Chapter 918 Iron Wood

Although Captain Baca's ships and crew sailors used to fight were completely captured by the Spanish Caribbean Fleet. But the small industrial foundation where he hides is still there, and now after the pirate alliance with Zhang Fan's team, Catalina and Captain Hooker, it should recover quickly. What's more, the alliance now has sufficient funds, and the business activity plan is also under the plan of the book demon and Captain Stoke.

In order to cover up the Karak large sailboats, Captain Baca's hiding dock drove full power to transform six large sailboats. All the complicated decorations related to Spain on the ship, as well as the useless tail buildings for navigation and transportation, repainted and replaced the head of the ship. These captured large Spanish sailboats will take a new look and set sail again in the next month or two.

The most important thing for Aken is that the two spiral rod propulsion systems of the Sunset were immediately removed. Although the two complete sets of dark green prop propulsion systems were still very primitive, they were immediately urgently integrated by the bright paddle sailboat of the Saint's. The two bright paddles disappeared in an instant and were replaced by two emerald propeller props hidden underwater to advance!

At this time, the 'Holy Magpie' also changed a lot. The four masts turned into three, and the front mast fell into a short oblique mast of the bow, as if the bow of the ship was like a powerful one-horn. Between the fore and the sloping mast, there are two diagonal sails, and the rear mast is also hung with a longitudinal truss sail.

Interestingly, these sails, including the triangular sails at the bow, have changed and returned to the Chinese sail style. The main sail of the main mast and the fore mast become a wide and narrow integrated trapezoidal sail, with a large windward surface, just like a back fin removed from the dragon's back. The oblique triangular sail of the fore mast and the longitudinal oblique truss canopy of the back mast are like open curved fins, with bone spurs protruding from the surface of the sail. It is also like an open Chinese folding fan, which looks simple and flamboyant.

Such a sail is hung on the mast, and the surface is reinforced by horizontal bamboo poles. It is not only firm and strong, but also uses few cables, unlike the cable pulley system that is as dense as spider webs on European galleys. And it is also easy to close the sail. As long as you loosen the cable with a winch, you can easily put away the sail just like closing a folding fan.

The hull of the St. Rye has also undergone some changes, forming a smooth streamlined structure. The widest position is behind the middle, forming a long water drop shape with the sharp and narrow bow. Such a streamlined hull is very different from the shape of the European hull, and it is more rich in the characteristics of ancient Chinese ships. In terms of ship design, although China and Europe have used the principles of bionics to design the hull into a streamlined shape, but the objects of imitation are different. Europeans imitate fish, while Chinese imitate water birds.

In this way, the widest part of the European hull is in the front of the middle, while the widest part of the Chinese hull is in the middle back. Later hydrodynamic research proved that China's approach is more scientific, because general ships are not submarines, not swimming underwater like fish, but between water and air like waterbirds, such as ducks and geese. After realizing this, Western ships in the later period also put the widest place in the middle and back like Chinese ships.

After replacing the propeller propulsion system, although it is still manual transmission, the speed and loading of the 'St. suan she' have been greatly improved, and the weight of the hull has been greatly reduced. This also gave Captain Baca the hope of his new flagship. And Aken also promised to help him build a new 300-ton armored fleet in ten years! Of course, he must also be loyal to Baron Shifan for ten years, and Baron Shifan has half of the stake and command of the fleet.

Captain Stoke's job was a little difficult to do. He originally only planned to lead Zhang Fan's team. After finding Hawkins and Drake's fleet, he left everyone and returned to Africa to live in seclusion. However, after the persuasion of Zhang Fan and the book demon, and the 'Caribbean League' seemed to have raised his ambition to travel in the Atlantic, Stoke decided to join the Baron's fleet. But he is only willing to carry out some commercial activities and non-plundering naval battles. Maybe he no longer wants to stain the blood of innocent people. This is in line with Zhang Fan's requirements, a loyal, honest and trustworthy leader of the commercial fleet.

Zhang Fan's team gave him the management rights of six Karak galleys and several escort trimastes, as well as the harbor of St. Nicholas. In terms of business operation, he and Captain Baca are both good at it. And now the whole Caribbean knows that Captain Baca's pirate group was defeated by the Spanish fleet. He took this opportunity to switch to commercial transportation. No one will doubt it.

The book demon provides very useful information about the propeller transmission mechanism for Captain Akan and Baca, which contains detailed drawings of the sealed water-lubricated bearings made of iron wood with propellers at the junction of the hull. The wood of iron wood is very hard and corrosion-resistant, and can produce a kind of mucus when there is water, which greatly reduces the friction coefficient of the friction surface and realizes the effect of self-lubrication. Therefore, iron pear wood is very useful in shipbuilding.

The tail shaft pipe part of the ship connects different environments inside and outside the ship, and the iron wood is suitable for installation in the part that comes into contact with seawater, which reduces the requirements for water sealing on one side of the seawater while supporting the tail shaft well. You should know that even modern ships still use sealed bearings made of iron wood. This kind of tree is everywhere on the mountainous and forested island of Haiti.

Iron wood bearings are not made of a complete material, but are composed of upper and lower shaft tiles composed of iron wood strips. Several copper strips of relatively thin thickness will be installed between the wooden strips, which will be fixed by the clamping of copper strips to prevent the movement of iron pear wood strips. The texture of the upper axis tile is parallel to the tail axis. The texture of the lower shaft tile is perpendicular to the tail shaft and points to the center of the shaft.

Such manufacturing process requirements are not very high, but this kind of sealed bearing has not been invented in this era. Once you know the key to this technology, you can do it with the technology of this era. The book demon and Aken just promoted this later civilization technology in advance. Just like the book demon taught ancient Chinese people to smelting iron and papermaking, the difficulty is even lower than teaching iron smelting paper technology.

With this sealed bearing, it fundamentally solves the problem of water seepage at the hull connection after the use of the propeller propeller, underwater sealing problems, vibration of the hull due to propeller rotation, affecting the robustness of the hull, and bearing wear. The solution of this series of problems has enabled the underwater propeller recommendation system to be widely used on all ships.