In early September, two new warships were launched from Emden Shipyard. Both warships are 500-ton "Hoffman-class" warships, using dense dragon rib warships and thickened sidewalks. In addition, the ship is equipped with 40 12-pound iron cannons, which are full of protection and attack power.
Moreover, because of the 4-to-1 aspect ratio, the speed of the warship reached 10 knots, which was higher than the 250-level armed merchant ship of 9 knots.
It can be said that this "Hoffman-class" warship, which references later British Garen ships, has high protection, strong attack power, and is very fast...
In short, in this era, it is the most perfect warship...
After the first Hoffman-class battleship was launched in October last year, Marin felt satisfied, so he arranged for Emden Shipyard to use high-temperature steam boxes and molds according to the data recorded before, and began to batch bend the ribs needed for the battleship. Because it was washed by high-temperature steam for several hours, the inside of the wood was completely wet. For this reason, this batch of ribs would need to be air-dried for several months before it could continue to be used.
Therefore, in the spring of the following year, these ribs could be used for shipbuilding. Just so happened that Marin's caravan purchased two 30-meter-long main keel wood from Eastern Europe, and two new warships began to be built. By the end of August and early September, the two ships were finally ready to be launched...
Marin visited again and boarded the ship and felt it was pretty good. So the two warships were officially put into service and were numbered as Hoffman-class ships No. 2 and No. 3.
The sailors on the ship had no problem controlling the full sails on the ship (middle sail, head and tail spinnaker, used for tail sails) and full spinnaker (used for head and tail sails) and the full spinnaker (used for head wind sails). Because the sailor school created by Marin trained a large number of young Friesian fishermen to become sailors. A warship only needed to control sails was only 60 sailors, and Marin trained two or three thousand sailors, which was enough.
Of course, the artillery on the ship is somewhat difficult to train. Marin set up artillery training camps on land to train artillery. However, firing artillery on land is completely different from firing artillery on warships.
If you use the cannon of a turret on land, there is no "reset" at all, which is extremely simple. Because the stone foundation of the turret can completely absorb the recoil of the cannon, no matter how large the caliber of the cannon is.
But it is different on the ship. The four-wheel gun mount "designed" by Marin based on the pictures seen in later generations must retreat after firing. Otherwise, if it is fixed on the hull, all recoil will react on the hull. Once the side volley is fired, it will easily cause the capsized...
Moreover, the four-wheel gun mount has to be tied with a rope before firing the cannon. After firing the cannon, the four-wheel gun mount will suddenly retreat with recoil and break the rope. Of course, the breaking of the rope will also absorb a large amount of work done by reaction force. Then, tie a knot to the broken rope and continue to use it...
The guns on the warship must have been extended from the ship's side and the artillery doors of the lower ply. However, because they are front-loaded guns, if the guns continue to stay outside, they will not be able to load gunpowder and shells from the muzzle. Therefore, the retreat of the four-wheel gun mount can also allow the muzzle to be returned to the ship, making it easier for the gunner to load gunpowder and shells.
Therefore, the retreat and breaking of the four-wheel gun mount are very useful whether it is to reduce the impact of the gun recoil on the ship or to facilitate loading.
But after the retracted four-wheel gun mount is loaded, there is another step - resetting, which requires several gunners to restore the heavy gun to its original position and tie a rope behind the gun mount...
Fortunately, the four-wheel gun mount has wheels. Although it is not a circular wheel (the circular wheel is unstable and will run), it is a regular polygon wheel (mainly to increase resistance and prevent the gun mount from automatically sliding back and forth), it is much easier to push the gun mount with wheels than simply lifting the heavy gun body. If you lift the gun body, how heavy would it be? But the 12-pound gun is designed for safety, according to the 18-pound gun body, which weighs 2 tons. Even if 10 people lift it, they can't lift it. Because, if a person has to lift a weight of 200 kilograms, it is equivalent to 400 kilograms, which is really impossible for ordinary people to...
After using four-wheel gun mounts, although it is not easy to push, it can be done with 5 gunners. After all, there are wheels...
In fact, in this era, artillery was still an era when artillery was carried by artillerymen. Because there was no need for gun stands, and light Franco cannons are popular on warships, the number of artillery on many warships now reaches dozens of guns. When firing, everyone just lifted the cannons of those light Franco cannons onto the side of the ship, and it would be fine to squeeze them at all.
However, these "slim" small-caliber guns have no power in naval battles, so they can only bully the small boats. When encountering large ships, it is difficult to achieve success. The Portuguese were able to defeat the Indian-Egypt joint fleet in the "Diwu Battle" because most of the other side's ships were small boats, many warships were just small boats transporting boats, and many small fishing boats were forced to be recruited from fishermen... Therefore, the Portuguese's Franc cannon was able to achieve success...
At the current stage of "lifting the gun barrel", if the sailors are heavy, the sailors cannot lift it. Even if they use the sailors to lift it, because it is too heavy, everyone will lose their strength after lifting it a few times. It is far inferior to the four-wheel gun mount designed by Marin. It relies on pushing. Pushing saves more effort than lifting, and can fight for a long time...
Therefore, the four-wheel gun mount "invented" by Marin is actually ahead of the times and is very suitable for heavy artillery use. No wonder Marin clearly saw the plagiarism of the famous sail warships in the 18th century. How could there be any unreasonable reason?
In this era, other European countries, let alone naval warships, are also in the structure of people carrying cannons on land. They all use carriages to marches with gun barrels. When they arrive on the battlefield, they will lift the cannon barrels off the carriage and bury them in front of the formation... Only the French invented the gun ears and began to use low-level four-wheeled frames to set up artillery, but there are many gun mounts behind Marin's three-pound cannons...
In short, in terms of how artillery is placed, Marin is already ahead of this era...
In order to make the gunners adapt to the firing and aiming of the warships, Marin ordered that the three ships should train more artillery fires and not be afraid of wasting ammunition. Moreover, Marin also planned to train more artillery gunners. Therefore, he mobilized more artillery gunners from the artillery training camp to board the ship to learn how to control the artillery guns. Because Marin planned to build more warships...
In fact, Marin had prepared more ship ribs before. Emden Shipyard had bent the ribs needed to make 10 warships before. However, the number of 30-meter-long main keels was insufficient, so only three warships were built first. If the number of main keels was sufficient, it would be fine to build 10 ships...
At present, probably because of the prosperity of maritime trade, many royal families in Western European countries now regard old oak trees above 20 meters as a strategic resource for the country. Even if Marin wants to buy it, it is difficult to buy it.
In fact, there are many old oak trees up to twenty or thirty meters in the inland Europe. However, if it is too inland, such a large trunk may not be able to be transported to the beach smoothly...
After all, a tree trunk that is dozens of meters long weighs more than ten tons. Such heavy things must be transported as a whole and cannot be cut. How difficult is it to be average?
Therefore, even if there are such big trees in inland mountains, they cannot be transported out. Even if they are transported out, the price will be astonishingly high...
In this era, the keels needed for shipbuilding. Those oak trees often grow on the beach, which is very convenient to pull to the beach, or grow on the river connecting the sea. In this way, after the old oak trees are cut down, they can float on the river surface, flow down to the beach...
As for the old oak trees hidden in the mountains, I'm sorry, I can't transport them even if I find them; the price is unacceptable... Most of the old oak trees growing by the sea and by the river have long been discovered and cut down by the craftsmen of the shipyard, and will not wait until you discover them...
Therefore, it is difficult for Marin to collect the main keel material that is 30 meters long. However, in the Americas, there are almost no one in the Americas to develop (the Indians have very little damage to nature), and there are more old oak trees dozens of meters high by the sea and river. If you want keels, Garland said that even if Cape Breton Island is mainly coniferous forests, you can still find many old oak trees that are more than 30 meters long suitable for keels.
Just before Garland left Cape Breton Island and returned to East Friesland, he directed the immigrants to cut down more than a dozen old oak trees that were thirty or forty meters long (Note: Marin had previously promoted the use of new weights and measures such as rice, kilometers, kilograms, grams, mu, etc.), and organized everyone to carry it to the established air-drying position. For this reason, everyone was almost exhausted. However, in one or two years, Marin would add more than a dozen keels suitable for building large ships.
The problem is that these newly cut old oak trees will have to be air-dried for one or two years before they can be suitable for shipbuilding, and Marin still has to wait...
However, just as Marin was waiting anxiously, the ship selling salt in Teutonic countries returned to Marin's surprise...
It turned out that Marin had previously allowed Old Sten Stuley to send young officers into Schwartz's leading new army for training and learn new tactics, which made Old Sten Stuley very grateful.
In return, Old Sten Sturre found five huge oak logs that were up to 30 meters long from a Swedish shipyard and gave them to Marin to serve as the main keel for the new warship.
These logs have been air-dried in Swedish shipyards for a long time and have met the demand for shipbuilding. Moreover, in fact, the Swedish shipyards did not intend to build four or five hundred tons of ships, but only planned to build the currently popular two or three hundred tons of ships. Therefore, these five logs were originally intended to be sawed shorter. Fortunately, Old Sten Sturre discovered them in advance and gave them to Marin to repay Marin's support for him.
So, Marin sent a ship to the Baltic Sea. When he returned, he informed him to Sweden to tie these five huge logs to the side of the ship and staggered back to East Friesland...
Chapter completed!