"You say it's not a battleship?" Liu Yifeng pointed to the Zheng He-class ship far away from the port, and asked Li Hongji beside him: "Didn't you say that the pointed bow and the triangular soft sail must be a battleship?" ”

"Big leader, Zheng He-class is indeed a battleship, but that one is not."

"Why?"

"Because all the artillery is down."

Liu Yifeng carefully recalled the Zheng He-level before leaving Hong Kong, and it was indeed as Li Hongji said, not a single artillery could be seen on the exposed deck. Not only that, but the muzzles on the walls of the ship can also be seen to be sealed from the inside.

"It should be the modified Zheng He class, which is specially used to transport big shots. Although the Zheng He class is complicated to operate, it is said to be the best and fastest ship now. ”

"Big shots? Aren't we sitting at the Zheng He level? ”

Li Hongji secretly rolled his eyes and said, "Big boss, we are on a treasure ship." ”

"That treasure ship that Zheng He went to the West!?"

"Where is the West?"

"Don't worry." Liu Yifeng waved his hand and continued to ask: "Are we on a big treasure boat?" ”

"Hmm."

"But doesn't that mean that all the drawings of the treasure ship have been destroyed?"

"Chief, who did you listen to? Why destroy the blueprints of the treasure ship? ”

The generally accepted theory in the academic community is that after the Tianshun Dynasty stopped going to the Western Ocean, the relevant materials of the treasure ships were only sealed and not destroyed, and the relevant documents of the Ming Dynasty's treasure ships were destroyed in the Qing Dynasty.

Liu Yifeng hurriedly changed his words and said, "Oh, I also listened to others. ”

"That's." Li Hongji said categorically: "The drawings of the treasure ship are well preserved in Yingtianfu, and the Fujian capital has always had treasure ships in service, and after the establishment of the navy, a large number of treasure ships have been added on a large scale." ”

After speaking, he pointed out of the port, the Zheng He-class had become a black spot, and more than a dozen black spots appeared in the sky.

"Those should be the treasure ships that have come to pick us up."

Liu Yifeng was very excited, after all, Zheng He's treasure ship in the Western Ocean was the largest all-wooden sailing ship built in the history of mankind!

The Galen ship left a lot of literature, and even the physical hull, and Liu Yifeng was not interested in the Galen ship. But Zheng He's treasure ship disappeared in the long river of history, not only the hull was completely destroyed, but all official documents and drawings were also completely destroyed, and later archaeologists can only guess by a few words.

Now not only has the opportunity to see the true face, but also can ride in person, can Liu Yifeng not be excited.

When the dozen or so treasure ships approached the port, everyone looked over.

"Why is the sail of this ship different from the one just now, the soil is yellow and the white sail just now looks much more magnificent."

"You know a fart, the boat just now is obviously the boat of the big guys, and we people are riding on this kind of earthy and yellow boat."

"That boat was so tall just now, why are these boats so short?"

Feng Shuo and the leaders of the other four trading houses also gathered around, and they discussed one after another. They also heard part of the conversation between Li Hongji and Liu Yifeng before, and Feng Shuo asked directly: "Li Hongji, why are the two ships different?" ”

After all, Li Hongji is still a young man under the age of 20, and he still enjoys this kind of situation where everyone pays attention to him, and said a little proudly:

"The previous ship was a warship, but it didn't have artillery. The kind of boat is fast, nimble, and best for long-distance sailing. But the carrying capacity is not as good as the treasure ship we are going to sit on, and although our treasure ship is relatively slow and bulky, it has a large carrying capacity. ”

"Why?"

"Li Hongji, why is the warship so tall?"

"Aren't they all boats, why do you use two kinds of sails?"

"What's the difference between that white sail and this earthy yellow sail?"

Everyone's questions confused Li Hongji's face, but he couldn't answer any of them.

After all, he had only heard some common sense of the navy in the Southern Army, not really served in the navy, let alone an expert, so he could only move several times with his mouth open but couldn't say anything.

The answer to these questions is simple: the soft sail is the nautical system of the Mediterranean cultural circle that includes the Persian civilization, the Arab civilization, the Greek civilization and the Roman civilization, while the hard sail is the nautical system that belongs to the Chinese cultural circle alone.

These treasure ships are multi-masted, and they are all stiff sails made of bamboo. Some of the canvas is made of plant fibers, such as bamboo mats, and some are canvas soaked in special potions, so the color is mostly earthy yellow.

This is the unique hard sail of Chinese civilization.

The layout of a hard sail is much simpler than that of a soft sail, without the need for complex and cumbersome struts, just a simple anchor point to control each strut, which can then be combined into a pulley system to control its hoisting and lowering.

And the person who operates that pulley can even be streamlined to a skilled hand. Soft sails can't do that, requiring at least two skilled sailors per sail, and up to a dozen sails with the full sail extended.

For the same area, the wind power accepted and converted by the hard sail is higher than that of the soft sail, so the mast of the hard sail does not need to be too high, because the hard sail system does not need as many sails. Soft sails tend to have extremely tall masts, and some transoms are also extremely wide, all in order to hang more canvas to generate power comparable to that of hard sails, which also leads to the cost of soft sails far exceeding that of hard sails.

Of course, these are the advantages of hard sailing, and it also has disadvantages.

The first is that in complex sea conditions, the agility of a hard sail is much lower than that of a soft sail.

Because there are many sails, each sail can accept different angles of wind power under the control of skilled hands, so that the boat can maintain a certain amount of power. Hard sails, on the other hand, have a mast and are often very large, and the maneuverability is extremely low.

Therefore, in the face of complex sea conditions and wind directions, the only choice for hard sails is to retract the sails, and soft sails can also take risks in addition to retracting the sails under the control of skilled hands.

Also because of the bulkiness of the hard sail, if it is the kind of voyage that does not dock for a long time, the efficiency of the soft sail is also much higher than that of the hard sail.

First of all, the soft sail can be repaired in time, and if it is not repaired, the square sail can be cut into a spinnaker, and the spinnaker can be cut into a multi-sided small spinnaker, and if it can't be repaired, it can be removed from that side of the canvas.

However, the hard sail is made on one side from the beginning, and once there is a breach that can no longer be used, the ability of the whole sail to catch the wind is lost. If the ship did not have a spare sail, the mast would have to be left empty.

Because of the presence of the struts, the hard sail occupies much more area than the soft sail canvas, and the cabin is limited after all. Therefore, for long-term voyages without docking, the efficiency of soft sails is definitely higher than that of hard sails.

Finally, the overall speed, the bulkiness of the hard sail causes its utilization of the headwind to be much lower than the downwind, and it is impossible to have a tailwind all the time on the sea, so the overall speed, the hard sail is weaker than the soft sail.

In general: for merchants with many docks in the offshore sea, the hard sails with high cost performance far exceed the soft sails. For ocean and sea voyages or sea operations, flexible and well-maintained soft sails crush hard sails.

Liu Yifeng subconsciously finished popularizing the Chinese hard sail and the Mediterranean soft sail, and suddenly realized that there was silence around him.

He looked back and found that from Li Hongji to Feng Shuo to the four leaders and several officials of the Maritime Safety Bureau, they were all stunned and looked at themselves stupidly.

In fact, most of them didn't understand it too much, but they also had a vague feeling that what Liu Yifeng said seemed to be right: I can understand every word, but I can't understand it when it is connected, but it seems to be very powerful.

Because I think it's very powerful, I must not expose myself to not understand, so everyone has a serious face.

However, two of them basically understood, one was Li Hongji, who had been enlightened in the Southern Army, and the other was a man in his 20s.

Maybe he shouldn't be called a man, because judging from his dress, he is a father-in-law of Dongchang.