Chapter 383: Bold
Chapter 376 Bold
December 1853, Tingtao Garden in San Francisco, California.
It was approaching Christmas in the West.
At the end of the year, Liang Yao proposed a motion to make Christmas, Spring Festival, and April 1st, the State Day, legal holidays in California, which was quickly passed.
At the same time, Liang Yao also urged the Ministry of Finance to give the 1853 financial report as soon as possible, and the Bureau of Statistics to give the 1853 coal production, steel production, pig iron production, Los Angeles crude oil production and kerosene production, as well as the most important population data as soon as possible.
After the meeting, Liang Yao walked through the streets with a strong festive atmosphere and returned to Tingtao Garden.
Carnegie walked out of the telegraph room and handed Liang Yao a letter from Shanghai and a telegram from New York.
The letter from Shanghai was sent to him by Liang Shaoqiong, and Liang Yao could feel Liang Shaoqiong's joy in the letter.
Liang Shaoqiong was more motivated than he thought. With the victory in Yangzhou, the Guangdong Warriors had proved themselves and became one of the few useful military forces in the Qing Dynasty.
The telegram from New York was about the Battle of Sinop, a naval battle between the Russian Empire's Black Sea Fleet Squadron and the Turkish Squadron in Sinop Bay for control of the Black Sea.
It was also the last duel between sailing warships in human history and the last curtain call performance of sailing warships.
There is no doubt that the winner of this war was the Russian Empire. After this battle, Russia gained control of the sea before British and French warships entered the Black Sea.
At this time, Russia was also building steam warships, but because of Nicholas I's misjudgment of the situation, he thought that Britain would stand on this side and become an ally of the Russian Empire rather than an enemy.
As a result, after the Russian Empire declared war on Turkey, Britain immediately announced an embargo on Russia.
The materials embargoed by Britain on Russia included steam engines specially customized by Russia for new steam ships.
This resulted in the Russian steamships being built being unable to continue to be built, and the country could only continue to use wooden sailing warships that were a generation behind Britain and France during the entire war.
Of course, the Sinop naval battle was called the Sinop Massacre by Britain and France.
This was the preparation for Britain and France to send troops to Crimea.
Since Britain and France would soon send troops to participate in the war, Liang Yao could start to solve the problem of Mexico's land purchase next year, that is, in 1854.
However, before solving the problem of Mexico's land purchase, Liang Yao needed to solve the problem of plantations on the island of East Borneo. After all, Britain and France were only preparing to send troops to the Near East at this time, and had not really sent troops directly to the Near East.
"Boss, the dark steamer at the shipyard has been installed with the latest Sacramento rapid-fire guns provided by the Sacramento Arsenal. The ribbon-cutting ceremony will be held at 9 o'clock tomorrow morning. Sir Jeremiah asked me to ask if you will attend the ribbon-cutting ceremony to name the new ship?" Kane asked Liang Yao.
The Sacramento rapid-fire gun is the Armstrong gun developed and improved by the Sacramento Arsenal through reverse engineering. Its official name is the Sacramento gun, but due to its amazing firing speed, many people also like to call it the Sacramento rapid-fire gun.
"Go, I'll go in person." Liang Yao said.
This is the first ocean-going warship that the technicians of the San Francisco Shipyard shot and built under his guidance. It has a milestone significance for the shipbuilding industry in California. Why wouldn't he go?
He has high expectations for this type of warship and has been waiting for this day for a long time.
If this ship is successfully seaworthy, then he will not only have 4 warships to fight with the Dutch East India Company in the waters of Southeast Asia, but more importantly, the San Francisco Shipyard will have the ability to build warships independently, and Liang Yao will no longer have to spend money to buy warships from other countries.
At 8 o'clock the next morning, Liang Yao arrived at the San Francisco Shipyard early. The modified dark steamer had been launched and quietly moored on the calm sea outside the shipyard.
"This is a very bold masterpiece. The ship has not been named yet. Since you are here, please give it a name."
Jeremiah, the director of the San Francisco Shipyard and the shipbuilding expert responsible for designing and supervising the construction of the dark steamer, saw Liang Yao coming and went forward to greet Liang Yao.
Jeremiah was originally an American shipbuilding businessman. In 1850, he came to San Francisco with Vanderbilt for a business investigation.
He then founded the San Francisco Shipyard with Liang Yao, a dual-purpose shipyard that manufactures both civilian and military ships.
The San Francisco Shipyard is jointly owned by two people, but Liang Yao holds the majority of the shares. Liang Yao holds 50% of the shares of the San Francisco Shipyard, Jeremiah holds 26%, and the rest of the shares are held by others.
"Since this is a very bold masterpiece, let's call it the Bold." Liang Yao looked at the thousand-ton warship with his hands behind his back and exclaimed, "It's so beautiful."
Although steam warships had been installed in various countries in the mid-19th century, warships and passenger ships of this period basically retained sails and used mixed steam and wind power for navigation.
The first to abandon sails were the British, because Britain had ports all over the world, and British warships did not have to worry about the problem of replenishing coal, so they could abandon sails and use steam as the power to drive warships.
Another reason is that the British steam turbines are more advanced and reliable, and have better quality coal, which is also the reason why Britain dared to abandon sails.
Out of compromise with reality, the Bold still retains the sails as emergency power.
Although Liang Yao currently has three overseas ports, Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, Nagasaki Port in Japan, and Xiangshan Port in Guangdong, where he can replenish coal, and Liang Yao's main activities are also around the seas and routes near these ports.
However, the Bold prototype ship had an accident in which the propeller hit a reef and was damaged during its first seaworthiness, losing power and being unable to move.
In addition, other steamships have also had accidents where large waves directly rolled into the chimney, seawater soaked the boiler, and even directly broke the chimney.
Therefore, after towing the Bold back to the port, Jeremiah and others redesigned and manufactured a new propeller, and then honestly reinstalled the sails on the Bold as a backup power.
After all, the Bold is not a large ship. Once it encounters strong winds and waves at sea, there is still a relatively high probability that seawater will roll into the chimney and soak the boiler.
The Courageous is 65 meters long, 50 meters wide, and 15 meters deep. After the sails and weapons were reinstalled, the standard displacement exceeded 1,000 tons, reaching 1,080 tons, and the ship had a crew of 120 people.
The ship's power system is 2 reciprocating steam engines, 4 circular coal-fired boilers, and single-axis propulsion.
Without using sails, the maximum speed can reach 15 knots, the endurance is 4,400 nautical miles/8 knots, the standard coal load of the coal bunker is 220 tons, and the maximum coal load is 280 tons.
The main weapons are two 205mm (about 8 inches) 26-caliber Sacramento guns on the centerline of the ship, one at the bow and one at the stern.
The two main guns are fixed on a swivel with 25mm armor, which can rotate 360°, with a maximum shooting elevation of 13°, a shell weight of 48kg, and a range of up to 3,400m.
The secondary weapon is a 100mm (4-inch) Sacramento gun located on both sides of the ship.
The 100mm secondary gun is also installed on a rotating platform with 10mm protective armor. The rotating platform can rotate 135°. There are eight secondary guns, four on each side.
In the era when the ship's side gun battleships were still popular, such a weapon layout design was undoubtedly very bold.
Liang Yao dared to do this only after the Sacramento gun was successfully copied.
Although there are fewer guns on the battleship, the Sacramento gun has a very fast firing rate and high accuracy, which can completely make up for the lack of guns in the number of ships.
The guns are arranged on the rotating platform, and can be fired directly by rotating the rotating platform when the ship is not maneuvering.
These advantages are not available in the ship's side gun battleship. The main feature of the ship's side gun layout is that the guns are arranged horizontally on the gun ports on the freeboard walls on both sides of the ship or on the open deck, and the muzzles are pointed perpendicular to the center longitudinal direction of the battleship.
Therefore, if you want to shoot accurately, you must maneuver the ship to a certain position so that the guns on the ship can have a shooting angle.
The warships in the sail era are the most classic ship-side gun layout, and this design has been used in the era of sail and steam hybrid warships.
The disadvantage of this design is obvious, that is, the firepower of the bow and stern is insufficient.
After all, the bow and stern are limited by the narrow space and cannot place multiple guns.
Therefore, how to solve the lack of firepower at the bow and stern has always been a big problem for designers.
The Roland that Liang Yao bought from Tromelin is a ship-side gun battleship. The Frenchman's way of solving this problem is simple and extreme. Since the bow and stern can't be equipped with many guns, I will install a big one.
Therefore, the Roland has a 10-inch gun on the bow and an 8-inch gun on the stern.
In general, except for the smaller tonnage, not being an ironclad ship, but a wooden hull wrapped in cast iron, Liang Yao is still very satisfied with the other parameters of the Bold.
The maximum range can also meet the needs from Pearl Harbor in Hawaii to Nagasaki in Japan, and there are sails as auxiliary power.
With the Sacramento gun, the combat effectiveness of this warship has directly reached a higher level.
As for the ironclad ship, the next ship type will be explored slowly. The shipbuilding industry needs accumulation, and you can't eat a fat man in one bite.
America's advanced shipbuilding technology has basically been used this time.
"This naval gun layout is really bold." Fremont, who came late, said.
He was from the Army Engineering Corps, and Fremont didn't know much about the navy's warships.
He was amazed by this unique naval gun layout.
Fremont went to the Sacramento Arsenal to play with the Sacramento gun, and he had a high opinion of the Sacramento gun.
He believed that this was the most advanced artillery in the world, and its rate of fire, accuracy and even range were unparalleled.
The Bold was equipped with the Sacramento gun, not an ordinary artillery, so Fremont did not think that too few naval guns would be the shortcoming of the Bold.
"How much does it cost?" Liang Yao asked Jeremiah about the cost of the ship.
"Including the weapon system, $370,000, a price to bid farewell to the US Navy Department's order." Jeremiah spread his hands and said.
The cost of $370,000 is indeed very high. You have to know that the 2,000-ton Roland cruiser that Liang Yao got from the French was only 2.14 million francs, equivalent to $410,000 in US dollars.
For this price, forget about the Navy Department's order.
Given the nature of the US Congress, it will not spend huge sums of money to purchase warships unless a war breaks out or it is humiliated by foreign countries.
For example, during the Civil War, both the North and the South built and purchased warships in large numbers. The naval forces of both sides once reached more than 50,000 people, with 700 warships and 60 small inland ironclad ships. It became the second largest navy in the world after the British Navy. Of course, this is the combined naval strength of the North and the South.
But after the end of the Civil War in 1865, the federal government's finances were exhausted, and the debt-ridden America began to tighten its belt. In order to save money, it began to reduce its military forces on a large scale and carried out a full-scale strategic contraction, investing the saved financial resources in post-war reconstruction.
From 1865 to 1885 was a period of strategic contraction in the United States, and it was also a period when the American army had to endure.
Take the navy as an example.
In 1880, the U.S. Navy had only 48 warships left, most of which were old antiques left over from the Civil War. The ship condition was worrying, and the number of active naval personnel was only more than 6,000.
During the Cuban War (1868-1878), the United States and Britain secretly funded Cuban insurgents in order to overthrow Spain's rule over Cuba, and sent Cuban Americans back to Cuba to participate in the uprising, hoping to establish a pro-American Cuban government.
This matter was eventually discovered by the Spanish colonial government, and the Spanish colonial authorities were also very tough, executing the Americans, British and Cuban Americans involved in the matter as pirates.
Britain launched gunboat diplomacy in response, forcing Spain to pay compensation and apologize, and to send back the British who had not yet been executed. The Spanish were frightened by the British's strong ships and guns and did it honestly.
But when it was America's turn, the Spanish authorities not only did not apologize, but also reprimanded the American ambassador, and even played a sloppy eye on the compensation, and kept delaying it. This made America feel a great shame.
Of course, being humiliated by Spain is not the most shameful thing. After all, although Spain has been declining for hundreds of years, it is still the last power.
America's greatest humiliation came from the Panama Crisis of 1885.
After the Panama Crisis, the United States sent the wooden cruiser "Shenandoah" to interfere in Panama's internal affairs. The Chilean authorities were deeply disturbed and sent the Chilean Navy's armored cruiser "Esmeralda" to Panama to prevent the United States from interfering in Panama's internal affairs.
The Esmeralda is an enlarged version of the Chaoyong of the Beiyang Navy. This warship was bought by Japan during the Sino-Japanese War and renamed Izumi. The benchmark was the Zhiyuan of the Beiyang Fleet, which was a armored cruiser with a displacement of less than 3,000 tons.
As soon as the Esmeralda arrived in Panama, the American Navy, knowing that it was no match for the enemy, immediately withdrew to the country with its tail between its legs. This move by the navy caused an uproar in the United States.
It was humiliated by Spain before, but now a small South American country dares to humiliate the United States.
This was unacceptable to the arrogant Americans who believed that America belonged to the Americans during the Monroe era. The whole country strongly demanded to reorganize the military, at least the navy.
After that, the U.S. Navy, led by then Navy Secretary Hunter, carried out a naval revival movement in the 1880s and 1890s.
And in the late 19th century, it took revenge on Spain and provoked the Spanish-American War.
But it didn't matter. Liang Yao's target customer was himself, not the U.S. Navy Department. He wished that the Navy Department didn't want his warships.
Now the Navy Department can buy it or not, but I won't sell it to you even if you beg me to sell it to you in the future.