Chapter 120 New Ship Embarking

A novel ship began to float slowly from the dock under the buoyancy of the sea and quickly stabilized.

On both sides of the dock, it was already crowded with sea wolves at this time, but those who can come here to watch the ceremony at this time are basically people with heads and faces, at least if they are a first mate.

Of course, there are also some craftsmen who belong to the boat. They are still busy on both sides of the dock, sorting out the ropes, fixing the new ship in the dock, and adjusting and leveling the ship.

The weather has begun to cool down at this time. It is no longer as hot as the previous months, making people dizzy. The fresh sea breeze blows everyone's face on the shore, and everyone's faces are full of happy and excitement.

This day is a special day for Xiaotian, because the first dhow he designed and built was finally completed on this day and can be put into the water.

This is ten days later than his original plan to build in three months, but even so, Yu Xiaotian did not blame Guo Fu and other shipmakers.

Because building such a ship is a new challenge for them after all, they have never come into contact with such a ship type. Although Yu Xiaotian provided them with a rather exquisite ship model, they still encountered many problems when they began to expand the construction in proportion.

First of all, boatmen have never used such a dense ship ribs, and the boat ribs vary in curvature according to the part used. When making ship ribs, they should use whole wood, bake and heat them up, and use the fixture to bend them into the desired shape, and fix them to prevent the wood from opening after being built. Destroy the hull structure.

This item made the boatmen scratch their heads and think of many ways to solve this problem. For this purpose, they have to make a lot of fixed fixtures, build a drying room, and bake the ribs of the boat. This work alone consumes a lot of time.

Guo Fu and other shipmakers can basically work day and night in order to catch up with the time required by Yu Xiaotian. Yu Xiaotian also saw this when he inspected the boat house every day, knowing that they did not deliberately delay being lazy.

In addition, because it is the first time to build such a ship, shipmakers are not familiar with many structural parts of this type of ship, and the construction order is also different from their common Chinese ships before. During the construction period, there were also misplanned, resulting in chaotic construction sequence and having to be demolished for rework. It has also delayed a lot of time.

In addition, they also encountered a lot of trouble with the sails used in this ship. In the past, the sails they built were all Chinese hard sails, mainly bamboo bamboo, but on this new ship, Yu Xiaotian made it very clear that soft sails should be used.

In the past, the craftsmen in charge of sailing in the boat house scratched their heads. They didn't know what cloth was better to make this kind of sail.

Of course, Yu Xiaotian knows sails. Naturally, it is best to use canvas, and the sails of this kind of sloop are very powerful, and the requirements for canvas are higher, but where can he get canvas now? So far, there is no demand for canvas in China, so naturally no one will produce canvas.

And there are also requirements for the textile method of canvas. It can't be just plain textile, and the materials can't be all cotton. Try to use cotton and linen blends to be stronger and durable.

So far, he can only find a way to solve this kind of canvas for sails from Westerners, so he had to send someone to Macao and Manila to find such canvas.

Hard work pays off. After a lot of hard work, they got a batch of thick canvas from India from the Spaniards and solved the problem of sail decoration.

In a word, when building this new ship, the craftsmen of the boat house encountered a lot of trouble, but Chinese craftsmen are illiterate and uneducated, but their intelligence must not be ignored.

Once these craftsmen encounter problems, they will not only stick to the stereotypes. In fact, they are also very good at brainstorming. Under the brainstorming of everyone, they have finally come up with various ways to solve the technical problems one by one.

On this alone, Yu Xiaotian has nothing to complain about them. He just tries to take time every day to go to the boat house to learn about the troubles and problems they encounter. If he has enough time, he will also stay to help figure it out. Just look at the boat in the hands of the boatmen in the boat house, like a grasshopper. Ants move, little by little from some wood to parts, and then gradually assembled together.

Twenty days ago, the main construction of the ship was basically completed. Yu Xiaotian was very excited at that time and couldn't wait to drive the ship to sea immediately to try out how the performance of the ship was.

However, the completion of the hull does not mean that the ship can go into the water, because after the main body is completed, there is still a lot of correction work to be done. In addition, the seam position under the ship should be sealed, that is, the seam process.

For the matter of twisting, it is difficult for boatmen. China has a long history of shipbuilding and has long solved the problem of hull sealing. However, using very simple raw materials, such as grass and wood ash, oil, hemp rope head, lime, etc., can seal the seams on the hull.

After the twist of the hull was completed, it basically had the conditions to go into the water. However, considering that the ship had to be soaked in the sea and the hull had to undergo anti-corrosion treatment, the board of directors collected a large amount of large paint from the land, painted the ship and painted it all over.

The first sloop built by the sea wolf is completely built and has the ability to deliver the test voyage.

Yu Xiaotian specially asked people to choose a day as an auspicious day for the ship to be launched, and a rather grand launching ceremony was held for the ship.

The ship was also dressed in red by the shipmen today and prepared a lot of firecrackers. When the dock door was opened, the firecrackers sounded together. It was really lively.

However, while Yu Xiaotian was excited, he still felt a little uneasy. After all, he is just a boat model enthusiast, far from the real shipmaker. Theoretically, he can copy some ship models from later generations and make them into ship models, but if he makes a real ship according to the boat model he made, can he make a real ship? Yes, he really has no idea about this.

However, since he is still the "chief designer" of the sea wolf, although he is not sure, he also has to hold a shelf and pretend to be confident, while accepting the praise of his subordinates while secretly observing the situation after the ship was launched.

When the dock was filled with sea water, the ship began to float. On the whole, the boatmen did a good job before going into the water. The overall balance of the ship was adjusted better. After entering the water, the ship quickly floated smoothly on the water without leaning forward or backward. In the case of roll, the balance obviously meets the requirements of the water.

After the ship floated, more than a dozen specially selected sailors began to board the ship, sort out the sails and riggings on the ship, and conduct an overall inspection of the ship, especially the bottom cabin, as the focus, to check the leakage.

People stood near the dock and watched these people busy on the boat. After a while, the leader who led the ship ran to the side of the ship and shouted at Xiaotian's position: "Be a big boss! The hull has been inspected! No water leakage was found! Other inspections are also normal. Can you move out of the dock?

Yu Xiaotian was a little relieved, nodded to stop the noisy voices around him, and strode from a springboard to the deck of the ship.

After boarding the ship, Yu Xiaotian can feel the strength of the ship. At the beginning of construction, Yu Xiaotian told the shipmakers that the ship belongs to a warship. It must be made of sufficient materials and must be strong. At the same time to withstand the bad weather and strong winds on the sea, it is also necessary to ensure that it collides with the enemy ship. There are enough crossings.

So when the boatmen cut the materials, they did not cut corners. Not only did they use enough materials, but the wood did not use soft pine, but used valuable teak to build the ship. The thickness of the wood on the side panels and deck of the ship was more than twice as much as the materials used by ordinary merchant ships. In addition to the edical structure for assembly, a large number of large iron nails are also used for reinforcement.

Where the structure is load-bearing, there is more materials, and there is a lot of material left, so when you step on the ship, you can feel the solidity of the ship under your feet, and the sound of landing is dull, indicating that the thickness of the deck is very thick.

In this way, although the overall no-load weight of the ship has increased a lot, its strength should not be underestimated, and it can even be called the strongest ship of the sea wolf so far.

The ship is about 20 meters long, about four meters wide, and no more than four meters high. The hull is elegant and slender.

Yu Xiaotian walked around the ship in person and checked the situation everywhere. Because the ship is newly built, it looks very clean and has not yet loaded anything else. In addition, the upper part of the hull is flat, and there is almost no superstructure. Only the stern has a small stern, which is used as a helmsman. It is convenient for the helmsman to observe the navigation in front of the ship.

However, the ship still adopts the steering rod operation method. It turned out that Yu Xiaotian wanted to design a set of steering wheel operation mechanism for the ship to replace this backward vertical steering rod operation.

In this era, neither Chinese nor Western-style ships have invented the common steering wheel operating mechanism, and the invention of the steering wheel operating mechanism was not invented until the 18th century.

Before that, both Chinese and Western-style ships basically used the rudder or tiller to control the rudder, and there are great disadvantages. First, the controllable angle of the rudder operation is relatively small, which is not enough to meet the flexibility of the ship at sea, and the helmsman is swung when operating. Blocking the line of sight, you can't see the situation in front of you, so you can only adjust the rudder under the instructions of the rest of the ship.

Once encountering strong wind and waves or sharp turns, it is difficult for a helmsman to control it, and sometimes it even takes three or four people to control the helm to operate it.

Of course, Yu Xiaotian knows how to solve it. As long as he "invents" a set of steering wheel operation mechanism, this problem can be solved, making boat operation simpler and more effective, and improving the mobility of the ship.

(It's almost the end of the month. Brothers, please remember to keep the monthly ticket for me at the beginning of the month! Thank you very much!)