Chapter 248: The Expedition Departs

After Li Chiqi departed, Wen Desi immediately convened a meeting of the Standing Committee. Regarding Li Chiqi's concerns, the members exchanged uneasy glances—this was truly difficult to assess. No one dared guarantee that such a scenario wouldn't unfold.

"So, what do we discuss?" Wen Desi asked. "Do we delay the departure by a few weeks and put the ship in drydock for a refit? Or do we leave as planned?"

"That would take at least another month!" Wang Luobin had built ship models and understood vessel performance intimately. Adding power—whether screw propeller or paddle wheel—involved structural changes and a cascade of technical processes to work through. A month was an optimistic estimate.

"I don't know much about ships," Ma Qianzhu deployed a deflection before offering his opinion. "To be safe, naturally, going out with an engine installed would be best; at least it insures personal safety. After all, transmigrators are our primary wealth. Otherwise, we should increase the firepower on the ship: one SKS per person, and add a few more cannons."

Wen Desi thought Ma Qianzhu's idea was a simple solution. A dozen SKS rifles firing together would produce a fire density comparable to a machine gun.

"Semi-automatic rifles are nice, but there are at most thirty-some transmigrators on the Zhenhai. Unless everyone is a sharpshooter, being mobbed by seven or eight ships still means death," Chen Haiyang expressed his concern. "To ensure we hit targets outside the range of enemy cannons, the SKS and Type 56 semi-automatics need to open fire at over four hundred meters. Hitting targets at this distance requires considerable training. Most of the people going this time are technical staff. I'm rather worried."

"Rockets!" Li Yunxing proposed his solution. "Our test rockets have achieved preliminary success, with an effective range of over six hundred meters. Just a simple launcher—"

"Meaningless," Chen Haiyang dismissed it. "Rockets might work for bombarding area targets on shore, but hitting point targets at sea is basically just setting off fireworks."

They discussed back and forth, but regarding how to foolproof the Zhenhai's firepower, no one could devise a reliable plan.

"We're all idiots!" Lin Chuanqing, captain of the Zhenhai, slapped his forehead and shouted. "What power does the Deng Yingzhou rely on?"

"Diesel outboard motors!" Wang Luobin remembered. The so-called hanging paddle machine was an outboard motor—standard equipment on motorized sailing vessels. This was a modification that didn't require major surgery; two diesel outboard motors could be installed directly at the stern. Providing fifty horsepower would be effortless. And it didn't require entering drydock again; all the modification work could be done above the waterline.

"It consumes diesel." Ma Qianzhu's heart ached for the precious blood of industry.

"Maybe we could convert to a gas engine?"

"Forget it—don't mess with that in such a small space on the ship. The enemy won't have arrived and you'll all be poisoned by carbon monoxide. We don't have a hyperbaric oxygen chamber here," Ma Qianzhu grunted. Still, this counted as a choice of last resort.

"Actually, it won't consume much diesel," Lin Chuanqing said. "It's a hybrid power system. Normally we use sails, and only fire up the diesel engine when fighting or fleeing. With good luck, we might not need to use it at all."

The next day, part of the supplies on the ship were unloaded, and transmigrators from the machinery department climbed aboard to install two 17-kilowatt diesel outboard motors. During the installation, they discovered a new problem: the Zhenhai had a displacement of 170 tons, and its waterline sat much higher than the 70-ton Deng Yingzhou—the propellers couldn't reach the water.

Fortunately, this problem couldn't stump the mechanically-inclined fanatics. If the length wasn't enough, they would lengthen it. However, someone soon discovered that simply extending the drive shaft resulted in significantly increased vibration and compromised strength.

"How about cutting two portholes in the lower stern under the deck to install the outboard motors? That way the length fits," someone suggested.

"It's possible, but we'll have to touch the hull." Wen Desi studied it for a long time. "We'll have to avoid the ribs and can only cut holes in the hull plating."

After the portholes were cut, the two outboard motors were installed on specially made iron frames firmly fixed to the bottom deck. Because the portholes sat too close to the waterline, water would easily splash in at high speeds, and the machines were prone to damage from prolonged exposure to the seawater environment. Thus, the outboard motors used retractable propellers—lowered when in use and retracted when not, with the portholes sealed.

Tests showed that when using the outboard motors, the speed could easily reach eight knots in windless conditions. However, when operating with the portholes open in moderate sea conditions, water splashing was severe and required continuous pumping. For this, the machinery factory rushed to produce a set of sealing shields for use while underway, blocking the gaps around the machines as much as possible when the portholes were open. In the second test, water ingress still occurred but remained within an acceptable range.

The entire modification and testing were completed within two days. The unloaded cargo and supplies were reloaded onto the ship. This time, several hundred liters of diesel were added—enough for escape if necessary. The exploration team transmigrators were also issued additional modern firearms.

The fleet departed from Bopu. Their route was westward: to circumnavigate the entire island of Hainan and conduct a rough survey of the coastal terrain and resources.

For most transmigrators, this was their first attempt at sailing on such a small vessel. No matter how much Wen Desi had tried to implement the principle of comfort, it couldn't compare to modern ships from their original timeline. Not long after the Zhenhai put to sea, people began to get seasick. After half a day, almost all the transmigrators were afflicted. The bulwarks were crowded with transmigrators scrambling to "pay public grain" to the sea. In the end, they had nothing left to vomit and were helped back to their bunks by sailors and soldiers, exhausted and groaning. Only the Special Reconnaissance Team and Navy personnel, seasoned by long-term training, had already adapted.

"You there, vomiting by the rail! Yes, you! Hold onto the rope—if you fall in, there's no saving you!" Lin Chuanqing scolded a man who was retching while he personally manned the helm on the quarterdeck. The Zhenhai used a Western-style steering wheel, utilizing gears and steel cables for transmission, making the rudder extremely light and responsive. For safety, the Zhenhai employed a dual-backup system: in addition to the main wheel on the quarterdeck platform, there was a backup wheel inside the quarterdeck superstructure to ensure the ship could still be steered if one failed.

Over by the quarterdeck railing, Meng De leaned against the rail looking pale and seemingly wishing for death. He still clutched a sextant in his hand.

"Damn, you call yourself a navigation student?" Lin Chuanqing said dismissively.

"When we interned, we were on huge ships of thousands of tons—" Meng De retorted. "How was I supposed to know I'd end up on a small boat like this one day?"

"Heh heh heh, you just lack sea training. Look at that girl over there—she's stronger 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 naturally nothing to Li Huamei. Upon boarding the Zhenhai, she had expected to see new gadgets that would surprise her—the same wonder she had felt when boarding the "Holy Ship" that day. But looking around, aside from some novelty in the arrangement of the fore and aft gun positions, the whole ship was no different from the European two-masted vessels she had seen, except it was more comfortable to live in. As for those two delicate little guns, in her opinion, they might as well not be there; the shells they fired were at most six-pounders, and there were so few of them. Even the Hangzhou had fourteen guns of various sizes.

She couldn't fathom why the Australians wanted the fleet to circumnavigate Hainan. The island was quite familiar to sea merchants and pirates, especially its coastal bays. Almost any of them could serve for temporary anchorage—to shelter from wind, rest, and replenish fresh water. But the significance of the island ended there. No one was interested in its resources—it produced neither raw silk nor porcelain, nor any of the goods merchants desired. It was too poor, with too few people and nothing to sell. Yet the Australians' interest in it was so intense. What on earth for?

She looked up at the man steering the ship: square face, graying hair. He wore a tight-fitting blue and white horizontally striped shirt—people here often wore this kind of shirt, tight-fitting and collarless with very short sleeves. He stood steadily on the quarterdeck with a look of utter indifference—a true sea dog.

"What is that?" She noticed the fan-like instrument in Meng De's hand.

"Sextant." Meng De was dizzy and seeing stars from seasickness.

"Sextant?" Li Huamei intuitively knew this was some kind of astronomical measuring instrument. But she had never seen one before.

Meng De was too dizzy to speak. He simply shoved the instrument into her hand and went back to his vomiting.

Lin Chuanqing, steadying the helm, said, "It's an instrument for measuring latitude."

"Is it?" Li Huamei looked at it curiously in her hand. "It looks like a quadrant?"

"Heh, I don't know what a quadrant is." Lin Chuanqing smiled. "Never played with one. What you're talking about is probably the ancestor of the sextant, right?"

Li Huamei was puzzled: "Ancestor?"

Lin Chuanqing realized his slip of the tongue and muttered ambiguously, "This is definitely easier to use than your quadrant."

It was the early seventeenth century. Navigators like Li Huamei customarily used the quadrant developed by the late sixteenth-century English navigator John Davis—also known as the Davis Quadrant or back-staff—to measure latitude while sailing. Quadrants, or "staff projectors," were rarely seen now, yet they had been the greatest navigational invention of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The working principle was simple: navigators didn't need to stare directly at the sun as required when using an astrolabe or simple quadrant; instead, they used the shadow cast by a stick onto a scale. The position of the shadow's end indicated the sun's altitude, and from this, latitude could be calculated. Navigators achieved the best results with the Davis Quadrant on calm seas when the deck was stable. Because its calculation was simple and accurate, latitude measurement advanced from degrees to minutes. The Davis Quadrant soon replaced earlier instruments like the astrolabe and cross-staff.

(End of Chapter)