Chapter 116 Pies Falling from the Sky

After Hu Chuyuan returned to London, through the planning of RS Butterfield, some British media began to focus on Hu Chuyuan's purchase of Belize House, and claimed that Hu Chuyuan was the richest man in Asia, a ship administration official of the Qing Dynasty, and had the status of a "ja" of the Qing Dynasty.

British readers and media care more about Hu Chuyuan's wealth. According to the Times, as a trader who monopolizes the world's silk industry, plus salt, sugar and other food retail industries, Hu Chuyuan's annual income is as high as two million pounds.

Even in the UK, this is a very amazing amount. If the British can have a million pounds of wealth at this time, it is equivalent to a billionaire 130 years later, which is quite rare and rare.

Where is Hu Chuyuan?

His personal wealth is as high as 10 million pounds, and his stable income is still 2 million pounds a year. Isn't it amazing?

For a while, the whole of London and even Europe began to talk about Hu Chuyuan, and his special title "Hoosir" also spread all over Europe, as if he had called this name.

This is really just the beginning, and The Times soon continued to expose a more surprising news - Hu Chuyuan will buy an ironclad ship under construction at the SamudaBros shipyard in a private name.

Hu Chuyuan has a good reason. Because he often has to go in and out of the Strait of Malacca and the South Sea, and piracy activities in this area are particularly rampant, he wants to buy a warship and transform it into a passenger ship for his private sea travel, which is convenient for him to travel between Europe and the United States.

The two ironclad ships currently under construction by SamudaBros Shipyard and the Japanese first ironclad ship Fusang are sister ships, belonging to the second-class waist gun house ironclad ships, with a drainage tonnage of 3,777 tons, hybrid sails, and artillery arranged on both sides of the ship's side, and four 240mm main guns are located in the waist of the ship. Central.

If you want to buy warships in private name with the United Kingdom, Hu Chuyuan must pass the approval of the British Admiralty, which is almost impossible.

Even so, the British media are frantically tracking and reporting this matter.

Hu Chuyuan left Zheng Qinglian, Lin Yiyou and Yang Lianchen in the UK, and worked with Ye Fu, Deng Shichang and Hua Weifang to handle the purchase of warships. Accompanied by Wu Shuzhen, RS Butterfield and Zheng Xitai, he constantly met British business people and some celebrities in the British cultural circles.

Direct contact with the British aristocracy and political class is Hu Chuyuan's goal, but it is a little difficult.

So, he first met business people in London and celebrities in the cultural world, including Thomas Henry Huxley, Charles Darwin, Thomas Carlisle and others.

Through the introduction of Thomas Henry Huxley, Hu Chuyuan further understood some special people of the Royal Society for the Promotion of Natural Knowledge in London and decided to fund 50,000 pounds a year to sponsor the Royal Society's research in natural science and medicine.

This decision made Hu Chuyuan quickly get a strange appreciation in London. In fact, Hu Chuyuan's existence has a feeling of throat for the British, especially the Londoners who think they are extremely noble.

In their fixed thinking, the Chinese should be poor, ignorant and backward, and an inferior nation, but why are they so rich?

Hu Chuyuan is not an ordinary rich!

Some media even reported that Hu Chuyuan hired an American Irishman as a housekeeper with a monthly salary of up to 500 pounds.

In the UK, a monthly salary of 70 pounds is a very good middle class.

After Hu Chuyuan sponsored the Royal Society and became an honorary member, people's feelings for him seemed to have suddenly changed.

Hu Chuyuan is very good at dealing with the British at this time.

In several subsequent activities of the Royal Society, Hu Chuyuan successively met Sir John Brooke, a noble banker who was also an honorary member, and British Navy Captain John Arbuthnot Fischer.

It can be said that John Fischer himself wanted to know Hu Chuyuan, because he participated in the invasion of Guangzhou and the attack on the Dagu Fort in the Second Opium War, which was the only major defeat of the British Navy in the whole 19th century.

John Fischer was born in a naval family in Ceylon. He became a sailor of the Royal Navy at the age of 13, participated in the Crimean War at the age of 15, and participated in the Second Opium War at the age of 16.

In 1874, at the age of 33, he was promoted to colonel of the British Royal Navy.

At the same time, he is currently the best at torpedo tactics in the British Navy, and is also responsible for the torpedo tactics training of the Royal Navy.

During this period in Britain, he was already the most famous young officer and placed high expectations on people. In fact, it was his later reforms that enabled the British navy to maintain a long-term advantage over Germany.

This is a genius.

Although he was an aggressor and is likely to become the strongest opponent in the future, Hu Chuyuan still urgently needs his help and needs to reach an agreement with the British navy through him.

After knowing this person at the beginning, Hu Chuyuan slowly "pursued" him like a veteran in love. At first, he only intentionally or unintentionally invited him to participate in the Royal Society's activities on naval technology. After becoming more familiar with him, he often invited him to discuss naval ideas and technology in the new era.

Hu Chuyuan's personal charm is very strong. This is not only useful for the Chinese, but also for the British. As long as the other party no longer looks at him with the inferiority of the Chinese, he will soon find his wisdom and ability and his value.

Hu Chuyuan and John Fischer's relationship was extremely smooth. A few weeks later, the two became very special friends. As long as it was not a topic of national interests and secrets, everything else could be talked about at will.

Out of Hu Chuyuan's expectation, John Fisher is not only willing to help him negotiate with the Admiralty, but also very willing to go to the Fuzhou Ship Administration to engage in the training and guidance of Fujian Marine Division.

The salary doesn't matter, provided that the Admiralty should approve it, and Hu Chuyuan and the Qing Dynasty also need him enough rights for three to five years.

This is simply a pie that fell from the sky, or a meat bun.

With the help of John Fischer and Sir John Brooke, Hu Chuyuan successfully met Astri Cooper, First Secretary of the Navy of the British Admiralty, and some officials of the British Liberal Party, including Sir William Gleston, who was the former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

At this time, it was the middle of February 1880, and there was no new progress in the purchase of warships, but Hu Chuyuan gradually had close contact with British politics and the Admiralty in the name of his personal "Hoosir".

With his huge personal wealth and his influence, the depth he can reach far exceeds that of Hurd, and it is not comparable to that of Kingdengan.

During this period, Sir John Brooke and John Fischer were both Hu Chuyuan's most important personal close friends. They often went to various social occasions in the UK together, which was much more popular than Li Fengbo, who was then the minister in Europe.

In this case, the British political and military have a deeper understanding of Hu Chuyuan. The First Minister of Maritime Affairs, Astri Cooper, said bluntly that if we want to deal more closely with the Chinese, "Thebestway" is Hoosir.

With the gradual continuation and development of this situation, by March 1880, the situation had become very favorable. Hu Chuyuan held formal negotiations with the British Admiralty. The speed of reaching an agreement and the favorable conditions made Li Feng, who was at the same time buy a ship for the Beiyang Marine Division, stunned.

Hu Chuyuan's strategy is very simple. He first told Astri Cooper, the First Minister of Maritime Affairs, that China is about to set up two new fleets, one is the Beiyang Marine Division, which is highly valued by the imperial court, and the other is the Fujian Marine Division led by him and the governor of Fujian and Zhejiang.

In other words, in China's naval force and the coastal defense policy of the whole Qing Dynasty, he and the Fujian Navy are in an absolute weakness, and the financial allocation is only half of that of the Beiyang Navy.

Considering the situation of the French political axe's leading invasion of Vietnam, the Anglo-French balance strategy of Fuzhou Ship Administration and Fujian Marine Division may be coming to an end... This means that in the absence of sovereignty issues, Hu Chuyuan is very happy that the British Admiralty is more involved.

On the other hand, the negotiations between Li Fengbo, the British Admiralty and the agent of the Beiyang Marine Division, the envoy of the Qing Dynasty to the five countries in Europe, were extremely unsmooth.

Many reasons have contributed to the rapid birth of the Agreement on Arms Sales and Related Cooperation of the British Admiralty to Fuzhou Ship Administration. In this agreement, the Fujian Shipping Administration will purchase four Weikang-class second-class ironclad ships and four Guangwu-class light cruisers from the United Kingdom.

According to the basic requirements put forward by Hu Chuyuan, the drainage tonnage of the Weikang-class ironclad ship is between 4,500 tons and 5,000 tons. It adopts the central ironclad castle design of the Infleet White. The main gun is 240mm caliber, adopts a French exposed turret design, which is set on the bow deck, and 3 are installed on both sides of the string. There are 150mm caliber secondary guns, and two 150mm caliber double secondary guns are installed at the stern.

The speed of the ironclad ship must reach 15 knots, and the cruise speed should be 10 knots. It is fully steam-powered, and no longer uses tedious sails. The protective armor of the key areas and the conning tower must be able to resist 240mm heavy artillery, and the protective armor in other areas should be able to resist 150mm artillery.

His technical requirements are easy to meet for the British, because the armored defense requirements of the Weikang-class ironclad ships are not high, and the requirements of the artillery system and power system are not high.

Of course, this is only the basic requirement put forward by Hu Chuyuan, which must be met.

The Guangwu-class cruiser is based on the newly commissioned British Sea Cruiser Comus, which is the earliest flat armored protected cruiser with a displacement of 2,380 tons and an average speed of 13 knots. Although it does not use high-pressure ventilation technology, the maximum speed can still reach 16 knots.

Hu Chuyuan's basic requirement is to change the flat armor into dome armor, increase the boiler space, and there is no need to retain the sail system of the Comus - unlike the British, the cruisers of the Fujian sailors are only responsible for the rapid attack in the surrounding seas, and there is no need to cross the ocean. War, and the cruiser itself carries a very large amount of coal, so it seems meaningless to keep the sails.

At the same time, the Guangwu-class cruiser should also adopt a new artillery system, which is installed on the deck and protected by the terrace. The main gun is a double 150mm single-door Armstrong new gun, and the six secondary guns are 120mm. It must have two torpedo launchers and carry one with a speed of up to 16 The torpedo boat of the festival.

In order to ensure the placement of torpedo boats, and at the same time to ensure the speed and dome protection, the drainage tonnage of the cruiser can be increased, but it is not suitable to exceed 3,000 tons - this is to ensure that Fuzhou ship administration has the ability to imitate it.

In the whole contract and agreement, the first four ships of the Weikang class and Guangwu class must be completed and delivered by 1882, and the last four ships began production in 1884 and 1885 respectively, so as to modify the ship and produce new ships that better meet the conditions at that time after summing up the experience of the former.

At the same time, Hu Chuyuan also intended to avoid various ship delivery problems that could be caused by the Sino-French war.

The amount of the general contract is about 3.36 million taels of silver, the cost of a single Weikang class is 750,000 taels of silver, and the cost of a single Guangwu class is 180,000 taels of silver.

The total price is still relatively high, but the British Admiralty agreed to transfer the main manufacturing technologies other than Bosch mixed steel armor technology to Fuzhou Shipping Administration, including the ball boiler, three-expansion steam engine, and back-borear rapid-fire gun technology proposed by Wei Han and others (the original tube degenerate-speed-fire gun with hydraulic technology, and After 1890, the rapid-fire gun was incomparable, but the principle was roughly the same), chestnut gunpowder and armor-piercing shell manufacturing technology, and torpedo production technology, as a compensation, the Admiralty also agreed to transfer the Wis mixed steel armor technology that was easier to master.

Of course, all supporting facilities and mechanical equipment, including 3,000-ton and 5,000-ton shipyard facilities, 5,000-ton guidance ships, Mawei Port New Dockyard, New Port and a series of facilities will be imported from the United Kingdom - they must be slaughtered, but they must also be slaughtered.

After the implementation of the agreement, Fuzhou Ship Administration will be able to send up to 20 technicians to train at the Royal Navy Portsmouth Shipyard, Steel Works, and other warship and boiler manufacturers' factories.

Within eight years of the validity of the agreement, the Fuzhou Shipping Administration and Fujian Marine Division can send six admirals to the British Navy for internship every year, with an additional four in the first year.

All the ships in the agreement are designed by Sir Barnaby, Britain's best ship designer at present, and the technicians of the Royal Navy Portsmouth Shipyard will be in charge of guidance in Fuzhou Shipping Administration for two years.

At the same time, the British Admiralty will send a naval general within the validity period of the agreement to serve as a military adviser and supervisor of the Fujian Marine Division, train the generals and soldiers of the Fujian Marine Division, and design and implement the training plan of the Fujian Marine Division - the agreement has an exclusive surname, that is, France and other countries are not allowed to The Fujian Marine Division sent military advisers.

In private, the Ministry of the Navy approved the conversion of two second-class waist gun room ironclads of "Berley" and "Olin" that were originally to be sold to the Ottoman Empire. They were converted into armed merchant ships and sold to Hu Chuyuan, with a single ship of 350,000 taels of silver, which is much lower than the price they originally wanted to sell to the Beiyang Navy and Japan.

According to the plan of the British Admiralty, if the agreement is successfully implemented, the British Admiralty's influence on Fuzhou Ship Administration and Fujian Marine Division will far exceed that of France.

What about Hu Chuyuan? He also got most of what he wanted.

With the greed of the British, the follow-up expenses must be not small, but it doesn't matter. The price is worth paying.

Almost with personal charm, after winning the Agreement on Arms Sales and Related Cooperation of the British Admiralty to Fuzhou Ships, Hu Chuyuan was finally relieved and then led the team to France.

(to be continued)