People are afraid of being famous and pigs are afraid of being strong. During the two weeks of Wang Chenhao's stay in London, senior British officials, nobles and some arms dealers visited him at the Embassy of the Qing Empire in the UK where he was staying. The reporters from several famous British newspapers were paparazzi and blocked the door of the embassy 24 hours a day. Wang Chenhao's words and deeds were processed and published on the headlines of the newspaper the next day.

The reason why Wang Chenhao is so famous is inseparable from his series of measures in military, political and economic aspects.

In the military aspect, during the Battle of the Yellow Sea in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894, Wang Chenhao and his Jiaolong attracted high attention from European and American military strategists. In particular, John Abbasnot Fisher, the Third Minister of the Royal Navy, urgently wanted to meet Wang Chenhao, and wanted to obtain the performance parameters and underwater combat concepts of Jiaolong from him. In response, Wang Chenhao politely rejected him. He could not know the secret of Jiaolong in any case, because with his IQ and understanding of naval equipment, he would definitely find that Jiaolong did not belong to this era.

However, Wang Chenhao admires Major General Fisher very much. He has a very foresight in naval equipment manufacturing and naval tactical concepts. For example, his current job is the Third Maritime Secretary in charge of audit, equipment and logistics. He also serves as the director of the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard. The related work of the Dengyun-class battleship and the Haiqi-class armored cruiser is also inseparable from his participation.

Of course, Wang Chenhao knew about three major events in the naval that Fisher was truly famous. First, he presided over the first real destroyer in the history of human naval, which made the destroyer officially enter the naval combat sequence; second, he presided over the design of the USS Fearless battleship, and the new concept of unified main gun caliber battleship rewrites the milestone of the development of naval equipment; third, he also carried out epoch-making reforms to armored cruisers, and he proposed the popular battle cruisers.

Fisher's three contributions are key measures to influence the naval process. Wang Chenhao even wanted to assassinate him, so that Britain would lose these three key reforms, and its position as a naval overlord will definitely not be easily preserved.

Fisher naturally didn't know Wang Chenhao's true thoughts. Now he is only curious about Wang Chenhao. In addition to discussing the naval strategy and tactics with him, he also wanted to take the opportunity to sell naval equipment to Wang Chenhao in order to obtain funds to complete his design and reform on torpedo destroyers.

Wang Chenhao also wanted to learn the naval tactics and strategic concepts from Fisher. He always wanted to control the Beiyang Navy, so he urgently needed experience in this area, so the atmosphere of conversation and discussion with Fisher was very harmonious.

Fisher wanted to test Wang Chenhao's ability, so he avoided other naval arms and only talked about torpedo, torpedo boats and torpedo destroyers, and used the current maritime situation in the English Channel as the topic of discussion, because he firmly believed that he would be clearer than Wang Chenhao.

However, Fisher's abacus could not be heard after encountering Wang Chenhao. Because as a military enthusiast, Wang Chenhao was more deeply concerned about this aspect than Fisher.

Since the 19th century, as the hull developed from a wooden structure to an all-steel structure, the ship-borne gun developed from a front-mounted smoothbore gun to a rear-mounted rifled gun, and the power developed from a gallop and sail to a steam power. With the invention of mines, torpedoes, optical rangefinders and antennas, the development of world ships has entered a new stage. The performance of battleships, cruisers and armored ships has been greatly improved, becoming the protagonist of the naval battlefield.

By the end of the 19th century, torpedoes had developed into a brand new water weapon with a speed of more than 27 knots. Therefore, a small boat that can be used to launch torpedoes - a torpedo boat, was born in Britain in 1877. The threat of torpedo boats to large ships immediately attracted the attention of navies from all over the world. How to deal with this small, flexible, fast and extremely lethal light maritime "killer" has become a new topic urgently needed by the navies of various countries.

Fisher gave Wang Chenhao the topic that in the current English Channel, both the British and French navies require control of the strait and the navies of the two countries regularly confront each other. The British navies exceed the French navies in terms of warship tonnage and number, but the French navies vigorously develop high-speed torpedo boats and high-speed torpedo boats, using these low-cost but powerful torpedo boats to block the English Channel, forcing the British navy to surrender.

"Mr. Wang thought how should my Royal Navy break this situation?"

Wang Chenhao knew that Fisher was taking the exam, and wanted the arrogant Fisher to feel admiration. This was extremely important for Wang Chenhao's future development in the navy, because Wang Chenhao needed a lot of advanced equipment and technology from the British Navy, and Fisher was the key to opening the door.

"I don't need to answer this question. You already have the answer in your mind. But since you have this question, I'll say it." Wang Chenhao smiled slightly and continued: "We imagine building a new type of ship that can anti-torpedo boats. This type of ship is larger than a torpedo boat, can be equipped with several small-caliber rapid-fire cannons, and can also fire torpedoes. In this way, when the enemy's torpedo boats attack its large ships, this new type of ship can chase the incoming enemy torpedo boats, destroy it with artillery, protect its main ships, and also use its own torpedo to attack the enemy's large ships. This new type of torpedo boat capture ship with both offense and defense is called a destroyer. As long as your country equips this destroyer on a large scale, it will be fine to deal with the large number of French torpedo boats."

Fisher was a little surprised. The problem that had plagued the British Royal Navy for seven or eight years seemed to be solved in Wang Chenhao's eyes. In fact, since 1887, the British had secretly built a new type of ship like this as Wang Chenhao's mouth for the first time, and immediately joined the navy to serve in the navy to deal with the threat of numerous torpedo boats from France and Russia. At that time, because it was to be kept secret, it was also called a torpedo boat to confuse the French and Russian naval departments. In 1892, the British Navy secretly built four similar ships under the auspices of Fisher, and the internal name was "torpedo boat destroyer". Fisher said with a little question: "As far as I know, your country does not seem to have such a ship. Why does the destroyer mentioned by the King of Kings seem to be made by your country?"

Wang Chenhao laughed in his heart, "I can't explain this kind of thing to you." So he said, "Your country tried a warship called Havok two years ago. I think this is what I think is the destroyer. It seems that you are responsible for presiding?"

Fisher was stunned again, secretly amazement that Wang Chenhao even knew this. But this is a secret that only a few people know, and it seems that internal security measures should be strengthened.

Fisher believed in science, so he did not think that outsiders had rumored that Wang Chenhao was a prophet. He insisted that it was the senior officials within the Royal Navy who leaked the information. So Fisher did not need to hide it from Wang Chenhao anymore, so he was generous and explained the trial voyage of the Havok directly to Wang Chenhao.

The Havok displaced 275 tons, 56.4 meters long and 5.6 meters wide, has 12 pounds, 3 6-pound rapid-fire guns, and 3 18-inch fish**; the steam engine has a power of 3500-4000 horsepower, and a designed speed of 27 knots. The Havok easily achieved a speed of 26 knots during its first trial voyage. During the trial voyage the next day, the Havok easily caught up with a torpedo boat and surpassed the latter, which fully proved that it had the ability to catch torpedo boats and was enough to compete with other surface ships.

Subsequently, Fisher proposed that the Qing Empire Navy could also order this torpedo boat destroyer to cope with the threat from the Russian Navy in the Far East. Wang Chenhao thought that in order to increase the speed of the destroyer, Fisher began to test the use of steam turbine technology on it, which was the core power technology of the main ships in the future. Therefore, Wang Chenhao agreed to purchase a batch of new torpedo boat destroyers, but asked his Shanghai Shipbuilding Industry to cooperate with the Royal Navy Portsmouth Shipyard to develop new destroyers and share core technology.
Chapter completed!