Lin Gao Qiming

Chapter 1242 The Enemy Is In Liaoluo Bay

The boat of Ning Liujin's relatives was not big, at most it was only 200 yuan, and it was just one of the countless boats in the Zheng family's fleet.The hull is old, but still solid.Two privately cast cannons were installed on board.It's thick and short, and it's covered in yellow-red rust.When the cannon is fired, it jumps three feet high. Although it is tied with a rope, the gunner will still be hit if he is not careful.At Ning Liujin's feet were several large baskets of broken metal, small stones, and broken porcelain used as shells, and several jars of gunpowder were thrown under the mast, covered with straw mats.

Apart from the owner, the most important person on the ship is the fire chief. He can know how to read the needle, read the compass, and can recite the tide song backwards. It barely counts as a three-way, but the danger is too great. Ning Liujin has been on the ship for less than half a year, and the gunner has already changed two.When one fired the cannon, the cannon jumped up and hit the body, and he vomited blood and died on the spot. When the other fired the cannon, the gunpowder spewed out of the cannon door, burning his face, and was thrown by the ship owner when he was rolling around. The sea went.Ning Liujin was frightened out of his wits, and secretly swore in his heart that he would never be a gunner.

An "apprentice" like Ning Liujin is not considered a person on board.No one took his status as a "relative of the ship owner" seriously.All kinds of work plus fists greeted him.Not long after boarding the ship, he was raped by a guy while sleeping one night, and then he was brutally murdered many times-this kind of thing is common in pirate gangs, and everyone doesn't care about it.

In order to eat, he had no choice but to swallow this breath with hatred and humiliation.I hope that one day I will be able to stand out on the ship, and I will also be in the position of the second team——Nowadays, there are two wars at sea for three days, and the captain and chief fireman die very quickly. , Even the owner's wife and children were taken away.

This time they gathered in Kinmen, it is said that they wanted to fight against thieves.The owner of the ship drank a few more glasses one night and said frothingly that it was the imperial court's order. General Zheng was going to take everyone to hunt down the thieves. He said that everyone would be rewarded after beating the thieves.

Ning Liujin had no idea what the Kun bandits were. He only knew that they had big and fast ships, and that they were said to be more powerful than General Zheng—of course most people would not dare to say so openly.In fact, not to mention the gangsters, even Liu Xiang, who had fought with them before, had no idea who he was or how powerful he was.In his view, fighting is for the food, and whoever they fight is what the leaders consider.Ning Liujin's only concern was not to die in the war.

At 9.20 o'clock in the morning on September [-], the outline of Kinmen Island was already faintly visible.A lookout spotted the silhouettes of many ships [-] nautical miles north of the fleet.The officer on duty in the shooting command room immediately observed Liuluowan with infrared telescopes.He saw many ships moored along the coast of Liuluo Bay, three or four rows deep.They are all small and medium ships.A little farther to the west, there are seven three-masted gunboats with a thousand-ton displacement moored.

Lichun quickly raised the signal flag, and at the same time notified the teams and squadrons with light signals to prepare for battle in a single column. At 5:10, an order was issued from Lichun: advance, the enemy is in Liuluowan!
5时12分立春号的130mm主炮从3海里外首先开火，随后掣电、驭风、乘浪、扬波四舰依次开火，130mm大炮喷射出的火光映红了海湾。

Ning Liujin was falling asleep drowsily, when suddenly, a loud thunderous noise resounded through the sky. He thought it was going to rain, so he quickly opened his eyes.The moon and stars are rare in the sky.While being amazed, I saw a ball of flames rising from the periphery of the fleet, and then quickly dimmed.The guys who fell asleep on the deck all woke up in surprise.

"Quick! Get on the cannon! Someone is coming to kick the camp!" The captain's voice rang out hastily.

The guys hurriedly loaded the artillery or bird guns with medicine.The gunpowder canister is opened directly and poured into the barrel.Ning Liujin was not in charge of firearms, he immediately picked up the steel fork that he carried with him and stood beside the side of the boat, just staring at the dark sea.

From his angle there was almost nothing to see.His boat was mixed among many small and medium-sized boats in Liuluo Bay, and he could only see the boats and masts when he looked out.

But from the clouds hanging down the sky in the distance, you can see the flashing red light, and then there is the sound of rolling thunder.Dull explosions came one after another.The guys on the ship all stared wide-eyed, not knowing what they were about to face.

"Hurry up, hoist the sails and weigh the anchor!" The captains of every ship were shouting, no matter what they were facing, staying here was obviously waiting for death.Ning Liujin was also driven to heave the anchor, the wet cable rubbed his hands burning, but everyone was shrouded in a kind of fear, pulling the cable desperately regardless.

Suddenly, a bright light cut the sky and the sea, and it seemed to be a section of burning air, turning on the water.The source of the light is a faintly large black ship with a towering mast, which is advancing extremely fast against the wind.Liu Jin thought that he must have read it wrong, because there would never be a boat sailing in this direction—it was a pure headwind.

The light pointed at a sailboat, and stopped turning. Several orange flashes flashed on the phantom-like ship, and then the sailboat connected by the light became a ball of fire, and the sail rolled up towards the sky like a mat. Fragments flew over the flames and burrowed into the unknowable night.

The bright light suddenly disappeared again, and everyone watched in amazement that the burning ship quickly turned into two pieces and submerged underwater, and the flame floating on the water also quickly extinguished and became dark.

"Your mother, raise the sails!" The captain was the first to react, kicking and beating several crew members along the way. "Sails hoist! Sails full!" he yelled.

The Beginning of Spring led the four gunboats to the Liuluowan ship group. After the first round of shelling, they paused and quickly corrected their shots. Their target was the seven main gunboats farther away. The previous round of shelling was just for the follow-up The spy boat squadron indicated the target of the shot.

The squadron of spy boats followed, but their guns had a much shorter range, so they kept their guns silent and continued sailing into Cho Lo Wan.The guns had been loaded with grenades, and the gunners had loaded the tubes and were ready to fire at any time.

Cannons were fired sporadically from the fleet of the Zheng family in Liuluo Bay, but the best artillery equipped on these ships could not reach beyond 1 nautical mile, which was nothing more than a spectacular event for the sailors on board. Just a firework show.Under the command of the squadron leader, each squadron kept approaching the enemy fleet in a neat formation.

The Lichun sailed forward for 1 nautical mile, and when it was 2.5 nautical miles away from the seven three-masted gun ships, Ming Qiu looked at his watch and gave the order "turn on the searchlights and the whole team salvo" on the bridge.Li Ziping, the captain of the Lichun, had repeatedly calibrated the shooting elements in the artillery command room, and was waiting for the order to fire.As soon as Ming Qiu finished speaking, Li Chun fired its first salvo, which accurately covered a three-masted gunboat.The soaring water column instantly submerged the enemy ship.

After Lichun fired, the main guns and side guns of each ship fired one after another under the guidance of the searchlights, and dozens of shells flew away with red trails.Countless water columns were set off at the anchorage.

Li Ziping carefully observed the ups and downs of the water column with a telescope, and suddenly a mass of red flames flashed in the water column, followed by a dull explosion sound:
"A hit!" The observation post shouted immediately.

"Keep shooting and keep the speed." Li Ziping ordered on the bridge.The gunners on the main gun deck in front of the bridge are loading ammunition.Wash the barrel with a cannon brush, and then fill it with silk maroon medicine bags one by one, push the grenades one by one into the barrel, and then launch them out.

Every time the Lichun was launched, there would be a vibration, and the smoke and gunfire swept across the deck. The vibration, high temperature and gunpowder made the front deck a purgatory.But the sailors operating the cannon screamed excitedly, and some of them took off their shirts, their faces and bodies were blackened by gunpowder smoke and cannon oil.

"Damn, it really feels like the clouds on the hill." Li Ziping only felt the pungent gunpowder smoke passing over his face by the sea breeze, making him almost breathless.The bridge under his feet vibrated: the hissing of the boiler, the roar of the steam engine, the roar of the cannon... mixed together a vigorous war music of the steam cannon era.

As the distance got closer and the sky grew brighter, they no longer needed searchlights.The gunner constantly calibrated the target according to the drop point of the water column, and the gunners hit more and more accurately, and clusters of red-yellow flames exploded continuously in the dense water column.Although several ships in the fleet composed of seven gunboats have pulled anchor, they are almost powerless to fight back under the intensive and accurate artillery fire of the First Squadron. As long as the wooden hull is hit by a grenade, the ship will die The shell and deck caused serious structural damage, and the shrapnel mixed into pieces of wood flew across the deck, and the deck was suddenly filled with flesh and blood, like hell on earth.The flammable materials on the deck were also not controlled, and the fire quickly ignited after being hit by a shell.A gunboat was hit directly on the ammunition depot at the stern of the ship, causing a big explosion and blowing it in two.

From the beginning to the end, although there were a few gunboats that barely fired back, the number of artillery pieces was too small and the range was not enough, so they hardly posed any threat to the ships of the First Squadron.Only when the first battle group approached to about 1 nautical mile did a few shells fall into the column, but they missed any targets.By this time, almost all the gunboats had been hit, and most of them had sunk into Liuluo Bay or become a burning hull floating on the water.The last two three-masted gunboats also completely lost their ability to fight back after the next round of shelling, and sank to the bottom of the sea one by one in the subsequent shelling.

(End of this chapter)