Early morning in Lisbon Outer Harbour.

On the fort at the beach, the lieutenant in charge of guards climbed the watchtower with a few sentries. Walking on the stairs, he heard snoring like thunder, and even the sound of waves could not be suppressed. The lieutenant went up and kicked the two on duty personnel in the butt. One of them rubbed his butt and muttered, "You hit me again, I have worked very hard."

As he said that, this guy untied his belt, took out the dark work, and began to release the pressure. The sentry was the lieutenant's brother-in-law, and could always be more presumptuous.

"You idiot, you actually slept at this time. Fortunately, I was just here." The lieutenant cursed.

The sentry said, "Brother-in-law, I don't want to do it anymore. I heard that the new port gave it to the Chinese. They built a lot of factories. Let's go to the factory to work, and we earn more than the soldiers."

"If you thought so a few months ago, I will support you." Seeing that the rest of the people were moved, the lieutenant said in public: "It's better not to do it now. After a few months, the port will be built and the Chinese Merchant Association will find us. Our fort will take into account the lighthouse. The Chinese Merchant Association will give some subsidies, so we can receive double salary..."

The few people were even more happy to hear it. Suddenly the guy who was peeing turned around and swept across everyone. Everyone started to scold him, but saw him pointing outside, his mouth wide open and unable to speak. After a while, he shouted, "Brother-in-law, brother-in-law, look what that is..."

The lieutenant glanced at it and immediately lit the cannon. The entire port became nervous with the cannon.

At noon, the king's servants came to the fort and angrily admonished a group of people: "You idiots don't know the steamboat, don't you know the Chinese flag on it? Stupid guys, you almost ruined the king's welcome ceremony. If the Chinese prince hadn't spoken for you, you would be in trouble."

The chaos caused by the fort was because the Portuguese soldiers on duty discovered a fleet rushing directly towards Lisbon, and there were two ships that were spitting black smoke and emitting metallic luster. They were the Imperial Navy's latest steam iron armored ships, the Iron-Block, the Round and the coal-water supply ship, the Wind. This was the first steam-powered ship to come to the European continent and the first iron armored ship. It caused an uproar in Lisbon, and tens of thousands of people flocked to the port to find out, and Li Junwei generously asked to hold a visit.

The birth of the Iron-Block warship is a microcosm of the imperial naval reform. It can be said that it has a bumpy fate, and everything starts with the naval reform that took place in the 21st year of the empire.

The main reason for the naval reform at that time was that warships with the old naval system were facing the dilemma of the battleships that could not fight from the ocean, and ships with ocean combat could not defeat the main ships of European naval powers. The entire naval system was bloated and serious bureaucracy was also the crux of the problem.

The equipment factors are easy to talk about. The Navy quickly gave a reform plan to build a heavy cruiser with transformation capabilities, because since the 23rd year of the Empire, the launch of the heavy cruiser of the Zhiyuan and American-class heavy cruisers has made great contributions to the Empire's American strategy.

At the beginning of the naval reform, Li Junhua, as the emperor, proposed an idea, that is, whether to use steam power and whether to add armor to naval warships to improve combat capabilities. Of course, Li Junhua didn't know much about the navy. His original intention was to add armor to battleships. Obviously, the center of gravity made it impossible.

The Naval Equipment Office comprehensively combines fleet needs and naval shipyard capabilities and provides a detailed report to show the navy's respect for the emperor. The conclusion of the report is that steam power and iron armor defense cannot be achieved at this stage. The emperor is asked to allocate funds to do preliminary research. It is expected that the emperor can have the warships envisioned by the emperor in the thirty years of the empire.

The Navy's report came up with several reasons, mainly technical issues, one of which is the power method. According to the Navy, although civilian ships gradually used steam power as early as the tenth year of the Empire, they were all paddle steamers, not propellers. Paddle steamers were hanging on both sides of the ship like waterwheels, which was very unsafe. Not to mention the solid shells on the battleships, they could be destroyed by a volley of shotguns. The Navy built an experimental ship in the 14th year of the Empire, which was equipped with paddle wheels. For safety, they outsourced wooden shells, and the result was that the hull was too wide to sail outside the sea.

In order to make the emperor believe, the Navy also gave an example, saying that in the second steam power competition held by the Emperor, steam ships with the same power were run to the eleventh quarter, and propellers could only run to seven quarters.

The second is that the steam power efficiency is very low, and there are also high-power steam engines that can use more than 3,000 tons of main ships. Of course, all the reasons, in the later perspective, are nonsense. The Navy did not want to develop steam-powered ironclad ships at all. In the eyes of the senior management of the Navy, steam power should be an auxiliary power. When added to the main ship, you can enter and exit the port without tugs. That's all. The Navy's progress in combat effectiveness at that time was mainly reflected in artillery.

Large-caliber smoothbore gun, front-loaded rifled gun, rear-loaded rifled gun, disc fuze flowering bullet, triggered fuze flowering bullet, triggered fuze flowering bullet, the navy invested a lot of money in artillery, with the purpose of studying a long-range large-power cannon for imperial warships. The direction is to use rifled guns that trigger fuzes, so that naval warships can shoot opponents' warships from four hundred meters or even more. At this distance, European warships cannot shoot through imperial ships. The flowering bullets have great power and can quickly solve the opponent. Even cruise ships with small artillery can use this gun to clean up the opponent's battleships from a distance.

During the 21st year of the empire, the rear-mounted rifled gun had been finalized, but the trigger-type flowering shell was not developed successfully. Moreover, in order for the shell to fit the rifle, copper was used behind the cylindrical shells, and it was easy to explode. Based on several reasons, they were not used for the two types of warships in Zhiyuan and America.

With the report from the Navy Department, everything was over, and the emperor proposed the idea that the naval argument was not feasible, so that was it. But an accident broke this harmony. A secret memorial by Qi Changjie, the commander of the Imperial South Ocean Coast Guard, made Li Junhua realize that it was not that technology could not be done, but that naval bureaucracy was at work.

The Empire's Coast Guard was divided into five major war zones in the north, the Central, the South Ocean, the Indian Ocean and Africa. The security headquarters were located in Vladivostok, Shin Kyung, Manila, Penang and Cape Town. Unlike the army headed by the emperor, the imperial government bears military expenditures, the Coast Guard is provided by local governments and is also under the command of the chief executives of various places, especially special cities such as Penang and Cape Town.

However, the equipment of the Coast Guard is generally made by naval shipyards, which is also a chronic disease of military disputes. For example, the army does not allow the Lifanyuan army to have infantry exceeding the battalion level, the navy restricts the army's troop transport ships from being equipped with artillery, etc. The Navy restricts the ships of the Coast Guard to be at most two masts and ten artillery pieces. This book is nothing, because the Coast Guard is commanded by various places to arrest pirates and crack down on smuggling, and pirates and smuggling merchants use small boats.

During the 21st year of the empire, the Coast Guard took advantage of the spring breeze of naval reform and proposed to build a batch of new types of warships. Mainly, the existing schooners and small and medium cruisers of the Coast Guard were not suitable for combat. More and more smuggled ships used three to four hundred tons of flying scissors, and they often ran to the 16th quarter, and the Coast Guard could not catch up. Pirates, especially pirates in the Nanyang area, used gallops and sailed around the archipelago when they encountered the Coast Guard. The large ships of the Coast Guard were not agile enough.

The Coast Guard needed a warship that was both fast and agile. In the end, this kind of warship was defined as a cruise ship with combined power of the aircraft sail. In fact, as early as the 18th year of the Empire, the Nanyang War Zone, which was harassed by South China Sea pirates and smuggling ships, put forward this demand. At that time, the paddlefish with impact was required. Anyway, the Coast Guard faced a weak opponent, so it was enough to hit him at full speed, without fear of damage to the paddlewheel. However, such warships often cost thousands of tons, and the navy simply disagreed.

Now that the Navy just told the emperor that steam-powered warships were not feasible, the Coast Guard proposed a plan. In order to avoid a slap in the face, the Navy suppressed it. The reason was still the old reason. The Navy proposed that the technology could not be achieved. However, unlike before, this time the Navy did not allow the report to be handed over to the cabinet. This was a taboo, which was equivalent to the local government separating the local army from Shen Jing. The Nanyang Coast Guard Commander Qi Changjie, who proposed the plan, was very dissatisfied with this. What the parties did not know was that this official from the Central Court was not only in the security bureau, but also had the power to report to the emperor directly.

With a secret memorial, a huge uproar broke out.

The political matter did not suppress the equipment matter. The emperor distrustled the navy and issued three orders on the steam iron armored ship. The Navy Equipment Office gave another report in detail. The Zhongting came forward to invite experts from all walks of life such as metallurgy, power, ships, etc. to give opinions. The Nanyang Coast Guard provided another report to prove the feasibility.

The Navy Equipment Office still re-produces the old tune. The scientific community's opinion is that it can be done technically but may not be practical and reliable. However, the Coast Guard gave a completely different attitude and even came up with a ship design plan, bluntly saying that the steam ironclad ship can be completely built.

This type of warship led by the Nanyang Coast Guard, designed by Penang United Shipyard, Empire Nanyang Power and other units was named Cheetah. After reading the report, Li Junhua directly ordered the construction of a type of experimental ship.

The Cheetah used an unbuilt 24-cannon wooden cruiser as the main framework. It was originally ordered by the Governor's Governor of Goa, Portugal. Later, due to the improvement of the safety environment, it turned into four. Sixty-five percent of the warships that had been built were dismantled by the Nanyang Naval Shipyard and sold to the private shipyard of the Penang United Shipyard. It was originally intended to create an ocean-going sailing ship, but now it is temporarily used to transform it into a steam iron armored ship.

In just four months, the Cheetah had been built. Its full load displacement reached 1,800 tons, its ship was 60 meters long, 10.2 meters wide, and its maximum draft was 4 and a half meters. It used a mature horizontal reciprocating steam engine, with two coal-fired boilers, with an output power of 960 horsepower, and a single-axle single propeller propulsion. When it was propelled only with steam power, it had a speed of ten knots. When using sail power composed of two masts, it had a speed of only six knots. When using sail power, it could have a speed of eleven and a half knots.

The Cheetah has a coal load of 140 tons and a cruising capacity of 900 kilometers at eight-kilometer cruise speeds, because the Cheetah only needs to face pirates and smuggling ships, because it is only equipped with forty-five millimeters of wrought iron armor and thirty centimeters of wooden shells, which can be protected from nine pounds of shelling on one hundred meters. The armor extends from one meter underwater to the deck, and there are still fifty-five millimeters of armor directly in front of it.

In terms of firepower, the Cheetah originally fired ten 24-pound short-heavy guns and sixty-eight-pound guns deployed at the bow, which could fire flowering shells, shotguns and solid shells. The Cheetah also specially designed the collision angle. However, the construction of this ship was filled with battles between the navy, coast guard, state-owned shipyards and private shipyards, so after the launch trial voyage was completed, it was immediately modified and replaced with six ninety-pound wine bottle cannons and a sixty-eight-pound gun.

Whether it was the original report or the super-fast shipbuilding period, it all indicated that this was a steam iron-armored warship full of mature technology. The facts also proved that if the Navy took the initiative to develop similar warships, it might have been available in the fifteenth to eighteenth year of the empire.

All the mature technology comes from the private shipyard of Penang United Shipyard. The shipyard was joined by several small shipyards, including the shipyard that builds steam tugs for the Navy, the shipyard that builds cruise ships and two shipyards that own fly-scissors.

Penang United Shipyard has two flagship products: one is large and super-large fly-scissors, and the other is steam-powered ship. Twenty years after entering the empire, it has become the most advanced shipyard in the empire, especially in steam-powered ships, the United Shipyard is the world's number one.

The biggest reason why Penang United Shipyard has achieved such achievements without official direct investment is to find market demand. Its steam-powered ships have gradually evolved from manufacturing steam tugs to steam paddle ships and passenger ships, and gradually expanded from inland shipping to far-sea transportation. One of United Shipyard’s two largest customers, Hongji Mining, is the key to the takeoff of steam-powered ships in United Shipyard.

In the 19th year of the empire, with the intervention of the empire, the war between Annan and Guangnan that lasted for decades ended. Zheng Gen succeeded the throne, opened up on a large scale, and introduced imperial capital. One of the major projects was to expand the Hongji Coal Mine on a large scale with merchants from Guangdong and Guangxi. This coal mine located on the coast began to be excavated on a large scale during the community era to meet the coal use of Qiongzhou Iron Plant. As the empire's steam power was popularized, the demand for coal jumped.
Chapter completed!