Chapter 358: All Is Ready, the Fleet Sets Sail

Huo Ying said, "The cannons and shot bored out by the boring machine have a windage of only one fen between bore and ball."

One fen is just over three millimeters, and in this era the windage between the bore and ball of an eighteen-pounder should be two to four fen.

Although everyone calls them eighteen-pounders, each cannon is still hand-finished, so the bore diameters vary—some larger, some smaller—and can never be perfectly uniform. Some shot weighs seventeen jin, some nineteen jin; the size of the shot differs as well.

If you insist on making the shot exactly match the bore diameter, you end up with shot that won't fit into the chamber, or gets stuck halfway in, or—worst of all—the gun bursts when fired.

So the windage between the cannon and the shot diameter has a safety margin of two to four fen, which of course also covers precision error. However, if the error and safety margin are too large, it leads to another problem: the cannon has short range and shoots crooked.

Because the gases from the black powder deflagration escape through the gap between the shot and the bore, and the shot doesn't travel in a straight line down the barrel—it rattles up, down, left, and right against the bore walls, and finally bounces its way out.

Now the bore difference only looks like it dropped from two fen to one, but in reality it can improve the cannon's performance by a huge margin.

Huo Ying said, "The eighteen-pounders bored out by the machine have a maximum range of five hundred eighty paces, a point-blank range of one hundred fifty paces, and the radius of the impact zone has shrunk by nearly five chi."

"Not only that—because the bore is smooth and even, cleaning the barrel is also faster, about ten xi quicker than old-style cannons, loading is smoother, and the burst rate is lower as well."

The Siren cannons hand-finished with the lost-wax method at the Bucalao Foundry have a maximum range of about five hundred paces and a point-blank range of about one hundred thirty paces. In naval combat, the barrel elevation is neither a full 45° upward nor completely level—it's roughly 20° to 30°—so the maximum engagement distance at sea ends up fixed between two hundred and two hundred fifty paces. You can shoot farther, but the hit rate drops.

If equipped with this new type of bored cannon, the maximum engagement distance could be pushed to between two hundred thirty and two hundred ninety paces—a range increase of about 16%.

And when you factor in the improved accuracy, reduced loading time, higher muzzle velocity, longer service life, lower burst probability, and all the other advances, the performance improvement of the bored cannon is probably far more than just 16%.

Geng Wu was taken aback and blurted out, "Is this for real? The windage only shrank by one fen..."

Huo Ying said, "The data was all measured by the Navy Department—I'm not just making this up. The bored cannon only looks like the barrel is straighter and the windage is smaller, but in truth the roundness, cylindricity, coaxiality, and smoothness are all different, and the improvement is enormous!

Also, this shot mold was turned on a lathe, which gives it far higher roundness than the hand-beaten molds of the past—that's another reason the windage could be reduced." Lin Qian smiled and said, "This is the power of machinery. If reducing the windage by one fen didn't yield such a big performance gain, what would be the point of machinery?" Watching the bored-out cannon barrel, Lin Qian suddenly felt that the deafening noise and the acrid smell of oil weren't so hard to endure after all.

Lin Qian fired off two questions in a row: "How many boring machines does Fo Ye have now, and how many bored cannons have been produced?"

"Just one... well, there are quite a few bored cannons, but at the start quite a few barrels were ruined. When formal production began, we were also worried about waste, so we only bored nine-pounders. The eighteen-pounders only just started trial production—there are just a few of them."

"And how many nine-pounders have been bored?"

"Twelve."

Ran Qiu leaned in close and said in a low voice, "Your Majesty, the Navy Department sent a dispatch the other day—those twelve nine-pounders have already been mounted on the upper deck of the Candle Dragon." Lin Qian nodded, then said to Huo Ying, "I've heard the boring machine has been in trial production for quite a while. Why is the output so low, and why haven't new boring machines been added? Are there difficulties?"

Huo Ying had guessed His Majesty would ask about this and had already organized the difficulties in advance. He took a sheet of paper from his bosom and handed it to Lin Qian. On it were nearly thirty items densely listed, all of them technical problems in boring machine development.

The foremost problem was "insufficient rigidity of the boring bar."

Just then, a boring cycle finished, and the boring bar withdrew from the cannon barrel. A craftsman wearing thick deerskin gloves was swapping in a larger boring cutter.

Huo Ying led Lin Qian to the boring machine and pointed at the long steel pipe behind the boring cutter: "Your Majesty, this is the boring bar—this is what pushes the cutter forward into the barrel.

The larger the cannon's poundage, the longer the barrel, and the longer the boring bar has to be. The bigger and heavier the cutter, the more the boring bar bends under the load, and the worse the boring precision, roundness, and cylindricity become.

So right now the boring machine can handle at most an eighteen-pounder—anything bigger won't work."

Compared to boring cannon barrels, boring gun barrels is even harder. Limited by the machine tool's dimensions and the boring bar's rigidity, the current boring machine can't bore gun barrels—that's obvious, and Huo Ying didn't even bother listing it as a shortcoming on the sheet.

Also, the feed rate of the Great Xia boring machine relies entirely on manual pushing, which introduces large errors. Getting the bore bored evenly is already no small feat—cutting rifling is pure wishful thinking—so Huo Ying didn't write that down either.

That said, early rifling was originally scraped out by hand anyway, and the craftsmen at Fo Ye are currently researching that technique.

Ran Qiu blinked and said, "That bar doesn't look bent at all to me."

Huo Ying joked, "If it were bent enough for Auntie to see with the naked eye, that would be something serious indeed."

"Auntie" is the common folk's respectful term for a palace lady-in-waiting, similar to "eunuch." Ran Qiu serves Lin Qian closely—low in rank but great in influence—so everyone addresses her that way.

Huo Ying continued his explanation: "This boring bar right now is made from the finest refined steel in all of Fo Ye. To put it bluntly, even the imperial sword isn't made of steel this good. Unfortunately, it still bends somewhat."

Lin Qian knew a little about puddled steel and co-fusion steel, but Huo Ying understood this subject far better than Lin Qian did, so he didn't try to show off in front of an expert.

Advances in smelting technology aren't achieved overnight—you can't make a leap forward with a flash of inspiration. They require long-term technical accumulation.

Lin Qian glanced at the list of difficulties again. There were plenty of problems that required exactly this kind of technical accumulation.

For example, the initial precision of the barrel blank is insufficient. The lost-wax casting method at the Bucalao Foundry is cutting-edge technology for this era, but measured against machine production, the roundness still isn't good enough, and the barrel walls are uneven in thickness.

There were also other problems: the boring cutter easily chips, the machine tool's stability is low, the bearing shells wear out quickly, and the spindle speed, feed rate, and depth of cut all depend entirely on experience. None of these were things Lin Qian could solve—technical accumulation takes time, and besides spending time pondering and researching, there truly is no shortcut. Lin Qian looked at the list a while longer, then pointed at one entry and asked, "This says the lubricating grease is insufficient. What does that mean?"

Huo Ying walked over to the boring machine and pointed at several large barrels: "It's this."

Lin Qian suppressed his disgust at the acrid smell and approached. The barrels contained various kinds of grease—from left to right, rapeseed oil, lard, and beef tallow.

The rapeseed oil was clear and bright, deep yellow in color; the lard was a pale yellow thick paste; the beef tallow was a milky yellow hard lump.

Beside these three barrels was another one holding a black paste that stank to high heaven—enough to make a person bring up last night's dinner. Most of the strange smell in the yard came from that barrel of black sludge.

Huo Ying frowned and said, "Take that oil sludge away."

An apprentice stepped forward, held his breath, and carried the barrel of black sludge elsewhere. The air in the yard cleared up slightly.

Lin Qian breathed in small sips and asked, "What is oil sludge?"

"It's the stuff that accumulates in the gearbox—all kinds of decomposed oils, mixed with iron filings and bronze shavings.

It has to be cleaned out once a day, or the gears get jammed by the sludge and the teeth shear off."

After saying this, Huo Ying went on to introduce the three types of lubricating oil used by the boring machine. By all rights, these three were all excellent, expensive oils—beef tallow especially was rarely seen on the market. But in Huo Ying's telling, each had its own flaws: rapeseed oil flows away too quickly and doesn't cling, so it has to be constantly replenished like running water; lard and beef tallow freeze easily and have to be melted before use, and if they solidify in the gearbox, you have to smoke it out with a torch.

Huo Ying said, "A boring machine isn't like a forging hammer—the force on the gears is tremendous, and the force on the cutter and the barrel blank is even more astonishing. These oils have to be slathered on without restraint, or you'll shear gears or chip cutters.

But add too much, and the oil goes bad easily—and once it goes bad, it becomes sludge.

We've tried other oils too, and none of them are as good as lard, beef tallow, or rapeseed oil. We'll just make do for now and keep searching for something better later."

At the same time, insufficient lubrication also explains why boring machines can't be multiplied carelessly—cattle are an important means of production in this era, and neither the Great Ming nor the Great Xia permits slaughter without cause.

Getting a spoonful of beef tallow is an unparalleled delicacy for ordinary folk, but the boring machine splashes tallow around like water—and while it splashes, it complains about the tallow's poor quality.

One cow yields only about a dozen jin of leaf fat. At this rate of profligate use, counting spoilage, you'd have to slaughter a cow every month or two.

If you expanded to a hundred boring machines, you could buy up Guangzhou Prefecture's entire supply of beef tallow until it ran dry—illegal cattle slaughter would skyrocket, grain production would fall, and the farming system along the lower Pearl River would collapse outright.

The same logic applies to lard and rapeseed oil. In these times, everyone is short on fat, and Guangdong isn't an oil-producing region. These oils were all meant to go into people's bellies, but the boring machine is literally wrenching oil out of people's throats and splashing it into gearboxes—it's an outrageous waste of heaven's bounty.

Besides, the small yard doesn't just have the boring machine needing lubrication—there are also a dozen or so lathes and milling machines. No matter how precise the boring machine is, without lathes providing high-roundness shot molds, it's all for nothing.

With all these machine tools combined, the oil consumption is no small matter.

Lin Qian fell into silent thought. The Bachi River soap factory actually had the same lubrication problem—glycerin and tea oil were also used as stopgaps there—but the machine loads there weren't heavy, so vegetable oils could cling well enough, and the problem wasn't prominent.

On the boring machine, though, that wouldn't do. That enormous water wheel outside the yard—Lin Qian estimated it at ten horsepower by eye—was dedicated solely to powering this one boring machine. That gives you an idea of just how heavy the load on this boring machine is.

As for what lubricant to use, Lin Qian had no idea for the moment, but historically the Industrial Revolution seemed to have used whale fat, and he figured that kind of grease ought to be far better than lard, beef tallow, or rapeseed oil.

This counted as one of the rare problems in the development of Great Xia machine tools that could be solved by a flash of inspiration, and Lin Qian filed it away in his mind.

However, what limited the expansion of the boring mill was not just the lubrication problem — the list also included the issue of insufficient power.

Unlike Nanning, the lower Pearl River ran over flat terrain with very slow current, unsuitable for building water wheels, so Foshan did not have the grand sight of several hundred water wheels like Nanning did.

The water wheel for this boring mill could run only because the small river at the door had water conservancy works — a simple dam had been piled up.

To build another new boring mill, finding a suitable river would not be so easy.

Moreover, the Pearl River had distinct wet and dry seasons, and because the channel was flat and gentle, water levels varied greatly between seasons, which was also highly inconvenient for water wheel construction. The noise in the courtyard was too great, so Huo Ying brought Lin Qian outside to talk.

Once the cotton earplugs were removed, the world became much clearer.

Huo Ying said: "Your Majesty, to the northwest of Foshan there are still a few wild rivers. We are preparing to build dams there and set up several more water wheels.

In addition, the university is researching the use of animal power to replace water wheels — both the drive shafts and gear sets have been modified. But once development succeeds, the boring mills will no longer be restricted by rivers in the future."

From water wheel to animal power, the biggest change was that the power source shifted from perpendicular to the ground to parallel with the ground, and the direction of the main drive shaft would undergo a fundamental change. Whether to place the transmission gear set underground, or to add a separate direction-changing gear to convert the main drive shaft's orientation — these were all very complex problems that truly required careful study.

Great Xia's gear research had made some breakthroughs now, but there was still plenty of room for improvement, especially the ability for two gears to mesh at changing angles, which was extremely weak.

In later ages, the optimal tooth profile for such gears was umbrella-shaped, called "bevel gears." Just thinking about that shape made it obvious that Great Xia's craftsmen would find them very hard to produce.

So which nation of this era was the most skilled at industrial-grade gear transmission?

As it happened, it was the Dutch again. They were already using windmills extensively for work in this era, and their wooden gear transmission technology was very mature — just right for Great Xia's craftsmen to learn from.

As of now, the Great Xia navy already had new ships, new muskets, and new cannons. Everything was ready, just waiting for new technology and new talent to arrive from Batavia.

Lin Qian walked in the direction of the Guang'ao Road, saying casually along the way: "By the way, how is the steam engine development at the Polytechnic Institute going?"

Huo Ying shook his head and said: "Still not usable."

This answer was within Lin Qian's expectations. Even the most precise boring mill Great Xia currently had still carried an error of two or three percent, falling nearly ten times short of the precision required for a steam engine cylinder.

Whether metallurgy, boring, air-tightness, piston motion, or parts precision — all of it was still far off. At this point, let alone a Watt steam engine, even a Newcomen steam engine could not be built.

The English took over a hundred years to go from water-powered factories to Watt's improved steam engine.

And Civilization University had been founded for less than five years. No matter how skilled Great Xia's craftsmen were, they could not possibly be twenty times faster than the English. Fortunately, the industrial foundation was now established, and the steam engine was already under research. As long as time accumulated, it would eventually come into view. That said, the steam engine was only a product of the Industrial Revolution, not its prerequisite. As long as Great Xia developed steadily, whether it had a steam engine within twenty or thirty years would not actually affect the progress of productive forces.

If the Industrial Revolution were compared to cultivation, then productive forces would be like cultivation base. Water power optimization, metallurgy upgrades, and transmission improvements were like polishing one's bone structure and tempering one's flesh. The steam engine was a Nascent Soul stage treasure that could be used all the way to the Spirit Transformation stage, helping a cultivator ascend to immortality.

Great Xia had just reached the Foundation Establishment stage, and the boring mill was already a top-grade treasure of that stage, enough to look down upon fellow cultivators of the same level. There was no need to fixate on Nascent Soul stage treasures — once the cultivation base was reached, the treasure could naturally be refined.

If the cultivation base was insufficient, even a Nascent Soul treasure in hand would not be as useful as a Foundation Establishment treasure.

For now, the urgent matter for Great Xia was to seize the opportunities of its fellow cultivators at the same stage.

Leaving Foshan city, Lin Qian took his leave of Huo Ying and returned to Guangzhou.

After waiting several more days, Zheng Zhilong, Lü Zhou, Chen Jiao, and the others all gathered in Guangzhou city. Lin Qian summoned all the navy commanders and held a pre-war conference at the General Staff Headquarters.

The Great Xia army was still fighting in Guizhou, and the Army Staff remained in Nanning, so the Guangzhou General Staff Headquarters currently had only navy personnel — the atmosphere at the meeting was considerably more harmonious for it.

Exactly how to advance, what supplies to bring, and how to respond to the Dutchmen's different reactions — the Naval Staff had already wargamed all of it in great detail. This meeting was mainly to report to Lin Qian, and also to brief the navy's senior officers, including the commanding generals.

In the main hall of the General Staff Headquarters sat a sand table three or four zhang wide, modeling Batavia and the surrounding sea. For the sake of realism, the part representing the sea even had real water in it.

The ship models, to keep them from being washed away by the "seawater," were all pinned to the "seabed" with long needles.

The sand table's terrain had been guessed at based on He Sai's descriptions and the accounts of traveling merchants — its accuracy certainly could not compare with sand tables of the Central Plains, but at least it would keep the fleet from blindly bumbling around the Java Sea.

Chief of Naval Staff Lu Ruoteng was holding a pointer, relaying the Dutch intelligence that He Sai had provided.

Great Xia had been founded on its navy, and Lin Qian's sworn brothers were basically all senior navy officers. If the Chief of Naval Staff lacked prestige, he could not command anyone — that seat was not an easy one to sit in.

Thus, to this day, the position of Chief of Naval Staff had changed hands many times.

Lu Ruoteng came from a coastal gentry family in Kinmen, Fujian. His ancestors were a branch of the Fan Yang Lu clan, and his family was also a prominent Kinmen lineage. Even before Lin Qian had risen up, his family had already followed His Majesty — they counted as one of Great Xia's founding families.

Influenced by his family's scholarship, Lu Ruoteng was not only broadly learned but also intimately familiar with maritime trade and local coastal defense. Promoting him to Chief of Naval Staff was due to his competence, but also because there was no better candidate, and there was some intent of using civil officials to restrain the military.

Lu Ruoteng finished introducing the Dutch fleet situation, then pointed his pointer at the waters beyond Batavia: "This is the Java Sea, and this is Batavia. This sea is over sixty li wide from east to west and over twenty li long from north to south — this is our battlefield.

To the northwest of this sea lie over a hundred islands, which the Dutch call the Thousand Islands...

The Dutch have built observation posts and simple bastions on some of the islands, so slipping quietly into Batavia to catch the Dutch by surprise is impossible.

At the latest, the Dutch will receive the alarm six hours before our forces arrive at the city walls."

"That place is always prone to thick fog — we could launch a surprise attack under cover of the mist," Zhong Aqi said.

Chen Jiao shook his head: "What we're sending this time is our entire family fortune — twenty-three warships, plus supply ships and auxiliary vessels, nearly a hundred ships of all sizes. Having that many ships sail through fog in unfamiliar waters is far too risky."

Since Chen Jiao had spoken, Lin Qian took the opportunity to say: "This time we should bring our Siraya mercenaries along too."

Chen Jiao laughed: "Sure thing — Aban and the others have been itching for action for ages."

Lu Ruoteng said: "According to traveling merchants, the waters at Batavia are very shallow, with only one main channel, located due east of the Thousand Islands, running straight to Batavia. In the rest of the sea, large ships entering will very easily run aground.

So this attack of ours has no other route — we can only meet them head-on.

Fortunately, looking at it from another angle, the Dutchmen's big ships are trapped by us and can't get out either — they can only burn through supplies with us."

Zheng Zhilong said: "I've heard that the Dutch Governor-General, Lucaszon, is an extremely warlike and cruel man. Would someone like that just sit and burn through supplies?"

Lu Ruoteng said: "The Staff must wargame according to the smartest tactics. We've come from afar, our ships have superior firepower, and Batavia's channel is narrow, unfavorable for deploying a fleet. Relying on shore batteries and defending from the city is the most suitable tactic.

The unfortunate part is that the Dutch have poured enormous effort into Batavia — the city is exceptionally sturdy, with cannons everywhere.

The Mataram Sultanate besieged Batavia twice, mobilizing a total of a hundred thousand men, and still could not take this strong city."

He pointed his pointer at the city of Batavia on the sand table.

The city was square in overall shape, built with sharp corners and straight lines, and its northeast corner even had a standard Western-style bastion.

What drew the eye was that due north of Batavia city, two dikes extended into the sea like a straw — from the city's layout, one could say it was exceptionally ugly.

Lin Qian picked up the pointer, indicating the straw, and asked: "What is this?"

He Sai said: "Those are the river mouth dikes of the Ciliwung River."

Lin Qian asked curiously: "What are they for?"

This time even He Sai could not answer. Such water conservancy works — unless one was a professional, just looking at them, it was indeed hard to figure out.

Lu Ruoteng said, "I suspect it's for 'concentrating the current to flush the sand.' Java has many volcanoes, so the Ciliwung River carries a great deal of silt, which over time raises the seabed and buries the fine harbor. This method uses the river's own force to push the sand out to the open sea."

"Makes sense." Zheng Zhilong nodded. "No wonder the Western barbarians universally acknowledge the Dutch as the best at water management. This trip, we can just capture them all." Lu Ruoteng frowned slightly and advised, "Capturing people outright is going too far. When we attack a city, winning hearts is paramount. Any Dutchman willing to surrender should simply be allowed to leave."

"Ha." Zheng Zhilong gave a light laugh. "The Chief of Staff says that — seems you don't know how the red-haired barbarians treat us.

From the end of previous years to the start of this one, on the Hirado route alone, hijacked and missing ships add up to twenty or thirty.

Last year, when Sha Pu rebelled, over a thousand Yunnan commoners were abducted and taken out of the country.

Annam and Guangnan have our company watching over them, so they dare not use Han slaves; Manila also has our concession, and the Spanish have their reservations too.

So where did those abducted Han people go?

We are merely doing unto them as they did unto us."

Lü Zhou nodded and said, "That is indeed the case. I have heard that the two great sieges of Mataram made the Dutch Governor-General extremely nervous, and he conscripted a great number of people to repair the city walls.

And the Western barbarians of the South Seas generally consider the natives and Malays stupid and lazy — the Han are universally acknowledged as the best labor.

I have heard that in recent years, the Dutch also recruited large numbers of Han laborers in Sumatra, Pattani, Guangnan, Siam, and other places."

Lü Zhou was the current Governor-General of the Water Chenla Chartered Agricultural Company, headquartered at Xinquan Harbor; being close by, he was well informed on the Dutch situation. He Sai, meanwhile, clenched both fists and gnashed his teeth, saying, "Laborers, well said — they're just tricked into slavery! These infidels all deserve the stake!"

Lin Qian said coldly, "The Dutch settled Batavia in the year 1620 of the Western calendar, and from that moment on, this city has overflowed with the blood and tears of slaves." Not only Han slaves, but also the flesh and blood of natives and Malays.

"It's time for the Dutch to pay their debts! Pass my order — the navy assembles, and we set sail against Batavia!"

"Yes!" Everyone present clasped their hands in acknowledgment.

On the twenty-third day of the first month of the third year of Zhongxuan, the Grand Xia navy assembled in the waters off Macao and formally set sail.

Before departing, Lin Qian received word by eagle ship that the three battalions of the Grand Xia new army, with Fu Zonglong's help, had swept through like a splitting bamboo and taken the city of Guiyang. At the same time, Ma Xianglin's vanguard had also taken Guangshun Prefecture and Dingfan Prefecture — all of western Guizhou was now in Grand Xia hands.

Along the way, nearly every prefecture and county surrendered the moment troops arrived; some small guard stations and county towns even submitted upon receiving the proclamation alone.

The eastern and western routes barely fought at all on the march — the speed of taking cities was entirely determined by the speed of marching.

Moreover, after Guiyang Prefecture fell, most of the prefectures and counties in eastern Guizhou had long since submitted memorials of surrender. The pacification of the entire Guizhou province was within sight. Along with it came another official document — the Eastern Depot agents had dug up the ancestral graves of the Huangyan Lin clan.

Lin Qian passed the document around for his officers to read, and laughed, "It seems Chongzhen is at the end of his rope."

The men passed it around for a while, then burst into loud laughter.

In Lin Qian's view, Chongzhen's move was a sign of weakness — and also a guarantee that during his southern campaign, the Great Ming would have no ability to stir up trouble. It was a reassurance pill for Lin Qian. After everyone had finished reading it, Lin Qian said, "Since he has come to us with gifts, courtesy demands a return visit. When we come back from Batavia, I'll take everyone to visit the Ming Xiaoling Mausoleum!" All the generals voiced their agreement.

Lin Qian gave the order: "Set sail."

Yahei

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