Chapter 25 Grandma Zhang enters the Grand View Garden (14) Super Battleship

Although he finally decided to build a flat-bottomed boat, Liu Hou did not plan to build a boat casually according to the technology of this era. He wants to build a "super battleship" of this era.

First of all, the ship must be very large, it must be divided into several layers, otherwise how can it fit dozens or hundreds of guns? "House Boat"! According to the craftsmen who dug up from Soochow, the ship built by Liu Hou belonged to the "Lou Ship".

During the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, Wu and Yue were already able to build building ships, and the "Yuhuang" that King Wu Lu took was a building ship. The building ship built during the conquest of Nanyue by Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty can carry 1,000 people and is about 28 meters high, which is as tall as several floors today.

It is even said that Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty once built a giant ship, called the "Yuzhang Big Ship", which can carry 10,000 people, and the ship can build a palace, of course, this cannot be a warship.

During the Three Kingdoms period, the building ships built by the state of Wu for warfare were very large, and the ships could build 5 floors and carry up to 3,000 people, which was the main force of water warfare. The usual tactics are to ram an enemy ship or directly board an enemy ship for hand-to-hand combat.

Therefore, the size of the ships in this era directly affected the number of soldiers on board, and therefore the outcome of the battle. In addition to the high-rise buildings, each floor is also built with a defensive female wall, and the first floor of the female wall also has sword holes, spear holes, etc., which can be attacked from a distance and can be defended closely, and there are also defensive weapons such as stones and iron thorns, which is simply a mobile city.

The Taiping Yulan records that the famous ships of Eastern Wu include: Feiyun, Gaihai, Chang'an, Red Dragon, Chima, Qinglong Battleship, Chenyu and so on.

However, it is dangerous to build a ship so high and a flat-bottomed boat. Where does the danger come from? Later generations can see at a glance: the center of gravity is too high, and it is easy to fall!

Due to the problem of the center of gravity and poor wind resistance, the building ship can only be used in inland rivers and lakes, and the risk of going to sea is extremely high, and it is easy to sink. Among them, the more famous is that the "five-floor boat" commanded by Wu General Dong Xi encountered a strong wind on the water surface of the Yangtze River, and the result was overturned, and Dong Xi drowned; In addition, Sun Quan's "Chang'an" building ship was also sunk by a storm on the sea.

Liu Hou is very worried about this problem, since he can't build a steeple-bottomed boat to improve his ability to resist wind and waves, so he can only build it so high. Therefore, Liu Hou decided that his "super battleship" would only build 3 floors. The province is too high, top-heavy, and the boat capsizes when it is blown by the wind, and it will be miserable.

Liu Hou and Zhang Xingcai came to the shipyard and went directly to the dock to visit. They ascended to a tall building that overlooked the entire dockyard, and the large ship under construction was visible to them.

I saw a behemoth at my feet, full of prehistoric beasts. The behemoth had a long keel running through the head and tail, and there were beams at intervals in the keel, like the ribs of a prehistoric behemoth. Countless craftsmen and workers were busy around this behemoth, like a swarm of ants crawling up and down on a giant beetle.

The ship was designed to be 24 zhang (about 55 meters) long, 4 zhang (9.2 meters) above the water level, could carry 1,000 people, and could carry 10,000 people, using the algorithm of later generations, the displacement of this ship should be close to 1,500 tons. In fact, a ship of this scale can only be regarded as an ordinary size in Soochow, and it is far from being comparable to their "building ship".

It is a technical reason to build so small, after all, Liu Hou's shipbuilding industry here has just started, and the craftsmen are all from all over the world.

The second is the problem of cost, Liu Hou now has to make money everywhere, especially in the investment in firearms is a bottomless pit, although in recent years various industries have flourished, but it is impossible to come up with too much money to build ships at once. I can only settle for the next best thing and make it smaller.

Another reason is the problem of time, building such a large ship is not a day or two, a month or two months can be built, and the construction period is often counted in years. Liu Hou calculated, it is estimated that it will not be many years before Guan Yu carelessly loses Jingzhou, time is urgent, and the boat is urgently needed, so now he can't be too greedy and chew too much.

The top priority is to get a ship out for use first, don't need to send troops to rescue Guan Yu when the time comes, the ship has not been built yet, so even if you build a big ship, it is useless if you can't launch it.

Moreover, Liu Hou's so-called "super battleship" is not a traditional cold-weapon warship, so it looks at the strength of the firepower, not the size of the ship. Of course, generally speaking, the ship is larger, and the more personnel and materials it loads, the combat power will be stronger. Especially in the era of cold weapons, the number of people is an important indicator of the size of combat effectiveness.

Of course, Liu Hou's ship will not be the old routine of using cold weapons, according to Liu Hou's understanding of watching pirate films, the combat power of the battleship is determined by the number of artillery. Therefore, Liu Hou designed his "super battleship" to set up three rows of guns on each side of the ship, one row on each floor, and 15 guns in each row.

In this way, there were 45 guns on each side of the ship, 90 on both sides, plus 1 in the bow and 1 in the stern, for a total of 92 guns on the whole ship. When the battle was about to take place, the side of the ship was facing the enemy, and 45 guns in three rows, plus 2 guns in the bow and stern, a total of 47 guns bombarded the enemy.

This can no longer be described as terrifying, this kind of firepower, at least surpassing many pirate ships in the later Age of Discovery, has almost reached the firepower level of the battleships of some Western countries in the 17th century. Liu Hou did not believe that there was any ship in this era that could withstand a salvo of this "super battleship".

However, now Liu Hou does not have any artillery used on ships. His five bronze cannons were obviously too powerful and too close in range to be of little use on the ship. Therefore, from this moment on, it is necessary to start casting some large-caliber cannons. Fortunately, the ship had a sufficient displacement, and the guns mounted on the ship did not need to be considered too much about the weight.

The incomparably heavy red-clothed cannon and general cannon in Liu Hou's head in the later generations can come in handy. These cannons could have been cast entirely in iron, and since the walls were too thick and bulky to move, they were not a problem when placed on a ship.

Therefore, as long as these shipborne guns consider the range and power, Liu Hou plans not to consider even the cost issue, or to build this battleship into a monster with fierce firepower regardless of the cost. In the end, Liu Hou set the specifications of the shipborne gun as: caliber 120 mm, gun length 2.2 meters, artillery company gun weight 800 kg. The effective firing range of this gun is 900 meters, the loading capacity: 12 kg.

Of course, hitting one or two kilometers away is not a problem, but the accuracy and power are not guaranteed.

"Little Adou, look, what is that?" Zhang Xingcai patted Liu Hou's shoulder with one hand, and pointed to the prototype of the battleship below with the other. Because the height is higher than Liu Hou, Zhang Xingcai's action of patting Liu Hou's shoulder seems very natural.

"What? Where do you say? "Liu Hou is confused, such a large range, how do you know where you are referring to?

"It's the stuff that is a grid. Why are there some small lattices in the bottom of the boat? ”

"Oh, that's ......" Liu Hou took a closer look, only to find that the bottom of the boat was indeed covered with lattices. After a little thought, I knew what it was. Watertight cabins! That is what Liu Hou learned when he visited an aircraft carrier in his later life.

When the Soviet Union collapsed and many military facilities were sold cheaply, a company in Shenzhen bought back a decommissioned aircraft carrier and transformed it into a theme park open to the public. Liu Hou also visited this behemoth that once dominated the ocean, and also learned some knowledge about ships and aircraft carriers by the way.

On that aircraft carrier, Liu Hou knew for the first time that the interior of the big ship was composed of these watertight compartments that could be isolated from water.

"It's a watertight compartment, a separate space isolated by bulkheads that don't easily permeate water." Liu Hou explained.

"What's the purpose of this watertight chamber?" Zhang Xingcai bit his fingers and asked with a curious baby look.

"The role is very great, one is to strengthen the hull and increase the structural strength of the hull."

"The second is that the watertight bulkhead separates the cabins from each other, and during the voyage, even if one or two cabins are damaged and enter the water, the water will not flow to the other cabins. From the overall point of view of the ship, it still maintains considerable buoyancy and does not sink. Therefore, the watertight bulkhead can improve the sinking resistance of the ship. ”

Liu Hou poured out as much knowledge about the watertight cabin as he could in his head. Of course, there were more than two benefits of a watertight chamber, but that's all he remembered.

"Wow, that really helps! That way, even if you get hit by an enemy, you won't be sunk, right? Zhang Xingcai asked.

"Yes, you are right, as long as the damage is not very severe, the ship can still be exercised, and at this time, some cargo and heavy objects can be abandoned, and the ship can still maintain a certain amount of mobility."

"Well, that's great, isn't this genius invention coming up with by Master Zuo?"

"Uh...... Be. Liu Houdao, but he thought in his heart: "How can this bull-nosed old Taoist have so many skills, and I didn't teach him." ”

Archaeological findings show that the watertight compartment was invented in the Tang Dynasty, and was widely used in sea ships after the Song Dynasty, and some inland river ships also adopted it. Liu Hou proposed this epoch-making structure ahead of time, and China's shipbuilding technology advanced out of thin air for hundreds of years.

"I really didn't expect our master to be so powerful, he knows everything. Well, I've decided, I must learn all his skills back, and I'll become 'Zhang Shenxian' in the future, wow, Kaka......"

Seeing Zhang Xingcai laughing wantonly, Liu Hou couldn't bear to hit her, he knew from later generations that for children, encouragement is much more useful than criticism, so he said:

"If you can really learn his skills, then of course you will be very powerful, and maybe you will become a goddess admired by all people-immortals. But it's not enough to just talk about it, you have to study it carefully. Master Zuo's knowledge is vast and profound, far beyond the knowledge of the mortal world, and if you don't work hard enough, you may not be able to learn much. ”

"Don't worry, I will work hard and learn from him." Zhang Xingcai said viciously, with the meaning of pulling his arms and trousers.

"Little Adou, you said, what kind of watertight cabin does our ship have, is it invincible in the world, and when the time comes, let's see whose ship can beat us. Hmph, they all say that Dongwu's ship is powerful, when the time comes, let them see the power of our watertight ship, when the time comes, their ship will sink into the water, our ship will not sink no matter how it hits, they are not dumbfounded, wow Ka Ka! ”

"Uh......" Liu Hou was speechless again, this Nizi really has the temperament of a savage girlfriend. Colliding with each other is the act of barbarians, we are civilized people, how can we compare with others to collide with boats. ”

"How can you fight a water war if you don't hit the boat?" It is no wonder that in this era of cold weapons, water warfare is nothing more than those routines, throwing stones at bed crossbows, archery, and even stone throwers in long-distance battles; Melee combat is the collision of ships, and then the soldiers go out to jump in the gang to attack.

And the most exciting and impressive is undoubtedly the collision. So many warships were equipped with ramming horns. With a "boom", the long collision angle crashed into the enemy's ship, knocking the enemy ship out of a large hole, and then slowly sinking, or directly crushing the enemy's boat into pieces, such a scene makes people's blood boil when you think about it.