Chapter 26: The Expedition Departs

After Li Chiqi left, Wen Desi immediately convened a meeting of the Executive Committee’s standing committee. Faced with the concerns Li Chiqi had raised, everyone looked at each other—it was a difficult situation. No one dared to guarantee that such an incident wouldn’t happen.

“Well, let’s discuss it, shall we?” Wen Desi said. “Should we postpone the voyage for a few weeks to refit the ship in the dock? Or should we just set off as is?”

“That would take at least another month!” Wang Luobin, who had also built ship models, knew a lot about ship performance. Adding power, whether by propeller or paddle wheel, would involve structural modifications and a series of new techniques to master and learn. A month was an optimistic estimate.

“I don’t know much about ships,” Ma Qianzhu began with a deflective “push hands” move before continuing with his opinion. “To be on the safe side, it would naturally be better to go out with the engine installed. At least it’s an insurance for personal safety. After all, the transmigrators are our primary asset. Otherwise, we should increase the ship’s firepower. One Type 56 semi-automatic rifle per person, and add a few more cannons.”

Wen Desi thought Ma Qianzhu’s idea was a simple solution. A dozen Type 56 rifles firing at once would have a rate of fire comparable to a machine gun.

“Semi-automatic rifles are good, but there are at most thirty-odd transmigrators on the Zhenhai. Unless everyone is a crack shot, if we’re surrounded by seven or eight ships, we’re still dead,” Chen Haiyang expressed his concern. “To ensure we can fire from outside the enemy’s cannon range, the Type 56s and SKSs would have to open fire from over 400 meters. Hitting a target at that distance requires considerable training. Most of the people on this trip are technical personnel. I’m quite worried.”

“Rockets!” Li Yunxing proposed his own solution. “Our experimental rockets have achieved preliminary success, with an effective range of over 600 meters. All we need is a simple launcher—”

“Meaningless,” Chen Haiyang said dismissively. “Rockets are fine for bombarding area targets on land. Firing at point targets at sea is basically just setting off fireworks.”

After much discussion, no one could come up with a foolproof plan to increase the Zhenhai’s firepower.

“We’re all being stupid!” Lin Chuanqing, the captain of the Zhenhai, slapped his forehead and exclaimed. “What kind of power does the Dengyingzhou use?”

“A diesel outboard motor!” Wang Luobin remembered. The so-called “outboard motor” was a standard piece of equipment on motor-sailers. This was a modification that didn’t require too much work. Two diesel outboards could be directly installed on the stern, easily providing 50 horsepower. And it wouldn’t need to go back into the dry dock; the modifications could be done directly on the waterline.

“It will consume diesel,” Ma Qianzhu said, feeling the pain for the “blood of industry.”

“How about converting it to a gas engine?”

“Forget it. Don’t mess with that on such a small ship. The enemy won’t have even arrived and you’ll all be dead from carbon monoxide poisoning. We don’t have a hyperbaric oxygen chamber here,” Ma Qianzhu snorted. This was a choice born of no other choice.

“It won’t actually use much diesel,” Lin Chuanqing said. “It’s a hybrid. We’ll use the sails normally and only use the diesel engine for fighting or escaping. With luck, we might not even need to use it.”

The next day, some of the supplies on the ship were unloaded again, and the transmigrators from the machine department climbed aboard to install two 17KW diesel outboard motors. During the installation, they discovered a new problem: the Zhenhai had a displacement of 170 tons, with a waterline much higher than the 70-ton Dengyingzhou. The propellers couldn’t reach the water.

Fortunately, this problem was no match for the madmen of the mechanical engineering department. If the length wasn’t enough, they would just extend it. However, someone soon discovered that simply lengthening the drive shaft greatly increased vibration and compromised its strength.

“How about we cut two portholes in the stern below the deck to install the outboards? That way, the length would be right,” someone suggested.

“That’s possible, but it would mean modifying the hull,” Wen Desi said after examining it for a while. “We have to avoid the ribs and can only cut holes in the hull planking.”

After the portholes were cut, the two outboards were mounted on specially made iron brackets, which were firmly fixed to the ship’s bottom deck. Because the portholes were too close to the waterline, they were prone to splashing at high speeds, and the machinery would be easily damaged by long-term exposure to the marine environment. Therefore, they adopted a retractable propeller system. The propellers would be lowered when in use and retracted when not, with the portholes closed.

After testing, they found that when using the outboards in calm conditions, the ship could easily reach a speed of 8 knots. However, in moderate seas, there was significant splashing when the portholes were open, requiring constant pumping. The machine factory then rushed to produce a set of sealed window covers to be used while underway, to block the gaps around the machinery as much as possible when the portholes were open. The second test showed that water ingress still occurred, but it was within an acceptable range.

The entire modification and testing process was completed within two days. The unloaded cargo and supplies were reloaded onto the ship, this time with the addition of several hundred liters of diesel, enough for an emergency escape. The transmigrators on the expedition were also issued some additional modern firearms.

The fleet departed from Bopu, their route heading west to circumnavigate the entire island of Hainan and gain a general understanding of the coastal terrain and resources.

For most of the transmigrators, this was their first time sailing on such a small vessel. No matter how much Wen Desi tried to implement principles of comfort, it couldn’t compare to the modern ships of their original time. Not long after the Zhenhai set sail, people began to get seasick. After half a day, almost all the transmigrators were seasick, crowding the rails to vomit into the sea. Eventually, they had nothing left to throw up and were helped back to their bunks by the sailors and soldiers, exhausted and groaning. Only the special reconnaissance team and the navy personnel, having been long accustomed to it through training, were fine.

“You, vomiting at the rail! Yes, you! Hold on to the rope! There’s no rescue if you fall off!” Lin Chuanqing shouted at a vomiting man while he himself was at the helm on the quarterdeck. The Zhenhai used a Western-style wheel, with a gear and wire rope transmission system, making the steering very light and sensitive. For safety, the Zhenhai had a dual backup system. Besides the main wheel on the quarterdeck, there was a backup wheel inside the aftcastle, in case one failed.

Looking over, he saw that Meng De was also looking pale and leaning against the rail of the quarterdeck, looking like he was on the verge of death. He was still clutching a sextant.

“Damn, and you call yourself a student of navigation?” Lin Chuanqing said with contempt.

“The ship we trained on was over a thousand tons—” Meng De retorted. “How was I supposed to know I’d end up on such a small boat one day?”

Lin Chuanqing said, “Hehehe, you just lack sea experience. Look, even the girl is tougher than you.”

“That’s not a fair comparison—” Meng De was about to continue but ran off to vomit again.

This level of sea state was nothing to Li Huamei, of course. When she boarded the Zhenhai, she had been hoping to see some new and surprising things—just like when she boarded the “holy ship” that day. But once on board, she saw that apart from some novelty in the arrangement of the bow and stern cannons, the ship was no different from the European two-masted ships she had seen, except that it was more comfortable to live in. As for the two small, delicate cannons, in her opinion, they were better off without them. The largest shells they fired were 6-pounders, and there were few of them. Her Hangzhou, at least, had 14 cannons of various sizes.

She didn’t know why the Australians wanted the fleet to circumnavigate Hainan Island. Hainan was quite familiar to sea merchants and pirates, especially its coastal harbors. Almost all of them could be used for temporary anchorage, shelter from the wind, repairs, and replenishment of fresh water. But that was the extent of the island’s significance. No one was interested in its resources—it produced neither silk nor porcelain, none of the goods that interested sea merchants. It was too poor, too sparsely populated, and had nothing to sell. Yet the Australians were so intensely interested in it. Why?

She glanced at the man at the helm. He had a square face and graying hair, and was wearing a tight-fitting, blue-and-white horizontally striped short-sleeved shirt—the people here often wore these kinds of shirts. They were almost skin-tight, collarless, and had very short sleeves. He stood steadily on the quarterdeck with a nonchalant expression, a true sea dog.

“What’s this?” she noticed the fan-like instrument in Meng De’s hand.

“A sextant,” Meng De said, his eyes blurry from seasickness.

“A sextant?” Li Huamei intuitively knew it was an astronomical measuring instrument, but she had never seen one before.

Meng De was too dizzy to speak. He simply thrust the instrument into her hands and went off to vomit.

Lin Chuanqing, while steadying the helm, said, “It’s an instrument for measuring latitude.”

“Is it?” Li Huamei held it curiously. “Like a quadrant?”

“Hehe, I don’t know what a quadrant is,” Lin Chuanqing smiled. “I’ve never used one. The thing you’re talking about is probably the sextant’s ancestor, right?”

Li Huamei was confused. “Ancestor?”

Lin Chuanqing realized his slip of the tongue and said vaguely, “This is definitely better than your quadrant.”

It was the early 17th century. Navigators like Li Huamei were accustomed to using the quadrant, invented by the English navigator John Davis at the end of the 16th century, to measure latitude at sea. The quadrant, or “backstaff,” is rarely seen now, but it was one of the greatest navigational inventions of the 16th and 17th centuries. Its principle was simple. Instead of trying to look at the sun as required when using an astrolabe or a simple quadrant, the navigator used the shadow cast by a rod onto a scale. The position of the end of the shadow indicated the sun’s altitude, from which the latitude could be calculated. The Davis quadrant was most effective when used on a calm sea with a stable deck. Because its calculations were simple and precise, it advanced the calculation of latitude from being limited to degrees to being accurate to the minute. It quickly replaced older instruments like the astrolabe and the cross-staff.