In fact, Hong Tao's design of using the figure of a first-class battleship and the firepower of a third-class battleship is very suitable for current naval battleship. In later generations, the reason why Western countries have fought their lives to build hulls and the number of artillery increased was because they have opponents with comparable shipbuilding skills and must suppress the other party. Hong Tao does not have this need, and he does not need to compete with other countries in the sea merchants. The current Jiaoshark class is enough to deal with all maritime wars.

The King of the Sea was just a monster warship that he compromised with the parliament. It had neither technical advantages nor any efficiency. To put it bluntly, this was a large yacht built by the Imperial Parliament for their emperor, or a luxurious armed yacht, specially designed for this indefinite emperor to drive around, and he had no hope of fighting naval battles with the enemy.

The real battleship of the Royal Navy was the Jiaosha-class warship that had undergone the second major modification. Through this large-scale naval battle with the Mongolian Navy, from Hong Tao to the Imperial Parliament, one problem was realized, that is, the scale of the Royal Navy was a bit small. Less than twenty warships were difficult to fully deal with the possible large-scale maritime conflicts with neighboring countries, let alone face two or multiple wars at the same time.

In response to this situation, Hong Tao led a group of graduates from the nautical school and worked together with the Wen family, a group of pure and practical old ship craftsmen, to design a new model of warships based on the original Jiaosha-class warships, specifically used to deal with the current large-scale naval battles.

The newly designed warship is named Sea Wolf Class. Its displacement is only 350 tons, and its length is similar to that of the Jiaosha Class. However, its figure is a little thinner than the Jiaosha Class. The bow and stern are narrower. After three masts and Bakentin Sail, the standard speed can reach 11 knots, the maximum speed is no less than fifteen knots, and the sailors on the ship can be reduced to about 110 people, and the full load in wartime is only 180 people. Due to the small number of people, its endurance is not bad. Without any supplies, it can last at sea for more than three months.

In addition to high speed and high endurance, the firepower of the Sea Wolf-class is also very fierce. The Empire Metal Group specially produced a 120mm caliber long-tube cannon for it, and the standard configuration of each Sea Wolf-class warship is thirty.

This ******* naval gun not only reduces the weight, but also speeds up the loading speed and reduces the number of gunners. Each gun only requires three gunners to operate. With tacit understanding, it can reach a fire rate of one shot per minute. As for its power, it is definitely not as powerful as the 135mm extended naval gun, but it is enough to deal with ships from all over the world. Relatively speaking, the 135mm and 155mm naval guns are a bit wasteful.

Running fast, running far, turning flexible, and fiery firepower are all advantages of the sea wolf level, so it must have disadvantages. That's right, just like anything in the world, there are advantages and disadvantages. The more prominent the advantages, the more obvious the disadvantages are.

The disadvantage of the Sea Wolf-class is that it is difficult to control, which is caused by its slender ship shape. When ordinary sailors and sail drivers arrive on the Sea Wolf-class warship, it is difficult to master the performance of this warship immediately. It requires more complicated training to be on board.

The two evils are more light! Hong Tao was able to finally make the finalization of this kind of warship for large-scale production, which was because his advantages and disadvantages were equally prominent. At the same time, he also referred to the current technical conditions of the Jinhe Empire. After so many years of maritime expansion, the empire did not lack good sailors, gunners and excellent naval officers. As long as they had a period of familiarity, they could overcome the shortcomings of the Sea Wolf-level and exert all their advantages. This kind of warship was useless to put in the navies of other countries, but put in the hands of the Jinhe Empire, it was a perfect weapon.

In addition, the Sea Wolf Class has another more important advantage, which is that the cost is relatively cheap. A Dragon Shark-class warship costs more than 2,000 imperial gold coins, while a Sea Wolf Class costs less than 1,500 imperial gold coins.

The weight of an imperial gold coin is half a Song meter, which is about twenty grams (Song jin is 640 grams, and sixteen taels are one pound). According to the current ratio, it can be exchanged for 15 sprite Song copper coins. In other words, the hull of a Jiaosha-class warship is as expensive as more than 30,000 sprites, while a Sea Wolf-class only costs more than 20,000 sprites. It is almost one-third to one-quarter cheaper.

This price is only the internal accounting price of the Jinhe Empire and cannot be used as the market price. Because there are many vassal states in the Jinhe Empire that produce high-quality woods, and it does not cost too much to obtain these woods. They only need to exchange them with iron farm tools or sugar and high-alcohol produced by the empire. This is not the same. Under the power of cannons, the acquisition cost of these woods is lower. This is the advantage of colonial rule. By exploiting the colonial people, the Jinhe Empire can save a lot of economic costs.

Hong Tao really can't calculate the specific market costs of these warships. Since the logistics circulation in this era was not very developed, many things were completely different prices hundreds of miles apart, and they were very different and could not be compared one by one. If you only compare the prices of coastal cities along the Southern Song Dynasty, the cost of a Jiaosha-class warship might reach more than 40,000 guan, which is still the cost price.

Don't think that the cost of a warship is so much. This is just a part of it. To be precise, the price of the hull, the sailing tools and artillery have not been included. The cost of a bronze 135-caliber cannon is as high as 500 jin. Including the labor and fire consumption, as well as the scrap rate, the estimated cost is about 700 jin. Even if a warship is equipped with thirty naval guns, a total of 20,000 jin is worth a ship of artillery alone, which is basically the same as the cost of the hull.

The cost of an iron cannon of the same caliber is two-thirds lower than that of a copper cannon, mainly because of the cheaper material prices. This is just in the Jinhe Empire that no one in the world can smel out the gray cast iron cannon. No one can object to it. Moreover, with the Rodman casting method, the yield rate of the cast iron cannon of the Empire Metal Group was very high, and the cost was reduced by more than 60%. This is the power of technology. It can make expensive things worthless and double the value of a bunch of inconspicuous ores, which can even steal them even if others want to.

Rather than saying that the navy plays the financial resources of the country, it can be said that the navy needs the overall scientific and technological level of a country to support it. If the navy built like the Mongolian Empire, which has no financial resources or technology, and has no technology, it will be a very unreliable development direction just by relying on the number advantage of ten times and dozens of times. Once the enemy's base changes and the technology is improved, you have to work hundreds or thousands of times to keep it even. It would be strange if such an arms race is not lost.

Now Hong Tao is preparing to change the base, and it is not a small change, but a big change. After temporarily removing the threat from the Mongol Empire, the Royal Navy's mission in the next ten years will not be limited to East Asia and South Asia, and its scope of activities will extend to the Arabian Peninsula and the west coast of Africa as commercial routes are used. This requires more warships to protect the navigation safety of these maritime commercial routes and to cope with possible emergencies.

Therefore, Hong Tao wanted to increase the Royal Navy's organization from less than twenty main warships to fifty. Among them, thirty ships were needed to build the Sea Wolf class, and a few more salmon-class armed cargo ships were added, and 120mm short-barrel guns were also installed to make them more suitable for naval battles with a slightly more intense degree.

These thirty Sea Wolf-class warships cannot be all built by the Empire Shipyard, because most of the energy of the Empire Shipyard is devoted to the construction of the Sea King, and there is no time or anyone to take care of so many Sea Wolf-class warships, so Hong Tao reorganized the structure of the Empire Shipyard.

The original Imperial Shipyard was still alive, but only dispatched 200 shipbuilders to the shipyard in Phuket to expand the shipyard there, and then made every effort to build Seawolf-class warships. It is expected that at least eight ships will be launched every year.

In addition, the Empire Shipyard, Empire Metal Group, Empire Petrochemical Group, and Empire Machinery Group will also send people to Cape Town Port, and build a new large shipyard, a metal smelting plant, a forging plant and a foundry, as well as a supporting machinery factory and gunpowder plant. Make full use of South Africa's mineral resources and human resources advantages to develop Cape Town into a second shipbuilding, metallurgy and machinery base directly controlled by the Empire, besides Jinhe City.
Chapter completed!