Ironclad "Pritz"
Sifa naturally knew of this warship. For a time last year, the newspapers had covered it relentlessly, and Sifa had even seen a photograph of it in Black Sails' files.
It was a towering giant vessel that gleamed with metallic light from bow to stern. It had no sails, only observation platforms, two towering smokestacks, and two open gun turrets positioned fore and aft.
As for written records, they were far more detailed. Even now, Sifa could still recall the Pritz's specifications.
"The Pritz is 101 meters long, 21 meters wide, and has a high freeboard design. Its main armor belt is 457 millimeters thick, with a displacement of 10,060 tons. It carries four 305-millimeter main guns, two fore and two aft, as well as six rapid-fire guns, twelve 6-pounder guns, eighteen six-barreled machine guns, and four torpedo tubes. Its top speed can reach 16 knots!"
This was absolutely a product of a new era, and proof of Loen's national strength.
After all, building such an ironclad required three major coal-and-steel conglomerates, twenty large-scale steelworks, vast numbers of chemists and senior engineers, two royal shipyards and their nearly one hundred affiliated parts factories, and a nation capable of producing 12 million tons of steel annually.
Being able to build such a colossal steel warship was indeed enough to make every Loen person proud.
At the time, the newspapers had also reported Prime Minister Aguesid's declaration at the Pritz's launch.
The prime minister had declared that the age of pirates was over. Whether ghost ships or Cursed Ships, only ironclads would ultimately rule the seas.
That declaration had made people feel that the pirate kings and pirate admirals would soon become history, yet even now, those pirates remained active upon the seas.
Although ironclads had achieved a few successes