Daming Yuanfu

Chapter 728 Fleet Engagement
From the beginning of the establishment of the Majiang defense line, Zheng Song did not have high hopes, because the enemy's naval superiority was too great, so big that any defense line along the river was meaningless in front of them.

According to Zheng Song's point of view, unless the Manga's Frang Robots dispatch the main force to fight against the Gao and Mo combined fleet, otherwise this fleet can run amok along the Annan coast and along the river.

Malacca is Malacca, and Frangji is Portugal. The Portuguese launched a war to invade Malacca 70 years ago, defeated the Malacca people in one fell swoop, occupied the city of Malacca, and controlled the best sea route connecting the Pacific Ocean and the Indian Ocean. Strait of Malacca.

In the following decades, the Portuguese devoted themselves to transporting spices from the Spice Islands to Europe for sale, and on the other hand tried every means to contact Ming Dynasty, but this need not be elaborated for the time being.

However, the Portuguese also contacted Annan, but the Mo Dynasty was relatively conservative, so the Portuguese fixed their main trading partner on the Hou Li Dynasty in the south. To be precise, they started a business with the Zheng family.

However, in Zheng Song's view, there are still two things that are most attractive to him from the Portuguese: boats and guns.

After all, Mo Jingdian was still there at the time, and Zheng Song had to worry about the military threat from Mo Chao all the time, so only boats and guns were his concern, so Zheng started to do arms trading with the Portuguese.

In Zheng Song's opinion, Portuguese products are very good, but there is one worst point: they are too expensive.

Therefore, after so many years, Zheng Song bought no more than one hundred Fran cannons from the Portuguese, and bought two ships.

But these two Portuguese warships are not ordinary warships, but two large Galenic ships sent to Asia because of the replacement in Portugal—and they are military type with dense ribs, not commercial type with sparse ribs .

These two giants are Zheng Song's hope now, because he has already listened to his subordinates' detailed reports, and the largest batch of "Ming army warships" is only half the size of the two large military Galen ships.

This has to be explained. The main force of Gao Yushi's dispatch this time is the so-called "armed transport ship". A ship of [-] materials, equivalent to a displacement of [-] tons, is definitely not small for a transport ship of this era, but Compared with the Western warships that have entered the professional navy, it is definitely far behind.

Because of the shipbuilding industry, there is a limited number of highly pragmatic ones that can be developed. The construction technology of the great treasure ship in the glorious era of the Ming Dynasty in the past was forced to burn the design drawings because of Liu Daxia's pitfalls in the past. It has become a wasteland overgrown with weeds. Who knows where those craftsmen who can build big treasure ships have gone, and they may have been completely lost.

Therefore, Gao Pragmatic tried every means to recruit talents, and in the past few years, he could build to the current level. Currently, his shipyard in Laizhou is trying to design and manufacture a larger professional warship.

This professional warship in the pre-development state belongs to the lowest level of professional warships in the shipbuilding plan that Gao Yushi has planned long ago. It is called a "secondary cruiser". It is estimated to be 42 materials, 288 tons, and one deck. Cannon, the whole ship is divided into two levels of artillery, a total of [-] guns, with a capacity of [-] people.

Although compared with the current armed transport ship, the increase in tonnage does not seem to be much, but because it is completely designed according to military use, the cost is much more expensive.The current cost of a single armed transport ship is 5000 taels of silver, while the estimated cost of a second-class cruiser is as high as 12 to 13 taels.

And in fact, the two obsolete military Galen that Zheng Song bought from the Portuguese are [-]-ton big guys, even if the high-level and pragmatic second-level cruiser is built, they can't compare now.

The cargo of 1000 tons, in the highly pragmatic plan, has to go up two levels: first is the [-]-[-]-ton first-level cruiser, and then the third-level battleship is the tonnage.

Long way to go...

Zheng Song knew that the combined fleet of Gao and Mo was huge, and his naval force was not worth mentioning except for the two large ships sold to him by Frang Robot, so he thought about it and only thought of one The method was to make a surprise attack on the sea near the mouth of the Ma River when the Ming army was about to drive its navy into the Ma River to attack his defense line along the river, hoping to sink some of the Ming warships and force the Ming army to give up entering the river.

Only in this way can the line of defense along the river be called a meaningful line of defense. Otherwise, the cannons of the navy and warships of the Ming army will be fired at once, and any line of defense will be paper. His detailed work in Shenglong City has already reported to Mo Mao The "real reason" for Qia's surrender: Mo Maoqia was frightened and surrendered when a round of gunfire from a Ming warship destroyed the turret of Xiangfu Gate.

On February 21, the weather on the sea outside the Majiang Estuary was not too good. It began to rain lightly in the sky, accompanied by the sea breeze, which drenched the sailors on the deck to the skin.

Fortunately, this is Annan, and the weather is not cold. The sailors of the Jinghua Fleet have long been accustomed to this kind of life, and everyone does not take this level of wind and rain seriously, so what should they do?

However, since there is rain on the sea, it will inevitably affect the line of sight. Even the lookouts on the watchtower can now see far less.Fortunately, the Mo Jun Navy is quite familiar with the environment in this area. The liaison officers and navigators stationed on the Jinghua ships all said that there is no need to worry.

Since Gao Yu was transferred to take charge of the original Mo Yulin Department that surrendered, and the Jinghua Jiading Guard Regiment controlled by Gao Zhang has now become a highly pragmatic Chinese army guard, so the commander of the Jinghua Fleet has changed this time, and it is Jinghua Guangzhou. The leader of the Hong Kong Transport Fleet is Gao Jing.

This person was not originally a family member of the Gao family, but a native of Guangdong. His surname was Chen and his last name was Jing.His father used to have a small fleet of three sea-going ships, which was accumulated by three generations of the family.It's a pity that I encountered pirates when I went out to sea. Generally speaking, if you meet pirates, you only need to pay some money to buy roads. After discovering this fleet, they didn't follow the rules at all, and directly wanted to seize all the people and ships to "replenish blood".

So everything was gone, not only the head of the Chen family died, but also owed a whole lot of debt.

Chen Jing had been accompanying his father to go to sea since he was 13 years old, but it was a coincidence that he went to take the talent examination and missed going to sea, so he escaped.

Who knew that this farewell was actually a farewell, the father died, the family was in ruins, and the scholar did not pass the exam...

In desperation, he thought of the recruitment list of Jinghua Guangzhou Private Port at that time, and applied with an attitude of giving it a try. As a result, because he went to sea since he was a child, he was not only experienced and familiar with sea routes, but also was born as a child, so he was directly selected.

However, his family owed a lot of money, as high as more than 5000 taels of silver, and now they have lost their capital. It will take 30 years to pay back the normal salary.Chen Jing thought for a month, and finally made up his mind to "sell himself".

After Gao Wushi learned the news, he wrote to him personally, helped him pay off the debt, and changed his name to Gao Jing—the name next to the word Wang was not easily given by the Gao family, and belonged to cronies, such as Gao Juan and Gao Zhang. so it is.

In fact, Gao Xiaozhuang also has a nickname now, Gao Rui, but Gao Yushi is used to calling him Gao Xiaozhuang, so this nickname is rarely used.

Chen Jing became Gao Jing, and quickly stood out in Guangzhou Port. At the end of last year, he was promoted to the leader of Jinghua Guangzhou Port Transport Team—in fact, if this fleet is replaced by the military, he is the commander-in-chief of the fleet.

When Gao Yu was in command of the fleet last time, because of his status, Gao Yu naturally became the commander, and he was actually in charge of navigation and other matters as his deputy.But this time Gao Yu was away, he was "rectified" by Gao Yushi, and he really became the commander-in-chief of this "United Fleet".

Gao Jing is very grateful for Gao's pragmatic trust, so she also takes this job very seriously, and refuses to let go of every detail.

After hearing from the Navigator of the Mojun Navy on the flagship that Ma Jiangkou was not far ahead, he immediately ordered the entire fleet to be on alert.

Zheng Song knew that the Ming army's fleet was ambushed at Majiangkou, and Gao Jing also knew that Majiangkou was the last pass that Zheng Jun could threaten or block the Jinghua fleet.

With the change of the flag, the entire fleet began to move, and the relatively sparse file formation turned into a wild goose formation cautiously meeting the enemy. Gao Jing looked at it and breathed a sigh of relief.

However, before he was completely relieved, the watchman on the watchtower suddenly waved the flag and shouted: "There are enemy ships ahead! There are enemy ships ahead! The lead ship has three masts, and it is the soft sail of Hongmaofan big ship!"

Gao Jing suddenly walked to the edge of the bridge, and loudly said to the sailor in charge of sending the message: "Tell him to see clearly, there are several big three-masted soft-sail ships!"

The big ships of Hongmao Fanzi are powerful, but their strength has always been limited. Gao Jing is very aware of this. At most, there were no more than twenty three-masted soft-sail ships, and under normal circumstances, there were only about ten to thirteen ships. Even if Zheng Jun could invite them, the number would definitely not be many.

Not long after, news came from the watchtower that the opponent had only two three-masted soft-sail ships, and the rest were small hard-sail ships—the shipbuilding technology of the Annan people was basically copied from that of Ming Dynasty, while China has always used Hard sails, so the Annan people's own ships are also hard sails.

Gao Jing breathed a sigh of relief, there were only two ships, which meant that the two warships that Gao Tuanzuo mentioned before were bought from the Frang machine.

Of course the boat is powerful, otherwise, how could the Folang Robot form such a big force in Nanyang with so few people?
However, although ships are very important in sea warfare, the role of people cannot be ignored either—can the Annan people play with the big ships of the Frangji people?

Gao Jing took a deep breath, and said calmly: "Signature, the whole fleet maintains a goose formation to prepare for battle; each ship immediately prepares gunpowder and shells, and prepares to change direction at the same time, pay attention to the flagship semaphore at any time, and prepare to turn left!"
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Every day is rushing to draft, and I almost forgot to say: Happy Mid-Autumn Festival!

(End of this chapter)