on the ship, you can know how troublesome it is to maintain this thing. Moreover, the gunners needed on this ship are more than the artillery establishment of Zhangzhou City, and Xu Xinsu will not be able to spare so many professional manpower to operate this big killer weapon for a while.

At the same time, Xu Xinsu also realized that the Haihan militia was even stronger than the Fujian Ming Army in terms of personnel reserves for professional arms. According to Shi Diwen, this kind of big war ship is not only this one, but several, plus a large number of "exploration-class" and "exploration-class" warships, the required artillery is only nearly 1,000 people, and this is only the artillery of the people's maritime troops, and the establishment is already close to or even more than the number of artillery of the Ming army in Fujian.

However, most of the artillery under Xu Xinsu, especially the units that used Haihan artillery, were sent to Sanya to be trained by the Haihan military, and the growth of personnel was limited by objective conditions, so naturally it could not compare with the expansion speed of Haihan artillery. Of course, the Fujian military can also train the gunners on their own with the old and the new, but the effect is far less than sending them to Sanya and handing them over to the Haihan people to do it for them. Not to mention anything else, just for the live-fire practice, the gunners trained by the Fujian Ming Army were far inferior to the cadets in the Haihan Military Academy. And advanced subjects such as ballistic calculations can only be taught in simple terms by the instructors of the Haihan Military Academy. The gap in strength between the two sides in the artillery arm is almost impossible to close.

"There's nothing to see in this cabin, let's go back to it!" Shi Diwen didn't want Xu Xinsu to stay here all the time, although the combat mode on the Haihan warship couldn't be imitated, but Shi Diwen didn't plan to show all the hole cards - for example, the 48-pounder gun arranged on the lowest deck, he wouldn't take Xu Xinsu to visit. If the cannonball hits the area near the waterline, it can paralyze the ship with a single shot.

Although Xu Xinsu was a little reluctant to leave, he was a senior officer himself, and he also knew that the warship was already a military forbidden land, and it was a great favor that people were willing to take him to visit, and it would be a bit unreasonable to stay and not leave.

After the "Wei Signal" sailed on the steam propulsion device for two hours, Shi Diwen ordered the engine room to stop running, and at this time, the "Wei Signal" had already left the entire participating fleet behind him for ten nautical miles, and this speed made Xu Xinsu simply stunned, not knowing how to evaluate it.

"When we want to leave, no one can keep us, and when we want to fight, no one can slip away from the battlefield!" Shi Diwen proudly gave this warship carrying the highest scientific and technological achievements of Haihan extremely high praise, and its advantages in speed and firepower make it proud of its maritime competitors in the entire Far East.

After Xu Xinsu visited the power facilities and weapons on the ship, he had to convincingly admit Shi Diwen's statement. Xu Xinsu definitely didn't want to meet an opponent like Haihan in his lifetime, and he even had a little sympathy for Eighteen Zhi, because those bandits entrenched on the island didn't know what kind of trouble they had provoked.

As far as Xu Xinsu understands about Eighteen Zhi, the other party does not have any warships on hand that can fight against the monster of "Wei Signal", and there is probably no other way to escape when encountering it at sea - of course, whether it can escape or not depends on the mood of the Haihan commander. As for the battle, Xu Xinsu thinks that there will be no suspense, and the ship of Haihan is enough to beat several times the opponent. Although Eighteen Zhi claimed to have many ships, there were hundreds of ships under the command of a big leader, and there were probably not as many cannons as on this "prestige signal", and the difference in force between the two sides was more than one level.

Shi Diwen ordered the sail to slow down, and after waiting for a long time, the follow-up troops finally caught up. Naturally, the Haihan Navy was accustomed to such situations, and the "Wei Signal" and "Weiyan" would often leave their teammates behind and run alone for a section during sea training to test whether the operation of the steam propulsion system was stable. However, the Ming army sailors who participated in this military exercise witnessed such a spectacle for the first time, this huge Haihan warship suddenly accelerated with smoke, and as soon as the smoke escaped, the fleet was thrown behind, if it was not for the flag on the flagship for the fleet to follow, the officers of the naval division would probably really think that they had seen a ghost in the daytime.

Some officers of the Ming Army, who had doubts about the content of the military exercises arranged by Haihan, were basically convinced. Not to mention whether to fight or not, the speed of other people's warships alone is enough to make people give up resistance - they can't even catch up, how can this be played?

After the "Wei Signal" returned to the fleet, he no longer served as a Chinese army, but took up the work of piloting. Although this sea area is relatively unfamiliar to the Haihan Navy, the ship also arranged for several veteran sailors provided by Xu Xinsu to assist in navigating the sea. As for the use of wind direction and ocean current changes, the Haihan Navy, which has received advanced navigation training, has obvious advantages, and the performance of the "Wei Signal" is already outstanding, so it can lead the fleet to move with higher efficiency when piloting.

When the fleet arrived off the coast of Quanzhou, it was more than an hour earlier than expected, and for this voyage of only more than 50 nautical miles, it was not easy to shorten the sailing time so much, and it was really difficult to do it if it were not for the Haihan Navy.

After arriving at the predetermined sea area, the fleet began to practice coordinated operations at sea according to the plan. Under the leadership of the "Wei Signal", several warships began to learn how to seize the upper hand and use the side of the ship to face the enemy, that is, how to seize the tactics of the T-shaped in modern naval warfare.

This tactic is indeed a bit ahead of the Ming army sailors who are still using various primitive firearms as the main output, but as the Fujian sailors gradually purchase Haihan warships, the firepower output will rely more on the artillery equipped on both sides, and this tactic of maximizing the firepower output of the ship's side is still something that must be mastered. However, only a very small number of high-ranking officers of the Fujian naval division had been taught this kind of tactic in Sanya, but after returning to Fujian, they were completely unable to practice it, because the reason for the emergence of this tactic was that warships equipped with a large number of gunwales began to be equipped with surface troops, but there were few warships on the Fujian side that could be called gunboats.

The Fujian Naval Division, which usually does not have the opportunity to train at all, is fortunate to be able to follow the Haihan Navy to train this tactic, which is still very advanced in the Far East. Shi Diwen gave various orders while explaining the wonders of this tactic to Xu Xinsu.

In fact, there is no need for Shi Diwen to explain too much, Xu Xinsu already understands seven or eight points when he sees this queue. To put it simply, it is to use the superior firepower of your own gun's gun's to suppress a limited number of guns in the bow or stern of the opponent's ship, and the long line of your own gunboats is simply a moving artillery position. If you go sideways like this, even if your opponent's ship is not sunk, it is estimated that it is not much closer to capsizing.

Similar to this tactic, Xu Xinsu knows that the red-haired people and the Francophone people also have them, but their proficiency is probably not as good as the Haihan people who are proficient in navigation, and if you want to talk about the flexible Cheng dù of warships at sea, it must still be the first work of Haihan.

Although no target ships were arranged to shoot live ammunition, just walking in a line twice at sea, Xu Xinsu was able to make up what it would be like in battle. He had heard that the Haihan had defeated Liu Xiang's fleet at the mouth of the Pearl River with fewer victories and more victories, and had caused it to collapse from then on, and he thought that he had relied on this advanced tactic.

It was not until the sky slowly darkened that Shi Diwen ordered the exercise to be terminated, and the fleet sailed to Quanzhou Port to rest.

Quanzhou Port has been open for 1,000 years, known as the world's largest port, in the "Marco Polo Travels" that Quanzhou Port can be as famous as Alexandria in Egypt. During the Song and Yuan dynasties, Quanzhou was the most important foreign trade port in China, with more than 70 countries and regions having commercial and trade exchanges. However, in the later part of the Yuan Dynasty, the "Yisi Baxi War" in Quanzhou lasted for ten years, and this war hit Quanzhou's social economy hard, and began to decline. After the Ming Dynasty, due to the implementation of the maritime ban policy by the imperial court, Quanzhou could only trade with the Ryukyus, and the city of Fujian also moved north to Fuzhou, and the foreign trade status of Quanzhou Port further declined. By the time the traveler came to this time and space, during the Apocalypse and Chongzhen years, the status and scale of Quanzhou Port were no longer as good as that of the nearby Zhangzhou Port.