After the British and French allied forces looted Beijing twice, the Qing emperor became very confused, and his Qing empire had never been so humiliated. Therefore, the Qing dynasty put forward the slogan of "learning from foreigners to control foreigners", because the British and French allied forces all came from the sea. The Qing Dynasty is preparing to build two world-advanced fleets, beiyang fleet and Nanyang Fleet, which are called Asia's first fleet and Asia's second fleet respectively, with strong strength.

In modern history, many people knew about Beiyang Navy, but few people knew about Nanyang Fleet. The popularity difference between the two fleets is not a little. First of all, there is a big gap between the heads of the two fleets. The head of Nanyang Fleet is Shen Baozhen, an unknown official. The head of beiyang fleet is Li Hongzhang, who signed many treaties for the Qing Dynasty. The head of the fleet is the facade of the fleet, so beiyang fleet is more car-scrapping than Nanyang Fleet.

Secondly, Beiyang Navy participated in the Sino-Japanese War, which had a great influence on China, while Nanyang Navy did not participate, which doomed Nanyang Navy to be unknown. After the fall of Lushunkou, Dalian, the Japanese naval joint fleet besieged Weihai, and the Beiyang Navy of Weihai directly fought against Japan, playing very bravely. However, because the Beiyang Navy did not take the initiative to attack in the early stage of the port, it missed the opportunity of the war and played very passively. China and Japan fought fiercely for a whole month, and finally the Beiyang Navy ran out of ammunition and all the ships sank. During this period, Nanyang Navy was lazy in the south, and the decrees were unreasonable, without the support of Beiyang Navy.

If the Nanyang Navy can provide timely support, the winner of the Sino-Japanese War will be China, and China will not need to cede territory for reparations. The Nanyang navy, known as the second fleet in Asia, is really looked down upon. Beiyang Navy is praised by Chinese people, while Nanyang Navy can only silently disappear in the whirlpool of history.

Nanyang Navy once experienced a great humiliation, which made Nanyang Navy's reputation stink. 1874, Japan did not complete the Meiji Restoration, and its national strength was still very weak. Japanese sent 13 ships and 3600 troops to invade Taiwan Province Province. At that time, Nanyang Navy had 40 large ships and tens of thousands of officers and men. Japan's two main warships at that time, with a waterline of less than 6 inches, were all armored warships purchased by Japan from abroad. Shen Baozhen, commander-in-chief of Nanyang Fleet, was very scared when he heard that the Japanese navy had armored ships. I can't directly fear the war, let the Japanese come and go easily, and spend 502 thousand silver to accompany the smiling face to send the Japanese away.

Known as the "Second Fleet in Asia" and with strong military strength in Mazhuang, it is really disgraceful that the Nanyang Navy dare not go to war in the face of such a backward agricultural country as Japan. During the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895, which was related to China's fate, the Nanyang Navy hid in the rear and did not come forward. Such a fleet is really disgusting. So few people in modern China knew about Nanyang Navy, but more people knew about Beiyang Navy.