Chapter 108 Sloop

In addition to team training, sailors usually carry out simulation training for various work on the ship, receive training such as sailing, steering, fighting, anchoring and resupply operations on the ship, and also carry out some necessary fighting training.

while the soldiers mostly carry out team training and fighting training on land. In addition, Yu Xiaotian dialed out some old-fashioned fire rope guns and put them in the training camp, allowing sailors and soldiers to use *.

In addition, they have one thing in common, that is, artillery operation training. Whether they are sailors or soldiers, they must receive artillery operation training.

For this reason, Yu Xiaotian provided the training camp with five new imitation six-pound guns and several old artillery guns for their training guns, and asked the recruits to practice these guns in batches every day.

On the whole, under the auspices of Xiaotian, the new training camp has basically developed in the direction of formal militarization, completely eliminating the drawbacks of ordinary pirates temporarily recruiting people and directly arranging them to work on ships.

Although the recruits are far from becoming qualified sailors after training, they have a strong sense of obedience and discipline. After boarding the ship, they can quickly accept the management of the ship, adapt to life at sea, and soon make them qualified sailors.

This is also the road of self-improvement that Yu Xiaotian wants to take. If he wants to protect his vested interests, he must first have a good fighting division. He must have a different team and a winning fleet, and naturally the best personnel.

So his investment in the training camp can be said to have spared no effort. In addition to providing sufficient guarantees on food, everyone who enters the camp will be distributed two sets of new clothes, and in addition, a needle and thread bag and a full set of daily necessities can be distributed to them. As long as it can be done, Yu Xiaotian almost always tries to give these The men have done it.

After the recruits entered the camp, they found that the treatment of working in the sea wolf was really good, but in terms of training, they were a little overwhelmed.

Yu Xiaotian had great expectations for this group of recruits. After summarizing the experience of previous training, he revised a new training outline and handed it over to the instructors of the training camp to follow the rules.

In addition to discipline and obedience training, new recruits have also have strong physical training. They have to get up early every morning to run first, followed by morning training, and in the afternoon they have various physical training against the scorching sun. In the evening, they have to concentrate and arrange people to teach them half an hour of literacy. New recruits After entering the camp, in addition to having a good sleep at night, it can be said that there is almost no chance to breathe at the end of the day.

And Yu Xiaotian's training requirements for new recruits are so strict that he doesn't believe that he can control these recruits by talking! Therefore, the corporal punishment in the new barracks is also very severe.

If someone fails to meet the requirements in training, running the circle is the lightest. It is common to serve with military sticks and whips if they violate discipline or disobey orders. Corporal punishment is the most effective way in any army, whether it is old or a new army, which is worth mentioning.

As a result, after such high-intensity training, many guys who came here to make a lot of money couldn't stand it. Shortly after the opening of the new soldier training camp, they began to desert.

But for these deserters, Yu Xiaotian told them in advance when they were recruited. Here are the sea wolves, and there is only one end for the deserters, that is, to punish them as traitors and kill them without mercy.

After the situation of deserters appeared, several of them were immediately arrested and sent directly to the prison for disposal. The prison was sentenced to hang these deserters and sent back to the training camp in public and hanged on the platform of the training camp.

In this way, the momentum of restraining deserters continued to develop under high pressure, and the new recruits were put to be obedient.

After Yu Xiaotian returned to Nanri Island, he did not leave Nanri Island for two months, and devoted all his energy to the training of Nanri Island and other affairs.

As for the peripheral affairs, he handed over to his men to take care of them. Every day, the fast ships traveled between the wolf cave of Nanri Island and various places to pass on the news, so that Yu Xiaotian could grasp the activities of his subordinates.

In addition, he set up regular routes in three important places: Jilong Bay, Shuangfeng Island and Nangantang, and sent traffic fast ships to come and go every five days to convey these news. In addition, in order to control the southern waters, he set up a small village on Magnoki Island south of Nanri Island, which can directly control Meizhou Bay. In the area, if the government hadn't set up a water village on Meizhou Island, he would have even wanted to take Meizhou Island as an outpost for him.

In two months, in addition to focusing on the recruit training camp, Yu Xiaotian poured more energy into the boat.

Now he is not short of money, and the construction of new ships has begun to start. At present, there are more than 100 craftsmen in the boat houses, and the types of craftsmen are quite complete. There is no technical problem for Nanri Island to build new ships.

The reason why the new ship has not been built before is only to repair the old ship is that Nanri Island itself lacks timber resources, and the required wood must be harvested by land and transported back to Nanri Island by ship.

In this regard, Yu Xiaotian had arranged for the director to purchase a large number of wood for shipbuilding from land before he went to Jilong Bay last time, and he had to choose good wood.

After two months of preparation, all kinds of wood have recently begun to be continuously transported to Nanri Island and stored in the boat house, waiting for Xiaotian to order to start shipbuilding.

However, after returning to Nanri Island, Yu Xiaotian was not in a hurry to let the craftsmen of the boat house start building new boats. Instead, while busy with other affairs, he used the evening time to let several fine carpenters come to his residence to help him with some new things.

Before Yu Xiaotian came to this era, his biggest hobby was probably only a boat model except for Sanda. Now he finally has time to pick up this craft again. As long as he has a little leisure, he will immediately return to his residence and take a few fine carpenters to play with him.

With the cooperation of him and several fine carpenters, after more than ten days, a novel sailing ship finally appeared on his desk.

The hull is narrow, and the length-to-width ratio is about higher than 4 to 1 and lower than 5 to 1, which makes the hull look slender and beautiful. The bow is sharpened. At a glance, you can see that the ship has a considerable speed. The bottom of the ship is still a V-shaped bottom. There is no compartment on the upper part of the hull, but it is densely adopted on the whole ship. The ribs of the ship ensure the structural robustness of the hull, but in the counterweight warehouse and cargo warehouse under the waterline at the bottom, the design of a large compartment is adopted, which makes it more or less have the characteristics of Chinese sailboats, effectively combining the Chinese and Western sailboats.

Another feature of this ship is that there is no superstructure and only a tail platform, which makes the ship look low and stable as a whole.

And the ship only used a mast, and the mast was in the front of the hull. On this mast, Yu Xiaotian hung two sails for it. The sail installation was extremely simple, all of which were made of Western-style soft sails, instead of the Chinese-style bamboo hard sails.

The two sails are triangular, one is in the front and the other is in the back, and the two sails are similar in size. The back belongs to the main sail. The bottom is fixed on a horizontal rod, and the sail can be easily adjusted by swinging left and right to the wind, while the front sail is directly fixed at the bow position, and one corner is hung on the mast through a pulley. The following is controlled by a sail cable, which can be adjusted to the left and right sides of the ship at any time to obtain wind power.

If there are knowledgeable people at this time, it must be seen at a glance that this is a very common boat type in later competitions and yachts and sailboats, known as sloops.

This kind of hull is not big, but because the sail design is cleverly, the hull is low, and the sail is simple, and it is very easy to operate the sail. There are very few sailors who need to operate the sail, and the speed is very fast. It is very suitable for activities near the sea. The ability to drive against the wind is very strong. Even when sailing in the distant sea, it is also very large Advantages, in the case of a storm, its hull is low and its center of gravity is very low, which can effectively maintain the balance of the hull on the windy sea and is not easy to sink. Its effectiveness has long been verified by later generations.

This kind of ship with oblique truss sail appeared relatively late. During the Anglo-American War, the United States made many similar ships, which were specially used as armed merchant ships, which could not only avoid the interception of British warships, but also serve as merchant ships that attacked and harassed Britain.

The most important thing is that this kind of ship is not very complicated to build, has few sails, and is easier to operate. Even sailors who have never come into contact with this kind of sailor can operate skillfully and come and go freely at sea with its speed after a short period of training.

What does a pirate ship need most? It's not how strong their firepower is. What they need most is speed and flexibility to make the pirate ship have an absolute advantage at sea. If they can beat it, they will fight immediately. If they can't beat it and don't want to slip, then they can also take advantage of the advantages of speed and flexibility to fight with the enemy at sea. Zhou Xuan, stabbed, and gave his opponent a guy. Sometimes a small wolf may not bite an elephant.

The reason why Yu Xiaotian has not been in a hurry to build new ships for so long is that they have been considering what kind of ships they should build. Now Spaniards, Portuguese and even Dutch, British and French are using a large number of improved Clark sailboats or better Galen ships. These ships are tall and divided The multi-deck can be loaded with a large number of artillery, with strong navigation ability and combat effectiveness.

If they can build such a warship now, they can have the ability to sweep the coast of China in a short time, but the problem is that these Western-style sailboats are relatively large, ranging from 400 to 500 tons and weighing up to 1,000 to 2,000 tons. It takes more labor, takes a long time to build, and consumes more materials.

With the strength of the current sea wolf, their boathouse on Nanri Island can't build such a large warship. Even if it can be built, it will take a long process for the craftsmen of the boathouse to slowly explore the way to build it, so now build such a Western-style warship. Obviously, it is not a good choice, or even a way to put the cart before the horse.

Therefore, Yu Xiaotian thought for a long time and finally set their new ship as this light dhow.

(Thank you again for the reward of the Nanbo brothers! Thank you very much!)