Chapter 90 Keelung Cannon

Now the whaling ship is equipped with a whaling cannon specially cast by Yu Xiaotian. With this whaling gun, whaling has become much easier. There is no need for sailors to go down to small boats, chase whales, and hunt whales with whaling forks. It is really a very dangerous thing to do so. When the whaler was whaling, he was either injured or drowned in the sea because of the whale's resistance.

But with the whaling gun, the whaling began to become much safer. After the whaling ship found the whale, it began to chase the whale. After approaching the whale, the gunner operated the whaling gun and aimed at the whale. The whaling gun would fire a thick iron gun with a barbed into the whale's body.

There is a rope behind the whaling fork, and there is a large barrel at the end of the rope. After the whale is injured, it can't dive. On the way to escape on the sea, there will be a lot of blood loss. The whaler can follow it. After it loses too much blood and loses the ability to struggle, it will send people to the boat and sail to the whale to fight hard. Give the dying whale a final blow and end its life.

So since the whaling cannon was made and equipped with whaling ships, the whaling efficiency has been greatly improved. Now the whaling fleet on the Keelung Fort side can harvest a few whales every month, which can fully meet the current demand for oil of sea wolves. It can also export part of it and earn some money.

Other parts of whales, such as whale meat, have become a good meal in the rice bowls of the sea wolf department. Now they do not have a large-scale breeding industry, and there is little meat supply. In addition to hunting, they have to rely on immigrant households to raise some pigs and sheep to meet the needs of sea wolves. There is no need to think about beef. Cultivated cattle are the first class of sea wolves. Protect animals, unless the old farming cattle that can't work can slaughter and eat meat, the rest of the farming cattle have to work in the fields. Many workshops also need to cultivate cattle as animal power to provide power for some simple machinery.

In addition to making leather armor, whale skin can also make high-grade leather. Both land and Westerners are very interested in whale skin produced by sea wolves and can be sold at a good price. A whale's skin can make sea wolf earn hundreds of taels of silver.

As for the internal organs, as long as they are not poisonous, they can be eaten. They can be marinated and chopped into stew. Whether it is the sea wolves, the craftsmen of the workshop and even the students of the school, they like to eat it very much. In this era, it is too difficult for the poor people to eat meat. It is enough to eat some of whales. Things that people feel very happy about.

However, such an industry has brought a negative impact, that is, once you arrive at Keelung Fort, you can smell the strong refining whale fat in the chicken cage bay, burning the stench produced by those oil residues, which is also mixed with the fishy smell and fishy smell from the aquatic processing plant, which lingers who are new here. I can't help but have a desire to cover my nose.

In addition to the fish and whale processing farm that has begun to take shape here, the overall defense fortification system of Jilong Bay has now been basically completed. Three forts have been built at the mouth of the bay, forming a crossfire on the whole sea surface of the bay mouth, which can strictly block the bay mouth.

And the three forts themselves also have quite strong defensive capabilities. Even if the enemy lands forcibly, it is not easy to seize the forts.

In addition to a large number of cannons, the three forts are also surrounded by trenches. There are carbonized bamboo sticks everywhere inside and outside the trench, light or secretly. If you want to rely on light infantry, you can attack the fort battery. Don't even think about it.

In addition to these three large forts, Keelung Fort has added some bunkers on the four highlands that may pass through human places.

These bunkers are usually changed by a group of soldiers at regular duty. Once they encounter an enemy attack, they can live in three teams at any time, and they can immediately add a 12-pound mountain howitzer and two tiger squat guns in the bunker. Anyone who wants to bypass the fort at the mouth of the bay from the land and directly attack Keelung Fort can directly. It will be blocked by these bunkers.

Even if all the peripheral defense lines have been lost, Keelung Fort itself is a fort, which is built according to the western ridge structure. It also has a very strong defense. In addition, Keelung Fort's own reserves of materials, it is enough to hold on for a long time and will not be easily broken by the enemy, and strive to wait until the reinforcements arrive. There is no problem at all.

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

However, Yu Xiaotian is not very satisfied with the vigilance of the current Keelung Fort personnel. The guards of the forts and bunkers everywhere are psychologically relaxed. It is generally believed that no one dares to come here to trouble them now.

Yu Xiaotian caught the blackhead and Sun Baoqiang and scolded them for this, demanding that they must pay attention to it, strengthen the patrol on the sea, expand their current patrol area, and double the patrol area of the Keelung Fort left-behind warships to prevent the enemy from being found in front of their eyes.

In addition, Yu Xiaotian is not very satisfied with the road situation here. Although some roads have been built here, the terrain here is relatively high and low, and it is not easy to transport materials. If the road situation is worse, it will be more difficult. It is not easy to mobilize limited troops and reinforce the war. Where it is needed, especially some heavy weapons such as artillery, is not easy to transport to the place where the battle is most intense, so Yu Xiaotian asked the blackhead to rectify this point.

As for the situation of the workshop here, Yu Xiaotian did not pay much attention. At present, the industrial zone of Sea Wolf focuses on the freshwater City, which is relatively convenient for transportation, while Keelungbao is mainly a fishery industry. Gunworks have not set up a branch here, only the cannon has set up a branch factory on this side.

This time, Yu Xiaotian came here mainly to see the production of the cannon factory here. There is only one large workshop on the side of Keelung Fort, which is equipped with three casting tables, and only three cannons can be cast at the same time.

However, the cannon here is different from that of Nanri Island and freshwater artillery. It is only responsible for casting heavy artillery, and the lowest artillery is also a 12-pound cannon. The main production is that the previous Nanri Island cannon was only cast into a 24-pound cannon.

This 24-pound cannon weighs more than 3,000 catties in the gun body alone, and weighs more than 4,000 catties. At present, all ships of Sea Wolf are unable to effectively carry such heavy guns for the time being. Even if they are loaded, they can only shoot a few shells. As a result, the ship's board is not long after firing. It should be cracked. Basically, it can only be regarded as a hammer deal. If you can't win or defeat the enemy, your own ship will at least be scrapped. If you don't do it, 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 successful trial production, the gun was transported to Keelung Fort and installed on the Peace Island Battery for use as a shore gun.

When using a standard solid bullet with a small tolerance, this 24-pound gun has a direct shooting distance of about two miles. After accurate measurement, it can basically reach 902 meters, and within this range, the shooting accuracy is quite high, and it can easily and accurately hit a fast ship about the same size as a flying type. Objective.

And the power of this gun is also great. More than 20 catties of shells are very fast within two miles, which can basically ensure that they can penetrate all the hulls of the enemy they may encounter at present and cause considerable casualties.

However, this 24-pound cannon actually has a range of more than two miles when used as a shore gun. According to the results of the test, when used as a shore gun, the effective range can reach at least two kilometers, that is, about four miles, and can also ensure a considerable hit rate.

This result is basically thanks to the very advanced iron casting method, which makes the gun body very strong and can reduce a lot of weight. If this is imitated by the Ming Dynasty craftsmen on land, they should at least double the gun wall and weigh at least seven times. More than 1,000 catties is simply a disaster for users. It is estimated that they can't even aim at it, let alone reset it.

Moreover, the weight of this 24-pound cannon cast by the sea wolf, even with the weight of similar cannons cast by craftsmen in Western countries at the same time, is much lighter, and the casting process is much better than them.

But the reason why it was only cast into a cannon and stopped it was because at the time of trial production, the sea wolf's iron reserves were still very small. This guy consumed a lot of iron. To cast this cannon, he had to refine the pig iron purchased from the land first. After refining, there was only one catty of pig iron left After six or seven hundred catties, it takes more than 5,000 catties of iron to cast this 24-pound cannon.

At that time, the sea wolf needed six-pound and twelve-pound guns. The demand for this 24-pound heavy gun was not large, so they could only regretfully stop production first.

But now the sea wolf has established a number of ways to import iron by expanding the purchase channels everywhere, which has initially solved the problem of insufficient raw materials and stored a considerable amount of iron.

In addition, the time for possible Spaniards to seize Chicken Cage Bay is getting closer and closer, so Yu Xiaotian specially ordered to build a slightly smaller cannon in Jilong Village during the industrial migration, specializing in casting medium and heavy artillery to meet the needs of this side first.

So after the construction of the chicken cage village was completed last year, the work of recasting 24 pounds of cannon began.

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

(squint a little and then rush to the hospital!)