In a huge dock, hundreds of craftsmen were busy on a thirty-meter-long fusiform hull.

The base of the ship has been completed, the side of the ship is surrounding, the water wheel is being installed, and the deck has been laid more than half. It is about to be launched into the water for final assembly.

Song Yingxing stood aside and introduced excitedly, but Zhu Qizhe looked at the drawings and frowned slightly.

This is a new type of thousand-material ship designed based on the appearance of the No. 2 Fu Ship and the structure of the wheels. There should be no problem in terms of its structure and performance. The problem is that the appearance does not look like a gunboat!

Song Yingxing may have never thought about the installation of artillery when designing it because he had never seen a real gunboat.

I have never seen a real gunboat in Zhuqizhu, but I have seen some pictures.

He frowned and pondered for a while, then couldn't help asking: "Chang Geng, this new ship will eventually be equipped with cannons. Where are you going to install the cannons?"

Song Yingxing pointed to the drawing without thinking and said, "Prince, you see, the bow of the ship and the side positions on both sides of the ship can be loaded with cannons. At that time, just fix the base on the deck."

The bow of the ship is just a little bigger, and there are not many empty places on both sides of the ship. How many cannons can be loaded in this place?

Zhu Qizhuo asked helplessly: "Do you mean a large ship with a thousand-material load of more than ten cannons?"

Song Yingxing nodded without hesitation and said, "Yes, the previous No. 2 lucky ship was like this."

Alas, more than ten cannons are enough!

Zhu Qizhuo shook his head slightly and said, "Chang Geng, we can only load forty or fifty cannons at least."

Ah, why are you installing so many artillery?

Upon hearing this, Song Yingxing couldn't help but say in surprise: "Prince, don't you need to install so many cannons, right? Didn't you say that this big ship must carry at least 500 kilograms of artillery, forty or fifty, that's tens of thousands of kilograms. Fifty ships are built in two months, that's millions of kilograms. Where do we get so much copper?"

This problem is indeed a bit tricky, and copper seems to never be enough!

Zhu Qizhe shook his head slightly and said, "Don't worry about this, we don't need to install cannons now. If there is copper, we can find another way. In short, a large ship with a thousand-material must be loaded with forty or fifty cannons. Moreover, except for the giant cannon on the head, other cannons must be covered with cabins, so that they will not be silenced when it rains and encounters sea storms."

Ah, is the cannon loaded into the cabin?

He has never seen this structure before!

Upon hearing this, Song Yingxing subconsciously asked: "All artillery is covered with cabins, how can the shells be fired?"

This is simple.

Zhu Qizhe pointed to the drawing and gestured: "Look, you can add a layer of connected cabin on the deck. The sides of this cabin are made into rope-like movable windows. Usually, the window is closed, and rain and sea water cannot enter. When you need to fire the fire, just pull the window up and push the gun's muzzle outside the window and you can fire."

Song Yingxing had never seen such a strange window, but the structure of this kind of window is not very complicated. Song Yingxing just thought about it for a while and understood it.

However, he still couldn't understand why a ship had to be loaded with forty or fifty cannons.

He couldn't help but curiously said, "Prince, it's enough to have more than ten cannons on a ship? It seems that the Japanese Japanese pirates have only a few cannons at most. Why do we need to install forty or fifty cannons?"

I'm so dizzy, this guy is just too curious.

A large ship with a thousand-material material is naturally enough to use more than ten cannons to deal with Japanese pirates in Japan. If it is used to deal with European powers, that is far from it.

You are afraid that you don’t know that the largest gunboat is loaded with hundreds of cannons. How can you fight with more than ten cannons?

Alas, I don’t know how many sea boats and gunboats the Dutch, known as the sea coachman, have built at this time, and I don’t know if they have become the overlords of the sea now.

Zhu Qizhuo only knew that the maritime overlord in the late Ming Dynasty was the Netherlands, but he had no idea about the history of maritime hegemony in the Netherlands.

In fact, the Netherlands had become the overlord of the maritime world around the 30th year of Wanli, the Ming Dynasty.

These sea coachmen were really crazy. From the 15th year of Wanli in the Ming Dynasty to the 30th year of Wanli in the Ming Dynasty, in just over ten years, they built tens of thousands of sea ships and gunboats. Spain and Portugal, which pioneered the era of navigation, were beaten to the point where they could not find the north.

Moreover, they have already reached the Ming Dynasty by now!

At this time, the coachman on the sea was really crazy or rampant. He was in the Ming Dynasty, with a population of over 100 million and a larger army than their total population. They even treated them as backward natives who were bullied!

How rampant are they?

In April of the second year of the Tianqi, Gu En, the governor of the Dutch East India Company, heard about the civil strife in the Ming Dynasty, and the Jiannu of Liaodong and the chieftains in the southwest rebelled one after another, so he categorically ordered the fleet commander Gao Wenlu to lead a joint fleet of seven warships and eight armed ships to head north to invade the Ming Dynasty, attempting to threaten the Ming Dynasty with force with the Netherlands, and even occupy the southeastern coast of the Ming Dynasty and establish a colony!

Seven warships and eight armed merchant ships, and only more than a thousand elite soldiers wanted to defeat the Ming Dynasty, making the Ming Dynasty bow down and surrender, which seemed a bit ridiculous.

However, these days, such things are not ridiculous at all.

This is how the European powers bully countries around the world with the benefit of firearms.

At that time, the Spanish colonist Pizarro took advantage of the civil turmoil in the Inca Empire and led 168 soldiers to conquer this indigenous empire with a population of up to 20 million and an army of hundreds of thousands!

Therefore, the Dutch believed that it was enough to defeat the indigenous Ming Dynasty that was in civil strife!

At the beginning, they did take a lot of advantages, because the Ming Dynasty could not have thought that these barbarians would fight unannounced and sent fleets to invade for no reason.

Moreover, after more than a hundred years of sea ban, the Ming Dynasty lost its invincible ocean fleet, and the only ones who could go out to sea were merchant ships that could compete for trade.

One side was deliberate, the other side was unprepared. At the beginning, Daming suffered a great loss.

The arrogant Dutch fleet did not talk about any etiquette and morality. When they rushed to the southeast coast of the Ming Dynasty, they were like pirates, firing ships when they saw ships and robbing things when they saw things. In just a few months, the Ming Dynasty's merchant ships engaged in trade were burned and sunk sixty or seventy ships, capturing more than a thousand people. They also forced these prisoners to build fortresses for them in Penghu, so that most of these prisoners died of exhaustion in Penghu.

What's more, they even went ashore to rob, burned many coastal villages, and even blocked the portal of Fujian's seaward and the estuary of Jiulongjiang.

Immediately afterwards, they began to make unreasonable demands, attempting to force the Ming Dynasty to sign an unequal treaty.

What opens all coastal ports, allows the Dutch to do business freely, what cedes Penghu, recognizes the Dutch rule in Penghu, what strictly prohibits the Ming Dynasty from engaging in trade with Spain and Portugal, and if you want to do business, you can only do it with them, etc.

If it were the late Qing Dynasty, they might have succeeded, because the Qing Dynasty would not fight at all after it degenerated for hundreds of years.

Unfortunately, it was not the late Qing Dynasty, but the Ming Dynasty.

The Ming Dynasty has always been a strong man, not to marry, not to pay tribute, not to cede land, and do not accept it!

Even if the Jiannu in Liaodong is rampant, even if the chieftains in the southwest are rebelling, even if the drought in the northwest is severe, even if the Ming Dynasty is in chaos, whether it is the Qingliu or the eunuch party, there is only one answer to the unreasonable demands of the Dutch: If you don’t accept it, do it!

Just as Zhu Qizhuo and She Chongming rebels were fighting fiercely, Fujian Governor Nan Juyi was ordered to come to Zhangzhou, directly organized troops and was about to start working.

What was the result of the war with the sea overlord of the Netherlands when the Ming Dynasty was so weak?
Chapter completed!