"The little brother has seen Boss Qiu, this is a little heart."

"Shopkeeper Zhang is too polite, quick, come into the house and sit."

After the nourishing greetings, Liu Yifeng finally sat in the reception room of the Fleet Chamber of Commerce. The decoration here is very luxurious, which shows the wealth of the fleet chamber of commerce.

In fact, there are very few poor people who can join the fleet chamber of commerce, and the chamber of commerce has a selection of members, and the chamber of commerce does not accept those boat owners who know at a glance that they can only run short distances.

It can be said that each shipkeeper of the Chamber of Commerce has the ability to travel back and forth between Dongshan Prefecture and the mainland alone, and unless this kind of shipkeeper is sunk by a natural disaster, there will be no poor people. Moreover, after joining the Chamber of Commerce, in the face of the shipkeeper who was unlucky and sank the ship, the Chamber of Commerce has an extremely preferential loan policy, which is actually the real reason why many shipkeepers flock to the fleet chamber of commerce.

It is very normal for such a fleet chamber of commerce to have deep pockets. However, Liu Yifeng is more interested in the many ship models placed on both sides of the lobby than the luxurious decoration. If this is seen by those poisoned ship model enthusiasts in later generations, it is estimated that they will go crazy.

"Shopkeeper Zhang is also interested in ship models?"

"Mainly, I haven't seen it."

Hearing this, Boss Qiu, as the landlord, naturally took Liu Yifeng to visit.

"This is, Nanyang-class?"

Liu Yifeng looked at the 1-meter-long ship model with a very familiar structure and recognized it as the Nanyang-class that he had been staying in for several months.

"Shopkeeper Zhang is very knowledgeable."

Boss Qiu's words are generally flattering and complimenting. As one of the largest ships in the Ming Dynasty, the Nanyang-class has indeed seen many people but also not too little, but what really shocked him was that Liu Yifeng actually knew Zheng He-class.

"Shopkeeper Zhang knows someone from the Navy?"

"Hehe, I have a friend who serves in the South Seas and is a wave-breaking captain."

Boss Qiu was suddenly a little awe-inspired, he also knew a lot of middle-level officers in the navy, and he also knew a few of Captain Breaking Waves, but he was born in the Zheng family, and Liu Yifeng, who was obviously not in their circle, could know Captain Breaking Waves, either he had other hard backgrounds, or he had some chances.

Don't look at the fact that there are 5 Zheng He-class ships in Dongshan Prefecture, and now they are basically docked at the port of Jinshan City, in fact, there are not many people who have seen Zheng He-class, and even fewer people can recognize Zheng He-class at a glance. Even in the eyes of many shipkeepers, there is no difference between Zheng He's class and Wang's Karak sailboats, except for size and tonnage.

For them, it's all soft sailboats.

But for Liu Yifeng, the difference between the Karak ship and the Galen ship is still arguable to the naked eye.

Zheng He-class is a first-class soft sailing ship designed by Daming after thoroughly understanding the technical indicators of the Karak ship, integrating the technology of Huaxia ships, and is basically one of the most advanced ships in the world.

The whole ship is a complete collection of the essence of Chinese and Europa boat design.

The technology on the Europa side is mainly reflected in the layout of the shelling compartment and the soft sail power system, while the technology on the Huaxia side is mainly reflected in the hull structure and watertight compartments.

Many people in later generations thought that the watertight compartment was invented by the Europa, but in fact the watertight compartment was invented by the Han Chinese. The first recorded watertight compartment was in the Tang Dynasty, but the widespread use of watertight compartments was in the Song Dynasty. The first time the Europa people used watertight compartments was in the middle of the 18th century, and the second empire on which the sun never set had already dominated the seas began to use watertight compartments on their warships.

However, a lot of the data of the Zheng He class is still confidential, this ship model is not as well-made as the Nanyang class, and there is only a shell, and the internal structure is empty, unlike other ship models that can even be dismantled one by one and then installed.

Among the subsequent ship models, there are the most lucky ships in China, the Guangzhou boat, the bird boat and the sand boat, and these four ship types are also known as the four ancient ships in China. In fact, there is still a treasure ship, but it is a pity that the Manchu Qing Dynasty destroyed 99% of the documents of the treasure ship, so that future generations can only rely on a few words to imagine.

Among the four ancient ships, the oldest is the sand boat, the main ship type of the Tang Dynasty, and its prototype is the anti-sand flat-bottomed boat that existed in the Qin and Han dynasties and the Northern and Southern Dynasties. In the past thousand years, the ship technology has been passed down in one line, and at most the shape and size of the ship have not changed.

The first technological innovation was the Fu ship in the Song and Yuan dynasties, the lower part of the ship was no longer flat-bottomed, but sharp-bottomed, which made the Fu ship have a stability far beyond that of a sand ship on the sea.

Then there are the bird boats and the wide ships of the Ming Dynasty, but in essence, the bird boats and the wide ships are the enhanced version of the Fu boat, which can barely be understood as the Fu Boat Plus Youth Edition. In particular, the technology of bird boats has basically not changed. The Hirofune was relatively better, using harder wood in the use of wood, resulting in the cost being about twice as expensive as that of the Fufune.

Listening to Boss Qiu's explanation, Liu Yifeng gradually understood why he saw the most lucky boats, followed by the Guangzhou boats, and most of the boats collecting guano and fishing in the sea area between Caoshan City and Yushan City were bird boats, and more than half of the ferries in Jinshan Bay were sand boats.

"Our members are basically Fuchuan and Guangchuan."

"Are there many members of a soft sailing ship like the king's shopkeeper?"

Boss Qiu shook his head: "In the entire Dongshan Prefecture, except for the Zheng He class of the Navy, he is a soft sailing ship. However, there are a lot of soft sailing ships in the South Seas, after all, there are a lot of Dutch and Francois in the Annam Prefecture, and I heard that the Annam Metropolitan Protectorate is not the same as ours in pursuit of carrying capacity, and has begun to pursue speed. ”

Liu Yifeng can understand, after all, the climate in the Nanyang region is hot and humid, and the shelf life of some commodities is not long. In particular, certain commodities are completely destroyed once they get wet, such as spices. Most of the goods shipped to the mainland in Dongshan Prefecture do not care about slight moisture, such as fur and bird manure, and Dongshan Prefecture is far away from the mainland, so the shipping in Dongshan Prefecture is still dominated by Fu Ship and Guangzhou Ship, which pursue the carrying capacity.

"If there is a carrying capacity of the Nanyang-class and the speed of the Zhenghe-class in the future, it is estimated that the Cantonese ships, the Fuchuan and the Dutch soft sailing ships will be useless."

Boss Qiu's exclamation gave Liu Yifeng a hint.

This kind of boat is not without in the age of sails, and that is the culmination of the era of sails: clippers!

However, he did not bring it up, he was a layman, and his understanding of the clipper was more reflected in the appearance. He reminded himself to recall as much as possible the shape of the take-off clipping, and then found a ship design expert and asked him to design it.

After the two chatted a few more words about the difference between hard sails and soft sails, Boss Qiu completely agreed that Liu Yifeng mentioned in the letter written to him by Shopkeeper Wang had a military background.

The reason is very simple, Liu Yifeng really knows too much about soft sailing boats.

In order to reconfirm, he took the initiative to talk about his origins.

"Zheng?" Liu Yifeng asked: "Could it be the descendants of the Three Treasure Eunuchs?" ”

Boss Qiu nodded, and shook his head again: "The Zheng family is indeed the descendant of the Three Treasure Eunuchs, but our lineage is not the Zheng family, but the people who went to the sea with the Three Treasure Eunuchs back then." ”

After Boss Qiu's explanation, Liu Yifeng understood what Zheng was.

When Zheng He went to the West as an act strongly supported by Emperor Jianwen, the tilt of countless resources must have cultivated the existence of a family. Although in the next hundred years, with the ban on the Ming Sea, these families with no background slowly fell, but the characteristics of the seafarers who united and held together when they went to sea allowed them to form a consortium called the Zheng family by later generations.

Some of them became officials, some became maritime merchants, and some even joined the Jiajing Dynasty. Although the Zheng family's alliance has no foundation, the huge wealth after the union has allowed them to survive the painful period of no foundation. After the Wanli Dynasty opened the sea ban, the Zheng Department, which had accumulated for more than a hundred years, tightly hugged the thigh of the Maritime Safety Bureau, and it developed.

At present, there are Zheng officials in the Maritime Safety Bureau, Zheng faction in the navy, Zheng craftsmen in the ship field, and Zheng shopkeepers in the private boat runners. These vested interests of Zheng He who went to the West did not have a single person surnamed Zheng, but they still united under the banner of this surname, as if they had become a behemoth in the navigation field of the Ming Dynasty.

Liu Yifeng is quite interested in this Zheng family, and he feels that it is the shipbuilding capital consortium of the Ming Dynasty. He also understood that Boss Qiu must ask for something to show his background, which made him a little worried, because he had nothing and had to figure out what the other party wanted, so he took the initiative to say:

"Boss Qiu, I'm just a retired soldier from Beiting who came to Dongshan Prefecture to explore, and I really don't know much about navigation."

Boss Qiu also heard that Liu Yifeng was testing his purpose, and said with a smile: "Shopkeeper Zhang, our Zheng Department only has some energy in the field of navigation, but we still have to rely on friends to help us in other fields." ”

"For example?"

"For example, the Beiting Army, such as the Southern Army, such as the Western Army."

Liu Yifeng raised his eyebrows and smiled bitterly, the three armies that Boss Qiu said had only one thing in common, and that was weapons. And the weapon they asked for was certainly not a sword, a sword, or a halberd, but a firearm.