Struggle in Russia

Li Xiao didn't know that the open and secret battles surrounding him were in full swing, and he didn't know that the little invention he made in his spare time helped him avoid a catastrophic disaster.

He is very busy, so busy that he has no extra time to pay attention to the intrigue of the St. Petersburg high-level. In the newspapers, he had already had several rounds of debates with the half-hearted chief designer of the Royal Navy, and he had to say that he was really weird.

As the chief designer of the battleship, that person barely passed the math and physics level. Designing a battleship is based on years of experience, and completely rejects all scientific experiments and scientific tests.

That's fine, what's even more worrisome is that this Sir William Symonds is still obsessed with self-confidence, thinking that his predecessor, Sir Robert Sebbins, is a liar, a man who only understands "paperwork" and only "science" "Formula" airs, thinking that Sebbins, who was born in a battleship design school, doesn't know how to build a ship at all!

To be honest, there are a lot of articles here. Contrary to the imagination of later generations, the Royal Navy, which ran across the sea, did not think that its shipbuilding technology was the best in the world. For a long time, the captains of the Royal Navy believed that the French shipbuilding technology was better than their own, and that the French-made ships were the best ships.

Based on this understanding, the Royal Navy is very contemptuous of its own ship designers, always thinking that they are a group of moths who take money and don't work. So in 1807, after research and initiative, a specialized school for training ship designers was established.

This is the warship design school that Sir Serpens graduated from. From its opening in 1807 to its forced closure in 1832, this school has trained a large number of professional ship design talents during its existence for more than 20 years. It should be said that it is of great significance to the Royal Navy, but the school has faced great controversy since its inception!

And this controversy comes from within the Royal Navy. A group of old-fashioned officers, including Symonds, do not understand science and only superstitiously believe in their own and predecessors' so-called "feelings" and "experience". They still "feel" that scientifically designed battleships are not as good as those captured from the French, "feel" that science is useless, and "feel" that warship design schools are a waste of money.

Let's put it this way, the Royal Navy split into the old-fashioned and conservative "experience and sense" faction and the "superstitious science" academic faction in shipbuilding. These two groups of people each have a large number of fans, and they flirt with each other every day, which is called a wonderful show.

At first, the "superstitious science" academics had the upper hand, not because their scientific claims were well-founded and deeply rooted in the hearts of the people. At the beginning of the 19th century, these were all nonsense, and science was far less popular than metaphysics.

There is only one reason why the academic school can gain the upper hand, and that is that there are people in the court. The one who supported the academy was Viscount Bahan, the First Sea Lord (that is, the Lord of the Navy), who directly promoted the birth of the Warship Design Academy.

With the support of the big boss of the Ministry of the Navy, who can do nothing to win the academic school. Even though many grassroots naval officers did not buy into the academics, the academics still lived happily.

But as the old saying goes, thirty years in Hedong and thirty years in Hexi. Things changed in 1832, when the new Government's First Sea Lord, Sir James Graham, was not going to be academic.

As soon as he came to power, he closed the School of Warship Design, and then let Sir Robert Serpens, the chief designer of the Royal Navy who graduated from the school, retire early and go home, and was replaced by the former Sir Symonds.

This Sir Symonds is a hardcore "experience and feeling" faction. He has always spared no effort to attack the warship design of the academic school as a piece of shit, and the warship designed by the academic school is far inferior to similar ships of the French.

All in all, academics are useless in Sir Symonds' eyes. The new chief designer was obsessed with his own experience and believed that the warship he designed was the best.

So is that really the case?

I'm afraid it's hard to say. Symonds' design philosophy was indeed very popular with Royal Navy officers at first.

Because the ship designed by this design has obvious features-a particularly large beam and a particularly pointed bottom.

Not to mention the pros and cons of this design. Let me talk about why officers in the Royal Navy like Symonds' design first. The reason is very simple. The most obvious feature of the boat designed by this designer is that it is wide and big.

Obviously, there is no officer who would not like his ship to be a little bigger. In this way, the living area will not be so cramped, and the living will be much more comfortable. Who would like to live in a cramped can?

So at first Symonds' design was very popular, but then... Later, the officers of the Royal Navy were full of tears. The poor officers found that Symonds' boat was indeed wide and big, with a luxurious living area and a large bed, but this boat was as uncomfortable as a roller coaster!

Be shocked!

According to the basic philosophy of warship design, Symonds' design has a relatively small length and width ratio, so a wide ship should be very stable, right? Why does it make people feel uncomfortable?

Hey, sometimes numbers can be deceiving. The small aspect ratio is really good for stability. Therefore, the rolling angle of the ship designed by Simmonds is not particularly large, at least not much larger than the ship designed by the academic school in the same period, but the rolling period of his design is extremely short!

To put it simply, the shaking frequency is extremely high! At the same time when someone else's boat rolls once, his boat will roll twice, and the angle of roll is slightly larger than others, so the result is predictable.

In the words of a Royal Navy officer: "The roll is sudden and violent! Discomforting!"

As we all know, the most important thing to be a warship is that it must be a stable firepower platform. If the roll is violent and sudden, the ship's gunner will have so much fun, and it will be almost impossible to work normally.

Later, Lord Coburn, the head of the Royal Navy, wrote to the First Sea Lord Graham immediately after he piloted Symonds' classic design "Vernon":

"When the wind is smooth, the Vernon can run faster than anything in the sea, I really believe that. But when it meets a head wave, the ship becomes unimaginable... I don't even know what to do." How to compare it, it can only be compared to a wooden horse played by a little boy, swaying in place...it is too easy to bury your head, it will be damaged when encountering wind and waves, and the ship will leak everywhere..."

Let's just say that Symonds' design is too extreme. For sailing boats, increasing the width of the boat and increasing the height of the bilge can help reduce yaw and reduce ballast. But Symonds, who doesn't understand mathematics, took all this too far, which directly led to his seemingly stable ship being a big shaker.

What's more frightening is that Symonds is full of hostility towards steamships, propellers and iron hulls, and always insists that the so-called traditional is the best, which directly leads to his becoming less and less popular...