Fox of France

The matter of choosing the messenger was handed over to Lucien. After all, when it comes to liars, the Ministry of Truth has the most, even more than the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Of course, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs also has its own advantages, that is, many people in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs are paid by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, secretly by the Ministry of Truth, or by the Ministry of Public Security, or even by three departments at the same time.

Lucien found a guy with excellent working ability in his department. Last time, this guy helped him find out a lot of people who were in the Ministry of Truth, their hearts were in the Ministry of Public Security, they were paid by the Ministry of Truth, and they were paid by the Ministry of Public Security. The guy with the bonus, so he fell into Lucien's eyes.

After talking with this person, Lucien decided that he was a very capable guy who was worthy of reuse. This guy's hands are full of calluses from being a craftsman. When necessary, he can show an honest and silly hat at any time, but he can speak five languages ​​and has received a fairly good education. More importantly, he He is quite clear-headed, can clearly see where his own interests lie, and is very courageous, not afraid of death, nor afraid of letting others die. Or to put it more plainly, this guy is a born liar and robber.

This guy's name is Victor de Treville. Well, looking at the name, you can tell that he is a nobleman. But one's background is involuntary, and the path can be chosen. Just like Guo Wen, who came from aristocratic background, firmly stood on the side of the revolution in "1993", Victor is also, or at least seems to be, a man who betrayed his origin and firmly stood on the side of the revolutionary masses. Progressive aristocrats together. He severed ties with his elder brother who remained in the reactionary camp. He made a lot of contributions in the battle to suppress the aristocratic rebellion when Napoleon became the first consul, and now he is one of the trump cards of the Ministry of Truth.

So now when he received this task, Lucien thought of him.

And Victor also knows that although he is highly valued, he is facing a big problem. That is, he has been working in the secret service all along.

In the eyes of many people, working in a secret department has great power and prestige, so powerful that they can't even mention their names. But this is actually a complete misunderstanding, the result of being misled by various dramas. The more you can't mention the name, the more you can be sacrificed at any time - anyway, no one will know if you sacrifice. Not to mention the ones whose names can’t be mentioned, most of the time, it’s the commanders of Jin Yiwei with names and surnames, compared with serious civil servants, especially those civil servants who were born as nobles, in fact Mao Neither count.

If you really want to climb up, you must find a way to get to Minglu, and you must become a person whose name can appear in newspapers. And Victor knew that this trip to Santo Domingo as the special envoy of the first ruling Napoleon might be such an opportunity.

So after receiving the mission, Victor immediately went home to prepare. He only told his wife, "I'm going on a mission," and took the luggage that he had prepared a long time ago—because he often went home because of a certain mission. But you need to go out immediately, so there will always be a set of luggage that has been packed in a box at home and can be picked up and left-out the door.

His wife, who was used to all this, never asked him where he was going or when he would be back. Because most of the time, those are "classified" too. It was Victor himself who added: "This time I may have to go out for a long time." And when he was going out, his son Edgar said in a childlike voice: "Dad, remember to bring me paint when you come back, I I'm running out of paint again."

Victor responded with a smile, and went out the door.

There was already a carriage waiting at the door.

"Go to Russell Pier." Victor got into the carriage and said to the driver.

Russell Quay is a pier on the Seine where steamers leave for Le Havre. In order to protect the secret of propellers, except for naval warships, civilian steamships are still only allowed to use paddle wheels. This of course slowed down the boats, but since the boats were running day and night, it was already the fastest way to get from Paris to the Atlantic coast. Of course, if the direction is reversed, from the Atlantic coast to Paris, it is still faster to take the mail coach.

When Victor arrived in Le Havre, the staff of the Ministry of Truth had already prepared for him the ship to Santo Domingo.

This is a large steam frigate named "Free Trade" with three tall masts and two large chimneys. The so-called large steam frigate is the latest experimental warship of the French Navy. , it has reached the level of a second-tier battleship in terms of displacement, which is about 2,300 tons.

In addition to the large increase in displacement, she also used a lot of new technologies. The first is the steel keel.

In this era, the keels needed to build warships are hard-won strategic resources. Although there is already keel splicing technology, the strength of spliced ​​keels is obviously not comparable to that of a giant tree grown directly, and the use of splicing It is also very restrictive. Therefore, the keel has severely limited the size of warships and other ships.

But the advent of cheap steel changed that. Steel is stronger than any wood, and it can be as thick as you want and as long as you want. The only problem is that steel corrodes easily in the offshore environment. Most of the other parts of a boat can be replaced, but the keel cannot be replaced. Once the keel is seriously corroded, it almost means that the whole ship is finished.

Of course, this is not without a solution, such as adding chromium to steel to make stainless steel. In fact, in the laboratories of the military-industrial complex, stainless steel has appeared. But chromium has only just been discovered, and it's not easy to extract, making stainless steel quite expensive. Moreover, the corrosion resistance of the stainless steel currently produced in the laboratory by the military-industrial complex is not enough to resist the salt spray environment at sea, and its strength is also very average compared to ordinary steel. Therefore, this technique is not suitable to be used to make the keel of a warship.

Another related technique is to galvanize the entire steel keel. On the earth, the reserves of zinc are far less than that of chromium, but its extraction is not difficult. A mysterious oriental country has been able to produce a large amount of metal zinc as early as a thousand years ago. Until the 19th century, metal Zinc is one of the key products exported by a big country.

The melting point of zinc is very low, which makes the galvanizing process quite simple, no need for electroplating, only the hot dip method is required.

The keel of this warship adopts this technology.

The use of steel keels made the cost of this 2,000-ton big guy relatively drop a bit. The construction time savings are even more pronounced.

This ship still uses a hybrid of steam and sail, but is equipped with two larger steam engines and is equipped with twin propellers.

Of course, the steam engine and coal bunker took up a lot of space, so the ship still only had a complete gun deck and a short lower gun deck.

However, compared with the "Equality" in the past, the firepower of the "Free Trade" is still much stronger. It has a full twenty 110mm breech-loading rifled guns. Two of them are installed in the bow part, and the other 18 doors are distributed on both sides of the warship. There are seven doors on each side of the upper gun deck and two on each side of the second gun deck.

Although the number of cannons has only increased by two, the rate of fire and power of each cannon have greatly increased.

The "Free Trade" has already completed many sailing tests in the offshore area, but the voyage across the Atlantic Ocean was the first time for her. And this kind of voyage is also the purpose of her design: to sail to the new continent to protect the free trade between the old and new continents.

In fact, this ship is not yet fully prepared for such a long voyage. It is just that the situation in Haiti has changed, and there is an urgent need for a warship that can stand up to the scene. Napoleon only made a request to the Navy to allow the "Free Trade" to sail on ocean voyages in advance.

On the night after Victor boarded the ship, the ship sailed out of the port and sailed towards the vast sea.

The speed of the "Free Trade" is not fast, on average, it is only about 7 knots. Of course, this is because they did not start the steam engine, but rely entirely on sails. Although the coal bunker of the "Free Trade" is large, it cannot support the voyage across the Atlantic Ocean.

Victor had no experience of traveling on a sea boat before, so life at sea was very novel at first. But the novelty quickly passed, and the days suddenly became monotonous and boring. The voyage across the Atlantic takes more than a month. During this month, all Victor can see is the blue sea except for the blue sky. Except for the blue sea, it is the blue sky.

Occasionally, they could encounter one or two other ships, but most of these ships avoided them at a long distance, and occasionally one or two came a little closer, but after seeing the size of the "Free Trade" clearly, He immediately turned around and ran away.

"Mr. Treville, is this your first time participating in such a long voyage?" Captain Zola asked, seeing Victor looking at the sea boredly alone.

"Yes, it is indeed the first time for me to participate in such a long-distance voyage. I have also been on a sea boat before, but only in the Mediterranean Sea, from Marseille to Genoa. You know, the Mediterranean Sea is really too small. By the way, Captain, how long will it take us to reach Santo Domingo."

"Ah, Monsieur de Treville, you have asked this question more than once. Maybe tomorrow, maybe the day after tomorrow, anyway, we are almost there," replied Captain Zola.

Victor smiled shyly, and was about to say something when he heard the lookout post shout: "Ship found, direction eleven o'clock!"