Daming pirates

Now all the whaling ships are equipped with a whaling cannon that Yu Xiaotian specially asked the gunsmith to cast for them. With this kind of whaling cannon, whaling has become much easier, and the sailors no longer need to go down to the small boat.

In the boat, they chased whales and used harpoons to hunt whales. It was really dangerous to do so. Many whaling sailors were either injured or killed because of the whales' resistance when hunting whales.

He was hit into the sea and drowned.

But with the advent of the whaling cannon, whaling became much safer. After the whaling ship discovered the whale, it began to hunt the whale. After approaching the whale, the gunner operated the whaling cannon, aimed at the whale and fired, and the whaling cannon would fire

A thick iron gun with a barb was shot into the whale's body.

There is a rope behind the whaling harpoon, and a large wooden barrel is tied to the end of the rope. After the whale is injured, it cannot dive. It will lose a lot of blood while struggling to escape on the sea. The whaling ship can follow it and wait until it loses too much blood.

After losing the ability to struggle, people will be sent down to the small boat, sailed to the whale, and strive to give the dying whale a final blow to end its life.

Therefore, since the whaling cannon was manufactured and equipped with whaling ships, the whaling efficiency has been greatly improved. Now the whaling fleet in Keelung Fort can harvest several whales every month, which can fully satisfy the sea wolves' current demand for oil.

In order to meet the demand, we can also export part of it and earn some small money.

Other parts of the whale, such as whale meat, have become a delicacy in the rice bowls of the Sea Wolf Tribe. Now they do not have a large-scale breeding industry and their meat supply is very small. In addition to hunting, they have to rely on immigrants to raise some pigs and sheep privately.

, to meet the needs of sea wolves, there is no need to think about beef. Farm cattle are the first-level protected animals of sea wolves. Unless the old farm cattle that cannot work can be slaughtered for meat, the rest of the farm cattle must be slaughtered.

To work in the fields, many workshops also need cattle as livestock power to provide a source of power for some simple machinery.

In addition to being used as leather armor, whale skin can also be used to make high-end leather materials. Both people on land and in the West are very interested in the whale skin produced by Sea Wolf. It can be sold at a good price. A whale's skin can be sold at a good price.

The skin can earn Sea Wolf hundreds of taels of silver.

As for the internal organs, as long as they are not poisonous, they can be eaten. They can be pickled and minced to make a stew. Whether it is the Sea Wolf tribe, the craftsmen in the workshop or even the students in the school, they all like to eat it.

It was very difficult for the poor people in this era to eat meat. Being able to eat some whale offal was enough to make people feel very happy.

However, such an industry has brought a negative impact, that is, as soon as you arrive in Keelung Fort, you can smell the strong odor caused by the burning of the oil residue when the whale blubber is refined in Jilong Bay.

It is also mixed with the lingering fishy and fishy stench from the aquatic product processing factory, making people who are new here want to cover their noses.

In addition to the fish and cetacean processing plant that has begun to take shape here, the overall defense system of Jilong Bay is now basically completed. Three forts have been built at the mouth of the bay, forming a cross-section on the entire sea surface of the bay.

Firepower can tightly block the entrance of the bay.

Moreover, the three forts themselves also have very strong defensive capabilities. Even if the enemy forces a forced landing, it will not be easy to seize the forts.

In addition to being equipped with a large number of cannons, the three forts are also surrounded by trenches. Carbonized bamboo sticks are inserted either openly or covertly inside and outside the trenches. If you want to rely on light infantry to attack the forts, you will not be able to die.

People, don't even think about it.

In addition to these three large forts, Keelung Fort has added some additional bunkers on the surrounding highlands where people may pass.

These bunkers are usually maintained by a group of soldiers at regular intervals. Once attacked by the enemy, three squads of troops can be accommodated at any time, and a twelve-pound mountain howitzer and two squatting tiger cannons can be immediately added to the bunker.

Anyone who wants to bypass the fort at the mouth of the bay from land and attack Keelung Fort directly will be blocked by these bunkers.

Even if all the outer defense lines are lost, Keelung Fort itself is a strong fortress. It is built according to the structure of a Western bastion. It also has extremely strong defensive power. In addition, Keelung Fort's own reserves of supplies are enough to hold on for a long time.

It will not be easily broken by the enemy, so there is no problem in waiting for reinforcements to arrive.

After Yu Xiaotian arrived at Keelung Fort, he inspected the defense situation here non-stop. He was basically satisfied with the construction of the fortifications. He only pointed out some problems in certain places and asked Heitou and the others to continue to improve in the next step.

However, Yu Xiaotian is not very satisfied with the current vigilance of the personnel in Keelung Fort. The personnel on duty at the forts and bunkers everywhere are relatively lax mentally and generally believe that no one dares to come here to cause trouble for them.

In response to this, Yu Xiaotian caught Heitou and Sun Baoqiang and gave them a scolding, asking them to pay attention and strengthen patrols on the sea, expand their current patrol area, and move the patrol area of ​​the warships left behind at Keelung Fort towards the

The outside is expanded twice to prevent the enemy from being discovered until they are right in front of you.

In addition, Yu Xiaotian is not very satisfied with the road conditions here. Although some roads have been built here, the terrain here is relatively undulating. It is not easy to transport materials. If the road conditions are worse, it will be even more difficult.

It is more difficult. It is not easy to mobilize limited troops and reinforcements to where they are needed during the war. Especially heavy weapons such as artillery are not easy to be transported to the places where the fighting is fiercest. So Yu Xiaotian asked Heitou and the others to pay attention to this point.

Need to make corrections.

As for the situation of the workshops here, Yu Xiaotian didn't pay much attention to it. At present, the focus of Seawolf's industrial zone is on Tamsui City, which has more convenient transportation. Keelung Fort is mainly a fishery industry and gunsmiths.

There is no branch factory here, only Paozuo has set up a small branch factory here.

This time Yu Xiaotian came here mainly to see the production situation of the artillery factory here. The artillery factory here in Keelung Fort only has a large workshop with three casting stations, which can only cast three cannons at the same time.

.

However, the artillery work here is different from that of Nanyue Island and Tamsui Artillery Works. It is only responsible for casting heavy artillery. The lowest artillery is a twelve-pound cannon. The main production is the former Nanyue Island artillery work.

A twenty-four pounder cannon.

This twenty-four-pound cannon weighs more than 3,000 kilograms alone. With the gun mount, the weight is even more than 4,000 kilograms. Currently, all the ships of Sea Wolf are unable to effectively carry such a heavy cannon.

, even if it is installed, it can only fire a few rounds.

, the result is that not long after the cannon was fired, the ship's planks were likely to be cracked. Basically, it can only be regarded as a one-shot deal. If you win the battle, but you cannot defeat the enemy, your own ship will at least be scrapped. If it is not done well, it will cause serious consequences.

, the ship will also sink into the sea with the cannon, which is really not cost-effective.

So after the trial production was successful, the gun was transported to Keelung Fort and installed on the Heping Island Fort for use as a shore gun.

This twenty-four-pound gun, when using standard solid bullets with very small tolerances, has a direct shooting distance of about two miles. After precise measurement, it can basically reach 920 meters, and within this range, the shooting accuracy is very high.

It is quite high and can easily and accurately hit a target that is about the same size as a Feizihao clipper.

Moreover, this kind of cannon is also extremely powerful. A cannon ball weighing more than 20 kilograms can travel very fast within two miles. It can basically guarantee that it can penetrate the hulls of all enemy ships they may encounter and inflict damage to them.

Considerable damage.

But this twenty-four-pound cannon actually has a range of much more than two miles when used as a shore gun. According to the test results, when used as a shore gun, the effective range of this gun can reach at least two kilometers.

, which is about four miles, and it can also guarantee a considerable hit rate.

This result is basically due to Sea Wolf's currently very advanced iron frame cannon casting method. When the cannon is cast, the cannon body is very strong and can reduce a lot of weight. This would have been possible for the Ming Dynasty craftsmen on land.

If they were to imitate this kind of cannon, they would have to at least double the thickness of the cannon wall and weigh at least more than 7,000 kilograms. For the user, it would be a disaster. No one with a size of 180 would be able to serve a cannon.

Han, I guess he can't even aim, let alone reset.

Moreover, the weight of this twenty-four-pound cannon self-cast by Sea Wolf is much lighter than similar cannons cast by craftsmen in Western countries at the same time, and the casting process is also much better than theirs.

However, the reason why they only cast one cannon and then stopped is because when they first trial-produced it, Sea Wolf's iron reserves were very small. This guy consumed a lot of iron. To cast this cannon, you must first

After refining the pig iron purchased from the land, one thousand kilograms of pig iron will only be left with six or seven hundred kilograms after refining. To cast such a twenty-four-pound cannon, more than five thousand kilograms of iron will be needed.

OK.

At that time, the Seawolf needed more six-pound and twelve-pound guns. There was not much demand for this twenty-four-pound gun, so it was regrettable that it had to be discontinued first.

But now, Seawolf has established multiple ways to import iron materials by expanding its purchase channels everywhere. It has initially solved the problem of insufficient raw materials and has reserved a considerable amount of iron materials.

In addition, the time when the Spaniards might come to rob Jilong Bay was getting closer and closer, so Yu Xiaotian ordered a smaller artillery forge to be built in Jilongzhai during the industrial relocation, which would be responsible for casting medium and heavy guns.

Artillery, first meet the needs here and then talk about it.

Therefore, after the artillery work at Jilongzhai was completed last year, the work of recasting the twenty-four-pound cannon began.

Yu Xiaotian came to Keelung Fort this time to inspect the production of medium and heavy artillery here.

(Squint a little, then rush to the hospital!)