Changfeng Thousands of Miles End Han Song

Chapter 873 Progress
The war in the Indian Ocean ended quickly.

Zhu Luo's navy has a B number in their hearts, they can dominate the Tianzhu sea area, even the great empire of the Tianfang world is not bad.However, when facing this Lu Qi Navy, he has no right to be proud at all.

If the Chinese's superiority in artillery is not broken for a day, they will not even be able to talk about the qualifications to parry.

The bloody Asan brother also has drops, but just like the Man Qingshui division who went to stop the British fleet during the first opium war, he failed to cause the slightest damage to the opponent, but he lost the entire army in a short time The fate of being overwhelmed.

Kurutonga Chola II directly issued the 'dismissal order'.A naval force capable of dominating Tianzhu just "disappeared", and was hidden in the long coastline of Zhuluo Kingdom in twos and threes.

But even that is still not safe.Because the coastline of South Tianzhu is too smooth, it is far less rugged than northern Ceylon, let alone compared with Nanyang.It's just that Ceylon is the fat that the Chinese are eyeing. Kurutonga Chola II has no confidence to resist this wave of Chinese attacks, so naturally it is impossible to hide the warship in Ceylon.

He encountered this kind of thing just after he took the throne, and his authority was directly shaken.Even if we cope with this wave of crises, the impact will be far-reaching.I hate China so much that I gnash my teeth.

But the development of the war situation will not change according to his will.

The time has entered the fourth month of the lunar calendar, and the Qi army has established a solid stronghold in Ceylon, and then it is eyeing the mainland of Zhuluo.

Kurutongga Chola II also gathered heavy troops, but the coastline of Chola Kingdom is so long, even if he had tried his best to mobilize the army, it was still stretched.

The Qi army did not keep Kurutonga Chola II waiting for long. On April 25, a total of five fleets were blown by the northeast wind all the way northward, and at the same time headed towards the five port cities on the east coast of Chola. Attacked.

One of these is Chiddenbarham, which is where the delta tributary of the Cauvery flows into the sea.The five invasion points selected by the Qi army this time all have similar geographical locations.

- the mouth of a river.

Because in this way, the small and medium-sized warships in the fleet can go straight along the river into the hinterland of South Tianzhu.

Just like the Cauvery River, this is one of the few big rivers in South Tianzhu, and it is also the essence of the Zhuluo Kingdom. Although the middle and upper reaches cannot be navigated smoothly due to the huge drop, the hundreds of miles downstream of the river are the most agriculturally developed areas in the Zhuluo Kingdom. one.At the same time, the capital of Zhuluo Kingdom also settled here.

Naturally, the Zhuluo Kingdom deployed an army here, and there were two small dhows wandering in the estuary area.I spotted the approaching Chinese fleet from afar... 
Faced with such a powerful enemy, the two small dhows decisively turned around and began to run away.

However, they were overtaken by two small schooners at the mouth of the river.

Ten years.The new sailboats have been developed to a great extent in the Lu Qi Navy.

Especially with the advent of gaff sails.

The appearance of this thing has nothing to do with Emperor Lu, it is purely the idea of ​​the masters of the Ship Department.

The cumbersome operation and labor cost of new sailboats are always its biggest "flaws", compared with traditional hard sailboats.During the manufacture and sea trial of each experimental ship, the ship operator discovered that although soft sailing ships have advantages such as fast speed, relatively solid hull structure, large deck space, and higher utilization efficiency, their shortcomings are also obvious.When the climate is changing rapidly, the sails are frequently lifted and lowered during sailing, and the labor intensity is particularly high, so the number of sail operators must be huge.

This is obviously contrary to the requirements of military ships.

Especially in China, a country that has been accustomed to easy-to-maneuver hard-sail ships for thousands of years, this defect is simply unbearable.

But the defect of the latter is obvious. The huge force exerted by the hard sail on the mast determines that the height of the mast should not be too high. Big room for improvement.

Therefore, in the past ten years, China's shipbuilding industry, especially warships in the military, has always focused on the new sailboats represented by soft sailboats.Although it has such a big "flaw".

It is also impossible for the shipping department to look at the "defects" indifferently. They have carried out experiments and improvements again and again. In the process, they found that one of the most labor-intensive points is the steering problem of the jib, and the operation is too cumbersome. Too inconvenient.Therefore, considering the reduction of manpower——in order to facilitate the turning of the sail boom, the ship department directly cut off the front half of the sail boom (that is, the lower edge boom) that was in the way.

However, in this way, the spinnaker lost half of the yard. Although the steering was convenient, its area was also reduced by half, the ability to use the wind was greatly weakened, and the speed of the ship also dropped accordingly.This result is unacceptable to the ship division.

So, they began to use their brains to find a way to see if they could make up for the loss.At the bottom of the mast, they made a sailing mast that could be turned around the mast.The windshield is perpendicular to the mast and is attached to the bottom of the mast with a metal collar.In this way, sailors can directly pull the wind rod in the horizontal direction with their hands or ropes.

The retained upper edge girder is also connected to the mast with a metal collar.However, unlike the wind mast, the wind mast is perpendicular to the mast, and there is an angle between the upper girder and the mast. The angle is still the same as when the lower girder was retained before, and the angle is raised , is also still called the upper edge girder.

As for the sails, they are stretched between the weatherstem at the bottom and the gaff above.In this way, the shape of the sail surface becomes the shape of a rectangle with a right triangle.However, the area of ​​a square with the same height and width is twice that of a triangle. Therefore, the area of ​​this new type of gaff sail is not smaller than that of the jib with the gaff of the lower girder.What's more, on the top of the girder at the upper edge, a right-angle triangle jib can be added to further increase the sail area and enhance the wind resistance.

Moreover, the manipulation of this new type of sail is also extremely simple.When the wind changes, the sailor only needs to rely on the winch rope to control the direction of the wind mast on the lower side of the gaff sail, and let it rotate to the opposite direction with the mast as the axis.Even one or two sailors can easily change the direction of a gaff sail, and it takes a very short time.

At this point, the performance of the soft-sailed sailboat has been greatly improved. After looking at the experimental ship, Emperor Lu also felt that the sail seemed more pleasing to the eye and seemed to be closer to the soft-sailed sailboat in his memory.

In the next few years, there were a lot of soft sailing boats in Lu Qi's navy.The volume of the latter has also risen from the initial thousand stone to less than [displacement of two hundred tons] to five thousand stone.Only counting the displacement, it is already very close to the thousand-ton sailing warships of later generations.

The two small sailing warships that are thrown out now are small shrimps with a load of less than a thousand stones, but their firepower is not weak, and their speed is faster.

After catching up with the two small dhows, they directly bombarded them with cannons.The latter also seemed to find that he could not escape, and started a desperate counterattack with the few ballistas on board. Some courageous crossbowmen also stood on the inside of the ship and fired at the two small sailing warships.However, because the distance was too far, most of their shots landed in the sea, causing the sailors on the two sailing ships of the Qi army to laugh loudly.

(End of this chapter)