Chapter 113 Naval Academy
Qin Mo placed a huge stone on the ground. The stone had the six characters "Danshui Naval Academy" written on it. The characters were not gilded and were even a bit crooked and rough because... it was written by Qin Mo.
Qin Mo didn't care about his clumsy handwriting; what he cared about was the group of energetic young people in front of him. These people were all Han Chinese, including the sons of high-ranking officials, as well as orphans and refugees bought from Da Xia.
"The Great Xia has a navy, and a very powerful one at that. They have many, many warships, but they are just a navy. What you will be leading in the future is the navy. The difference between the navy and the naval force is that the navy will experience stronger waves and storms."
"If you're a man, go sailing. At the end of the ocean lies unimaginable wealth. If you're a man, conquer this ocean. A man's journey is only the stars and the sea."
Qin Mo didn't know if the group of teenagers had been fooled by him, but he himself had been completely fooled. He had once traveled here to conquer the sea, and now he was going to conquer this sea as well. However, now, there really was endless wealth waiting for him on the other side of the sea.
The northern kingdoms of Goryeo and Fusang have opened their arms to Qin Mo's fleet. His fleet, unlike other merchants, is no longer affected by the monsoon season, with only a few months of optimal sailing time each year. With advanced navigation technology, they can navigate freely in zigzag patterns on the vast ocean, ultimately reaching their destinations.
Looking at the unhealed scars on the faces of the group of teenagers before him, Qin Mo couldn't help but feel helpless. Back then, when he decided to build a maritime school, he planned to select students from the children of high-ranking officials and the growing number of orphans from the Great Xia Dynasty, but this was met with fierce opposition from Lin Bo and others.
They believed that this kind of knowledge should not be disseminated on a large scale at all; secret transmission was the proper way, and students should be strictly selected from Qin Mo's troops to ensure their absolute loyalty.
Qin Mo knew that the father-to-son succession model would hinder the improvement and development of the technology. As for the loyalty of the trainees, they could be carefully selected, and at most, a loyalty test would be conducted.
Qin Mo couldn't recall when he had conducted "anti-prisoner-of-war training" with Lin Bo and the others, but they had secretly carried out the experiment. When Qin Mo saw a group of children who had endured hardships yet remained loyal standing before him, he began to wonder if he had been too cruel.
"Couldn't you guys torture other parts of the body? Do you know that scars on their faces will prevent them from getting married?" Qin Mo was furious; these kids would definitely have scars on their faces.
"Your Highness need not worry. No child chosen by Your Highness will lack a wife," Uncle Lin assured Qin Mo confidently. The elders of the chosen students also shared similar sentiments. They were truly sincere; hadn't they seen how sought-after the earliest Star Guardians were? They had three wives and four concubines without a problem.
What they couldn't have imagined was that decades later, in the Imperial Navy, the big shots with scars on their faces were the real big shots, while all the generals without scars wished they could cut their own faces.
The first lesson of the new semester was going out to sea, which was just navigating a wooden boat in a bend of the sea. As for swimming training? Go home and learn it yourself. The prince is too busy to care about those things.
Next to the Naval Academy was a large cluster of buildings, which Qin Mo called the "Sailor Training Camp." As the name suggests, it was a place specifically for training sailors, and it included not only Han Chinese, but also Korean children, Japanese, and even Russians.
They all stood outside the training camp, watching the boys playing with the wooden boats with envy. Looking back at the tall mast in the training camp, they suddenly felt like a bunch of monkeys being chased up and down by gorillas.
"Your Highness, is it inappropriate to allow these barbarians into your 'navy'...?" Uncle Lin took the lead in asking the question posed by all of Qin Mo's subordinates.
"Uncle Lin, through whom does our Great Xia Dynasty govern the entire empire?"
Lin Bo clearly didn't understand why Qin Mo would suddenly ask such a question. He thought for a moment and said, "Through officials... and nobles."
"So how many nobles does our Great Xia have? And how many commoners?"
Seeing the somewhat bewildered Uncle Lin and the others, Qin Mo pointed to the Han children playing with the sailboats and said, "Nobles!"
Qin Mo then pointed to the motley crew of people standing on the shore, looking at the naval cadets with envy, and said, "Civilians!"
With insufficient local population, Qin Mo planned to try the expansion strategy of the British Empire from his previous life, making the large-scale recruitment and absorption of foreigners inevitable.
Throughout history, many countries and regimes have existed where a small number of people ruled over a large population. Most recently, there was the Qing Dynasty, where a few hundred thousand people governed a nation of nearly one hundred million. Even the once-mighty British Empire had a power structure where a small group ruled over a large population. History has proven that a pyramid-shaped power structure is feasible.
The naval cadets' wooden boats were simple, with only a triangular sail but a standard rudder. Although it looked somewhat out of place, it helped cultivate the young men's driving habits.
The boys, five to a boat, were having a blast, even using oars, yet their boats still wobbled precariously. Only a handful of boats were handled with some semblance of skill. Qin Mo sighed, "Our foundation is still too weak!"
After all the boys heard the assembly call, they quickly docked and gathered in front of Qin Mo.
"You guys had a lot of fun, right? So let me ask you, what did you learn while playing?" Qin Mo looked at the restraint and enthusiasm in the eyes of the group of teenagers and asked in a very friendly manner.
The boys looked at each other, none daring to answer. They had been having so much fun, playing together as a group of friends, completely oblivious to what school was all about. A growing panic gripped them; they were terrified this was yet another elimination test. After all, they had already witnessed countless disappointed looks from those who had been eliminated.
"It's alright if you didn't learn anything today. Starting tomorrow, your good days will be over. You'll be playing with these wooden boats every day until you learn what you're supposed to learn while playing." Qin Mo's words relieved the boys, and they began to wonder what they needed to learn while playing.
Soon they learned what they needed to learn. Qin Mo began to teach personally: the relationship between wind direction and thrust, the decomposition of torque formed by sails and wind, and what the Bernoulli effect was. Of course, Qin Mo shamelessly labeled this effect as a "secret technique of high-ranking officials."
The Bernoulli effect states that the pressure of air and liquid changes where the airflow velocity is higher. When a sail is blown by the wind, there's a faster flow velocity on one side and a slower flow velocity on the other. The slower flow velocity then exerts a thrust on the faster flow velocity. Similarly, airplanes can fly because the airflow velocity below the wings is much slower than the airflow velocity above the wings.
Experienced sailors know how to adjust sails, but they only know the method, not the reasoning. Qin Mo is now explaining this to these young men so that when they have larger ships with higher and more numerous sails in the future, they will be able to navigate them better.
Qin Mo's lectures were rather obscure, but the boys studied very diligently. Qin Mo himself never expected that what he originally intended to train was to produce a group of captains, but instead he trained a large number of navigators, ship designers, and... colonists.
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