"Look, what a big ship!"

When the passenger ship "Qishun" left the port of Vinh An and passed through the narrow Quang Ninh Strait, which was named Xinghuo Island (the famous Krakatoa Island in the Sunda Strait today), many passengers lay on the right side of the ship, watching the steam rising from the mountain peaks on the island, and they could not help but sigh at the wonder of nature.

Several well-informed passengers said that the peak of the island was a volcano and that its interior was constantly moving violently, and that a geology expert from the Academy of Sciences who had visited the island asserted that the volcano, when it had accumulated enough energy, would inevitably breathe fire outward, which could then endanger the coastal inhabitants on both sides of the strait.

Fan Agui listened, with a half-believing look on his face, but he didn't dare to ask.

It's amazing that the mountains on the island can breathe fire on their own!

Is there a lot of flammable material in the mountains?

The island is surrounded by seawater, so why not put out a few buckets of water?

Also, such a small hill, even if it breathes fire, how can it affect the distance between the two sides of the strait?

I'm afraid this person is bragging!

In "Journey to the West", there are red children who can spray three flavors of real fire, and there are also hundreds of miles of vast flame mountains, which are so powerful that even Sun Monkey can't resist them.

Even if this small ruined island is on fire, at most the trees and flowers on it will be ignited and burned to the shore, or it will be splashed by the sea.

When Fan Agui was pondering in his heart, he suddenly heard a few loud whistles, looking for prestige, but saw a huge merchant ship coming to the right side of the "Qishun" they were riding, and when it passed by them by mistake, it sounded several whistles in a row, as if to greet the passengers on board warmly.

I thought that the passenger ship I was taking was very large, but compared with this merchant ship, it was inevitably dwarfed, and this body was more than half smaller.

My mother, if this ship is loaded with people, I'm afraid it can pull thousands of people!

"It's the Shengshi!" A sharp-eyed sailor said loudly: "This is the largest ship in our Qi country at present, with a length of more than 110 meters, a width of nearly 20 meters, and a full load displacement of more than 8,000 tons!" ”

In this period, the scale of the construction of wooden ships, in technology, has reached the limit of length. Therefore, the "Shengshi", which was launched in 1723, was built with a cast iron frame and a wooden shell, which made this large ship break through the original limit. The hull is also divided into watertight compartments by bulkheads, and the ship's steam engines and equipment are distributed between the cabins, which fully ensures the stability and safety of the ship.

However, the ship was rather inconvenient to operate, due to the long length of the boat, and the fact that its beautiful bird's beak shape and stern made the hull susceptible to waves at sea, which could corrode the hull.

The "Shengshi" is a full-sail ship, unlike naval sailing warships, which can only be equipped with a sylon-sail sail as an auxiliary equipment for its propellers and steam engines in order to equip more guns on deck.

The Shengshi is equipped with a powerful steam engine manufactured by Daqi Heavy Industries, which can propel it to a speed of more than 14 knots, which is much faster than many foreign warships. The ship's single propeller is equipped with a lifting gear device that allows it to be retracted into the aft wall tunnel.

The main reason why this huge merchant ship did not have its sails removed was due to economic considerations. After all, in the case of a steam engine, it costs a lot of money to burn a large amount of coal.

But in the case of wind, as long as the sails are raised, a lot of coal can be saved.

It doesn't cost a penny!

One of the most critical factors is the problem of fresh water for steam boilers, which makes steamships usually store more water than pure sailboats for boiler boiling.

It is true that steamships have many advantages over pure sailboats, such as the fact that they do a better job than sailboats when sailing into hydrologically complex rivers or ports in the case of near-no wind and straight headwinds.

However, compared to the fact that the ship can carry more cargo or people, and can save more money on the way, the steam-sail hybrid ship has a greater advantage than the full steam-driven ship, which is extremely important for the economical ocean carrier.

The development of steamships in Qi has been going through various twists and turns and repetitions for more than 30 years. In the early days of the steam engine, sailing ships still had many advantages, and they could survive almost any sea area and overcome the terrible waves.

In the early days, steam ships were faced with many disadvantages such as waves that could break or damage chimneys, extinguish steam boilers, and cut off their propeller blades.

In the early days, steamships could only reach an average speed of 5-7 knots in good weather. The fast sailing ships of the flying shear type in the Qi State sailed faster than the steamships in all circumstances, unless they were nearly windless and straight against the headwind.

More than 40 years ago, in the heyday of fast sailing, the formidable sails of sailing ships hung from the deck at a height of more than 30 meters, and the area of a front lower boom sail was 30 square meters.

In addition to square sails, there are usually 16 or more spinnakers from start to finish. Although these sails are relatively small, they have a better wind angle. When the ship is sailing, these triplet sails hung between the masts provide a lot of wind power. The jib and foremast strands located in the bow are actually rudder sails that assist in steering the bow when the helmsman needs to turn downwind. The afridge sloop schooner and slash mid-mast sail in the stern provide an opposite wind pressure and force the forward to reveal.

In normal sailing, in order to ensure a stable course, the deflection forces of all the shangers cancel each other out and form a forward momentum. The square sail suspended from the boom can be adjusted to a right angle to the keel, so that the wind can be maximized in downwind conditions. When the ship needs to change direction, the captain can force the behemoth to change direction by simply breaking the balance between the bow jib and the rear sloop.

The combined weight of the mast, boom and rigging on a typical four-masted galleon of the Qi Kingdom is more than 60 tons, but they are many times stronger than the old wooden masts and European hemp rigging. As a tradition, the rigging used to control the boom and sail of the high-speed sailing ships of the Qi Kingdom is the hemp rigging used in the Luzon region, which has become the largest producer of hemp rigging in the South Seas because of its abundant wild abaca.

The rigging and other bulky objects at the height of the sailboat are very complex and varied, some of the booms are more than 30 meters long, and the largest wings with a diameter of half a meter in the middle can weigh up to a ton when dry. If the metal wires, chains and Luzon hemp ropes in the rigging are joined end to end, they will stretch for several kilometres.

But everything is the same, and Qi's fast sailing ships always follow the most basic design principles. As the main power source, more than a dozen square sails are hung on the three huge main masts, which are designed to be short and wide, so that they are easy to maneuver and have the maximum wind surface area.

However, despite all the advantages of fast sailing, there is a fatal disadvantage in operation, that is, in order to control the complex and huge sails on board, it needs to be equipped with more sailors. A sailing ship with a displacement of about 2,000 tons, from the captain to the lowest level of sailor apprentices, has a crew of more than 300 people (if it is a battleship, the number will be more), of which there are nearly 200 sailors in shifts.

For a pure steam ship of the same size, all the operators add up to no more than fifty or sixty people, and the focus of the work has shifted from sail operation to the operation and maintenance of the bilge steam engine drive equipment.

With the development and improvement of steam-driven equipment for ships, in the past two decades, many reputable merchant ships have begun to adopt steam-sail hybrid ships on a large scale in order to provide services on time and reliably. During the voyage, the steam engine was mainly relied upon, and the sail was used as an auxiliary propulsion tool. They sail and continue sailing only when the machine is faulty.

Warships, on the other hand, sail by the power of the wind when cruising, and only turn to steam engines when there is no wind or the wind direction is unfavorable.

However, the Qi-British War, which has been going on for more than two years, has made the steam warships equipped with propellers shine, so that the Qi navy has gained unprecedented advantages in several naval battles, and perhaps for a long time in the future, it will stimulate the navies of various countries to launch a wave of large-scale sail warships to steam warships, and thus transmit it to civilian ships.

In this period, if there was one means of transportation that could change the world, it would be the railway.

The invention of this kind of land transportation weapon has made the inland areas lacking ports more closely linked with trade centers and political centers, the exchange of capital, personnel, and technology has become faster and cheaper, and the manpower and material resources that the country can mobilize at critical moments have also increased by more than an order of magnitude compared with before.

Without this thing, then the agrarian society would still be an agrarian society, limited by the distance barrier, the whole country was in a de facto feudal system, that is, the large and small landlords, as the emperor's vassals, tax collectors and bureaucratic reserves, in fact ruled over the peasants, who accounted for the absolute majority of the population, with low efficiency and limited output, how could this agrarian state rise?

In addition to the railway, the second place is undoubtedly the large-tonnage steel steamer. It has the advantages of fast speed, large cargo capacity, low cost, few operators, and ignores wind direction and ocean currents, which is simply an invention born for trade.

As soon as the two or three thousand ton steel steamers of Qi came out, there was a tendency to become popular, and it was likely to greatly change the course of the colonial world. Now they are already working on a new 8,000-ton ship that, if successful, will shock the world again and bring the entire sea and land closer together.

When the passenger ship "Qishun" left Yong'an, it encountered more ships along the way, including many steel steamers, spitting billowing smoke, clattering through the ocean, and sounding a loud whistle when they passed by.

There are also more red-haired and green-eyed Westerners on the passenger ship, which makes Fan Agui feel strange, and when he is breathing on the deck, or when eating in the restaurant, he frequently looks at them.

Hey, did these Yi people also go to Hanzhou itself?

Not only do these Yi people look very different from them, but they also eat differently. In the restaurant on the ship, these long-haired Yi people, three snacks a day, two big meals, the first to eat, is nothing more than roasted beef, sheep, chicken and fish. Then there are sweet steamed buns (bread), sugar cakes (biscuits), and a few slices of fruit. Drink cold water, sugar water (cocoa), milk, vegetable broth, sweet and bitter red wine, and butter, sweet potatoes, rice and other things.

Well, these Yi people should be rich people, dressed very decently, and eat very heartily.

Fan Agui looked at it and muttered with jealousy, looking at what they ate, the taste was not as good as a big white steamed bun in his hand, dipped in some spicy sauce, just a green onion, more flavorful.

The beef, sheep, chickens and fish that people eat are nothing more than roasted over fire, the outer layer is black and burnt, but the meat inside is still raw, fishy and hard. Even the fish and shrimp are sour and spicy, and the red wine is sour and bitter when you taste it, and the taste is really hard to swallow.

However, there are also some Yi people who are more enthusiastic about the oriental cuisine in the restaurant, but the appearance of the food, not to mention how funny. Because he can't use chopsticks, he holds a knife and fork to stir a plate of good dishes to a sparse mess, and even eats it well, and goes directly to grab it.

What a waste of money in the purse!

Spencer Compton, Minister Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of England and Baron of Wilmington, was very angry that he had attracted the prying eyes and onlookers of many people wherever he appeared on the ship, and considered it an affront to him.

As the third son of the third Earl of Nortamton of the Kingdom of England and the Speaker of the House of Commons, Spencer Compton has a respected status and is highly respected and flattered anywhere in the country.

Even after his close friend and the new King George II succeeded to the throne, he was once invited to replace Robert Walpole, the First Chancellor of the Exchequer (i.e., Prime Minister), to take over the government, and almost became the most powerful man in the kingdom, who could decide the fate of millions of people in the kingdom.

However, in order to put an end to the most painful war of the Kingdom of England, he had to endure a long and difficult journey, all the way to the East, to meet the Emperor of the Great Qi Empire in a humble and humiliating manner, and to ask the other side to lower and reduce some of the harsh terms of the peace talks, so as to give the Kingdom a decent armistice.

However, along the way, from the Canary Islands, to the territory of Qi in South Africa, to India, and finally through the Strait ......of Malacca, to Batavia, and finally to the mainland of Hanzhou, he and his attachés encountered unimaginable suffering, storms, hurricanes, water and soil, and oh, and the contempt shown by those Qi people along the way.

Since October last year, diplomatic representatives of Qi and Britain have held more than 10 rounds of talks in The Hague, but they have never been able to reach an armistice agreement.

The asking price of the Qi people is too high!

Not only to occupy several tropical islands in the British Caribbean, but also to force the Kingdom of England to withdraw from Ireland and allow it to become an independent state. What is even more unacceptable to England is that it actually wants to give the old tyrant James III an amnesty, let him return to Scotland, become the king of Scotland, achieve a certain degree of autonomy, and then form the Kingdom of Britain with England (England as early as May 1, 1707, Queen Anne issued a joint act to merge the Parliaments of Scotland and England, and the two kingdoms gave up their independent status).

There are also war reparations of 20 million pounds, the full opening of the domestic market, the reduction of import and export tariffs, and the granting of merchants and goods of Qi State super-national status, the king launched a war without authorization to confess his mistakes to Qi State...... there are all kinds of money, adding up to more than 30 paragraphs, but no matter which one of them, it is difficult for the royal government to accept.

The Qi people not only had to dismember the Kingdom of England, but also hollowed out the kingdom's family foundation, and then destroyed the kingdom's fragile industrial base. If it is forced to accept it completely, the kingdom will be in a situation from which it will never recover, let alone be unable to realize its influence on the European continent (interference), and it will be completely reduced to a small and marginal state of insignificance.

But if the fight continues, then the royal government will inevitably be dragged into an endless abyss, and there is no glimmer of victory in sight.

At the beginning of the war, many countries seemed to be happy with the defeat of the Kingdom of England. Spain wanted to wash away its shame, France wanted revenge, Sweden was deeply afraid of the kingdom's former backstabbing, and Prussia wanted to take advantage of Hanover's involvement in the crisis in England to try to expand its influence in Germany.

Even the former little friend, the Kingdom of Portugal, was anxious to get rid of the shackles and influence of the English at this time, and was ready to surrender to the country, and after ensuring that Brazil's interests would not be seriously damaged, it would even give up part of its overseas territories in Africa and the Atlantic in exchange for an armistice.

As far as one can see, there are not many partners in Europe who have come to the aid of the Kingdom of England. Russia was beaten by Sweden and retreated step by step, the capital St. Petersburg had been besieged for more than a year, and the Caucasus region was completely captured by the Zipper coalition forces. The Austrians, after Prince Eugen thwarted several successive Ottoman counterattacks, appeared to be a little weak to follow-up, so they stopped their large-scale military offensives, and while consolidating the occupied territories, they were also looking for opportunities to negotiate peace with the Ottomans.

The Venetians were even more miserable, after the Qi people came back to their senses, they united with the Ottoman Empire, from both sea and land directions, launched a fierce attack on this small country, the Venetian navy was sunk and damaged dozens of ships, not only lost the Adriatic sea power, but also lost all the territory on the east coast, the city of Venice was also besieged by the Qi navy, panicked, defeat and surrender is only a matter of time.

At a time when the Kingdom of England was in internal and external difficulties, it was to be thanked very much for the hard work of many English diplomatic envoys, who, through constant lobbying and persuasion, and the exchange of important interests, succeeded in changing some of their positions and actively intervening in the mediation of the war.

Subsequently, the Dutch, Danish, Poles, Austrians, and the kingdoms of Genoa, Sardinia, and Portugal all came forward to demand that Qi stop the war and restore the existing security situation in the North Atlantic and the Mediterranean.

Perhaps feeling the pressure of the European United Christian World, the attitude of the Qi delegates to the peace talks has also loosened somewhat, saying that they can make some concessions on the terms of the peace talks.

In this context, as a close friend of the King, Speaker of the House of Commons and President of the Privy Council, Spencer Compton was entrusted by His Majesty the King and Parliament to travel to the Qi mainland in the name of the King's Plenipotentiary Envoy to meet with the Emperor and the Prime Minister of the Qi State to make direct contact and consultations on the armistice between the two countries.

With each day of the war, the losses of the Kingdom of England increased by one point, and it was necessary to end it as soon as possible.

May God bless our Kingdom!

(End of chapter)