The first steam engine ship in China was named Huangpi, which was designed and built by China himself. In Anqing, the ordnance institute was designed and built by Xu Shou and Hua, and was built in 1865 (four years of Tongzhi in Qing Dynasty). Zeng Guofan named it Huangpi, and the cost was 8,200 silver.

The engine room is located in the front, and the steam engine is a single cylinder with a cylinder length of two feet and a cylinder diameter of one foot. The boiler is eleven feet long, the furnace diameter is two feet three inches, and there are forty-nine furnace tubes, seven feet two inches long and one inch five in diameter. The shaft is one foot two and eight inches long and one inch eight in diameter.

Design background

1840, the western "strong ship and strong artillery" opened the door to China's closed door. A group of people of insight put forward the slogan of "learning from foreigners to control foreigners" and set off a westernization movement to save the country and strengthen the country.

1864, Nanjing, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, was captured by the Qing army. Zeng Guofan moved the inner ordnance station from Anqing to Nanjing, and the development of the ship also moved to Nanjing to continue. According to the trial-production experience of small steam turbine, Xu Shou and others used open-wheel propulsion for large ships and changed low-pressure steam engines into high-pressure steam engines.

1in April, 865, the third steam ship "Huanggu" designed and manufactured by Xu Shou and Hua was successfully tried in Xiaguan River.