In the blink of an eye, the tenth year of the Apocalypse entered. If calculated according to the Western calendar, it was 1630 AD. However, according to the current situation, there seems to be no sign of chaos.

And he had a small happy event, that is, the queen Zhang Yan was pregnant. Although Zhu Youxiao, as the emperor, already had a prince and proved that he was not physically ill, the pregnancy of the queen also shows that the queen Zhang Yan still has the ability to be a mother.

This also shows that the eldest son will appear in the future. Although Zhu Youxiao doesn't care about this, it is indeed a happy event that adds icing on the cake for officials who abide by Confucian etiquette.

But Zhu Youxiao did not have the time to see Queen Zhang Yan. He has been in the Ming Shipbuilding Bureau for almost a month, and he developed the first wooden steam-powered warship in the Ming Dynasty to work with Mao Yuanyi.

According to the sketch plan, the first steam-powered warship in the Ming Dynasty was not small. In order to give him enough power, it had to have a large enough cylinder and boiler. Therefore, the entire warship reached 30 tons, up to 70 feet long, but it was definitely the main body of the double-horizontal steam-powered machine composed of boilers and cylinders, and was mainly placed on the front end of the bottom layer of the warship, and the rear end was stored in a large amount of coal. On top was a double-layer side turret, and there was also a large caliber cannon on the deck, and its firepower configuration was not smaller than that of the Fu Ship.

The power is much faster. According to modern words, the aviation industry is about 11th. In short, if it is wrapped in armor, it will indeed be the most advanced warships in the Ming Dynasty and even the world in the world, and even soft sailing ships that have passed through the West. After all, the power they rely on is different.

But building a steam-powered warship does not mean that it can be used immediately in the Imperial Guard Navy.

This kind of transcendent-age thing cannot be controlled by traditional boatmen. Even how to operate propellers requires step-by-step teaching to make these people familiar with them little by little.

Zhu Youxiao is a high-level background and can understand English literature. Of course, even Chinese literature, many places need to be translated by Zhu Youxiao.

Many times, Zhu Youxiao studied it himself first, then told it to Mao Yuanyi after he understood it. After Mao Yuanyi understood the principle, he then found a way to overcome a difficult problem.

Finally, Mao Yuanyi designed a set of devices and degree control devices that are close to modern power conversion (converting the thermal energy of water vapor into mechanical energy), and established the basic operating method of how to start a warship.

But this was also something he had done after experimenting many times, so it took a lot of time.

Now, he has to personally teach naval reserve talents such as Gu Sanmazi, who have received basic theoretical training in the Royal Military Academy and the Daming Ocean Academy.

It took several months for a warship to finally start moving in the Bohai Sea offshore outside Tianjin, and then Zhu Youxiao gave him the name "Zheng He".

The name of Zheng He is naturally to commemorate Zheng He who once promoted the majesty of the Ming Dynasty at the sea, and there is no doubt.

But the Zhenghe is not used for combat or even combat training, or even for driving training for the students. Gu Sanmazi and other naval officers will definitely command naval battles in the future, rather than driving ships, so they have to step up training a group of technical naval officers and soldiers who are dedicated to driving ships.

Gu Sanmazi and the first batch of students who learned to operate steam-powered ships soon became instructors at the Daming Ocean Academy and began to train their respective technical naval officers and soldiers.

In this way, after more than half a year of continuous operation, the North Sea Fleet, which was the main component of the first steam-powered warship, was officially established.

Originally, Zhu Youxiao planned to use the East China Sea Fleet as the main fleet of the naval system first, otherwise he would not have established the Ming Ocean Academy in Nanjing, and the Nanjing Navy, which has a naval foundation, was also in the southeast.

But now the court is starting to negotiate the amnesty with Zheng Zhilong. In order not to alert Zheng Zhilong, Zhu Youxiao listened to this. Yang Sichang's suggestion first establishes a major naval force in the Bohai area that his court can control, and then extends the Yellow Sea. Finally, it can threaten the Later Jin Dynasty and go south to control the East China Sea.

Moreover, there are also guards from the Liaodong Peninsula and the Denglai Peninsula, which can prevent the navy from being attacked by Zheng Zhilong or other large pirates in the early stage because they were not full of wings.

It is just a flaw that the north has no other strategic value except for strengthening its control over North Korea.

The fundamental purpose of Zhu Youxiao’s establishment of the navy was to break the undermining of the Ming Dynasty’s maritime power by pirates such as Zheng Zhilong, and then break the increasingly strong control of Western colonists over the Nanyang, and sell a large number of products from the Royal Weaving Bureau and the Royal Industrial Company to gain more wealth accumulation.

In this era when capital accumulation is being carried out, Zhu Youxiao, as the Emperor of the Ming Dynasty, could not rely solely on domestic demand for wealth. After all, if the old interest groups are destroyed, new interest groups will be born.

In a closed social space, affected by the development of productivity, wealth will be at a constant value for a certain period of time. If you want to obtain a large amount of wealth resources in the short term and then allow all domestic classes to enjoy benefits to alleviate conflicts, you can only rely on external plunder.

However, now building the main naval force in the North Sea means that the Ming Dynasty will not immediately participate in the maritime interests competition in the South China Sea.

In this way, Zhu Youxiao's small moves in the Beihai area did not make pirates such as Zheng Zhilong and Li Kuiqi realize the seriousness of this problem. Under Zhu Youxiao's temptation to have high officials and generous salaries, they naturally believed that the Ming Dynasty was just preparing for the future attack on the Qing Dynasty.

Because Xiong Wencan, the governor of Guangdong and Guangxi, who was in charge of recruiting the amnesty, said this to Zheng Zhilong, Zheng Zhilong was also convinced.

This is also a fault for Zheng Zhilong's stupidity. He is not as good as politically, and he is not even as good as his son Zheng Chenggong.

In the original history, Zheng Zhilong first surrendered to the court because he was deeply influenced by the traditional idea of ​​returning to the roots of fallen leaves, and later controlled the Longwu regime. However, he surrendered to the Qing Dynasty because of protecting his own interests, but ended up with a tragic ending.

If he relied on his own naval combat advantage as firmly as his son Zheng Chenggong, he might be able to start and end well, and perhaps establish a country overseas, which is unknown.

The Fifth Army had more than 20,000 people, plus Gu Sanmazi's original troops, plus slightly outstanding officers and soldiers drawn from other southern troops, especially the navy along the Yangtze River, jointly disrupted the mixed imperial guards and naval forces, totaling about 30,000 people, and temporarily formed the North Sea Fleet.

Qin Botong became the general officer and commander of the first fleet of the North Sea Fleet, while Gu Sanmazi was the commander of the second fleet of the North Sea. Li Rusi, who was formerly a subordinate of the Denglai Navy and was also a subordinate of Yuan Keli, studied in the Royal Military Academy like Gu Sanmazi, was the commander of the Third Fleet of the North Sea.

As the flagship of the North Sea Fleet, the Zheng He was personally led by Qin Botong.

While the North Sea Fleet was training and expanding in the Bohai area, the Royal Weaver Bureau encountered a problem.

It turned out that while Zheng Zhilong negotiated the recruitment negotiations with Xiong Wencan, the Governor of Guangdong and Guangxiong, he reduced the export volume of goods from the Royal Weaving Bureau, and even lowered the price of the Royal Weaving Bureau on the grounds of recent maritime insecurity.

After hearing this, Zhu Youxiao simply asked the Beihai First Fleet, which had been training for three months, to go south immediately on the grounds of the great ceremony of the king of Ryukyu ascending the throne, and the Beihai First Fleet was responsible for transporting the gifts to the Ryukyu Kingdom. In fact, it was to transport part of the goods from the Royal Weaving Bureau to sell them in Ryukyu Kingdom, with the purpose of taking the first step of the imperial court's own maritime trade.
Chapter completed!