I Became a Witch and Started an Industrial Revolution

Chapter 29: Steam Turbines, the Prelude to the Age of Giant Ships

However, this meant Mitia had to raise a super-department—the National Taxation Department.

Because this directly governed department, holding the final authority, could not be influenced.

It had to remain independently operational, otherwise, its very creation would lose its meaning.

And to guarantee its independence, it needed its own internal system of prisons, courts, and even violent enforcement agencies.

In other words: investigative power, judicial power, and enforcement power.

To ensure that no other department could obstruct it.

Moreover, the local administrations had to unconditionally cooperate with its work.

Coupled with auditing and accounting being placed under the jurisdiction of the National Taxation Bureau, this entity would grow to a terrifying size.

For now, this department could still remain directly under Mitia’s control.

If wielded well, it would be the Damocles’ sword hanging eternally over the heads of all officials and merchants harboring disloyalty, corruption, or greed.

This would also give the common people a relatively fair environment for business and work.

Mitia allowed people to become rich, but that wealth had to be built within the boundaries of her rules.

You could make money, but you could not be the only one making money.

Apart from supporting artisans transitioning into commerce, the enormous fiscal revenue gained through expanding trade over the past few years also enabled her to establish adult re-education classes.

She aimed to spread these adult learning classes throughout every part of her sphere of influence within the next five years, cultivating a sufficient reserve of talent to lay the foundation for building schools in the future.

For now, she had the money, but not enough manpower to carry out free education for children.

There were simply not enough teachers.

So, schools could only be flexibly established in accordance with the number of graduating teachers.

Of course, there was good news too.

Sendegas was a port city with excellent deep-water docks.

What did this mean?

Large steamships, steel giants of the sea!

At present, all ships in this world, whether military or civilian, regardless of size, were wooden-hulled—though magically reinforced wooden hulls.

Wood was not inherently bad.

It was relatively light, and the extensibility, tensile strength, and rigidity of some species of trees were not inferior to iron; in fact, their overall performance could even surpass iron.

Not to mention that timber was easy to obtain.

But Mitia had no intention of building such things.

First of all, she could not buy the kind of wood used to build warships.

No country was truly foolish enough to sell such a resource.

Even if they did sell it, the price would be enough to butcher her like a pig.

And if she still gritted her teeth and bought it, the entire continent would immediately know she planned to build warships…

So, both in principle and in practice, she had to skip this era and take a shortcut.

But taking a shortcut was not something that could be done just because she wanted to.

There were three problems she had to solve.

First, the steam engine did not provide enough power.

Second, how to make naval cannons—the cannon system itself was a highly complex engineering project.

Third, the training of naval soldiers—Mitia could only make the army take to the sea.

The first problem—the steam engine—was not that Mitia’s steam engines were inefficient.

She had already developed the three-cylinder triple-expansion steam engine.

Traditional steam engines had already pushed steam utilization to the maximum.

Even the most advanced quadruple-expansion design could at best raise utilization to infinitely close to 40%.

So development had basically reached its limit.

Mitia went to the steam engine workshop and gathered a batch of workers to follow her into the machine-tool factory.

Under her command, the machinists used the best available materials and lathes to process a batch of blades and fixed wheels.

Through her assembly, a device resembling a windmill filled with blades that could rotate appeared in her hand.

Someone asked in confusion: “Commander, this is?”

Mitia picked up an iron rod, stuck it into the fixed wheel, lifted it into the air, and released her hand.

With a wave of her hand, a powerful airflow rushed toward it.

Under the pressure, the blades began to spin, driving the iron rod below to move as well.

“You tell me—if we disregard other devices and find a way to let high-pressure steam directly blow these blades, making them spin, and through their rotation drive the transmission shaft below… If we scale this assembly up and add multiple sets of blades, wouldn’t the power on the transmission shaft increase?”

Many people’s eyes lit up, following Mitia’s train of thought.

“Right! We don’t actually need any connecting rods to drive a flywheel anymore. We just insert resistance plates into the flywheel, let the steam blow it directly, and it will move on its own!”

“This does sound feasible. Theoretically, to strengthen the power, all we’d need is to add a larger set of fan blades. The only issue is that it places very high demands on the strength of both the casing and the blades.”

“I think if we modify the material used to make the combustion chamber casing of the steam locomotive, it should work. The working environments are quite similar.”

Mitia looked with satisfaction at the craftsmen gathered around, discussing solutions.

What she had just introduced was the prototype of the steam turbine.

She could not do everything by herself.

It was time to cultivate them as well.

Soon, under Mitia’s intentional and unintentional guidance, the first-generation high-pressure steam turbine took shape.

Simply put, its working principle was like wind blowing a windmill, making the windmill turn.

Applied to a steam turbine, high-pressure steam would pass through a narrow channel to increase flow velocity, striking the blades and driving them to rotate, thereby generating power.

To maximize the use of steam pressure, the blades were divided into stationary stators and rotating rotors.

The rotor blades were curved in the shape of a √.

The stator blades adjusted and redirected the steam flow, guiding the steam to strike the concave surfaces of the rotor blades at the proper angle, producing thrust and driving them to rotate.

The overall design alternated between stator and rotor, layer upon layer.

The blades gradually increased in size like a trumpet, allowing the steam to progress step by step, utilizing most of its heat energy.

This design had one major advantage: the larger it was, the more economical it became, and the more abundant the power.

And since the whole device was laid horizontally, it would not take up too much space.

Having solved the greatest challenge at hand, the old shipyard in Sendegas harbor could now be put to use.

The small slipways were dismantled, and with a single stroke of Mitia’s pen, the shipyard’s area was expanded tenfold.

The turbine experiments and the construction of iron ships proceeded in parallel.

Her first step was not to build warships, but steel steamships.

Warships burned too much money, too easily provoked other nations’ fear, and most importantly, she needed prototypes for technological verification.

Building medium and large cargo steamships would allow her domain’s trade to extend by water routes into other countries.

Large-scale exports could further lower the cost of goods, fitting perfectly with her economic development plan for the next five years.

When necessary, she could even sell a batch of steamships to other countries, monopolizing their shipping lanes.

Mass production of ships would also help her accumulate a workforce of experienced shipbuilders.

As for warships, she could build a few models for technological validation and sea trials.

Experiments in cannon design and installation also required hull platforms, and they could be used to train naval officers.

She was eager to churn them out like dumplings, but even churning out dumplings had to follow the basic rules.