Lin Gao Qiming

Chapter 299 Sweet Harbor Situation - Encounter at Sea

To the east, about six nautical miles away, a fleet of more than a dozen ships of various tonnages and sizes appeared.

Le Lin, the first mate of the Big Whale, raised her binoculars and watched the voyage of the distant ship intently.

The wind was blowing slightly on the two hard sails of the big whale, pushing the boat at a speed of 2 knots per hour. The first officer looked at his watch.The ship has left Hai'an Port for two hours.

The big whale entered Hai'an last night, and then unloaded the [-] shi of rice carried by the boat.Then, another two hundred stones of sugar were added.In the original plan, the big whale did not load sugar goods. After all, its mission was to act as a bait, and it was unable to keep the safety of the goods during the battle. Whether it was flooded, burned or contaminated by human blood, the sugar could never be sold again. , and sugar is also a very good combustion agent, in case of fire in battle, it is no joke.

But if you don't pretend to be a bit of sugar, you can't act as a bait. The opponent has placed eyeliner on Hai'an Street.

Xi Yazhou raised his binoculars and concentrated on observing the voyage of these ships.Because he deleted too many posts on the Lingao BBS, his reputation among the masses has dropped sharply, and it has been exposed that the so-called "deduction on the map" he did during working hours was all computer games. Find an opportunity to perform meritorious service.This time it was a sea operation. The backbone of the navy had gone out a lot on long voyages, and the big whale was responsible for the bait task. It was basically preparing for shelling and hand-to-hand combat. It would be no problem to let an army take command.Of course, the driving of the ship is still in the charge of the navy.

"First mate," he said, turning to the first mate, "is this Haiyitang hiring pirates?"

"It's very possible," Le Lin replied, "But I can't see it clearly now, and it will become clear when I get closer."

"Okay," Xi Yazhou said, "order to be careful and alert. Ask everyone to make the necessary preparations."

Then the order was immediately communicated to the whole ship.Various preparation measures were implemented immediately.Lookout posts increased to four.

"Report to Detachment A that there is a suspicious ship appearing 6 nautical miles away from our ship." Standing on the poop, Xi Yaya felt a bit like a general in a movie, but the deck was full of straw bags, which seemed unavoidable Make people feel boring.

Detachment A consists of two fishing boats, and is responsible for direct protection of the whale, lest the whale be outnumbered and be raped by others.They waited 10 nautical miles south of the whale, keeping their distance.According to the plan: Once a battle occurs, Team A will come to reinforce it. The task of Detachment A is to cooperate with the big whale to destroy the enemy ships on the spot if there are less than 4 enemy ships; Juhuayu - an ambush circle has been set up there.

The convoy is approaching with considerable speed.The wind on the sea is not strong now, but the opponent's speed is obviously very fast.

"They're using sculls," Lelin said, "and they're chasing us like hell."

"Probably, as soon as we entered the port yesterday, someone tipped them off. Otherwise, how could it be so accurate." Xi Yazhou looked at the approaching fleet, thinking that a fierce battle would come soon, and felt very excited.Although he had been a soldier, it was the first time he had done so with real swords and guns.

The fleet approached two nautical miles.Lelin estimated their speed was at least 4 knots.In addition to sails, each ship uses at least six to eight oars for rowing.Now, there could be no misunderstanding of the intentions of this fleet.

"It's a pirate!" Lelin put down the binoculars

"That's right." Xi Yaya replied, "Ready for battle!"

The ship's bell on the Big Whale was quickly rang, and the sailors came out of the cabin and ran to their respective battle positions, among them were army gunners in gray uniforms and red artillery collar badges.They came aboard with four 12-pounder cannons.

The sailors quickly transported the sugar bales accumulated on the outer layer to the lower cabin. The other straw bales did not need to be moved.Four cannons and ammunition boxes are hidden deep in these bunkers, covered with straw mats.The sailors pressed two water pumps to pump up seawater to wet the straw bags and the deck to prevent the enemy from using arson tools.

It was Gu Dachun's fleet that came, ten ships of different sizes set off from an island near Xuwen last night.Although there are only ten ships in the area, seven of them are temporarily joined by individual households.These ships were gathered by Gu Dachun recently.I wish that the 5000 taels given to him by the third master plus the sugar money he grabbed last time made him very excited, and made him even more excited. This cheap brother-in-law has never thought highly of him in the past. After the two hundred shitang, his attitude towards him had changed drastically, and he could even be said to be very dependent on him, which made him very proud.Natural attitudes have also become more positive.

Seeing the strange looking and clumsy big ship in South China ahead, Gu Dachun felt that victory was already in sight.He even felt that it was unnecessary for him to find these helping boats—even if his three boats surrounded him, it would be enough to solve the problem.This time, Third Master Zhu sent him a clear message through Qiu Han: grabbing candy is a trivial matter, the key is that no one will dare to ship a candy from Leizhou in the future except Haiyitang's boat.

The implication of these words, Gu Dachun naturally understands that what was said last time was just "to make them know how powerful", but now the meaning is quite different - the best way to make people dare not is to kill and set fire.So this time, he made up his mind not to show mercy.

It is not difficult for the third master to ask him to add more boats and cannons to expand the team.Going to Jiangping once, you can recruit a lot of rough fishermen who are half fishermen and half bandits. They live in this two-way boundary. They are neither Vietnamese nor Ming people. robbery activities.Some can also bring ships, which can be regarded as their own production tools.Gu Dachun quickly recruited seven large ships with nearly 600 people.

It's just that cannons and gunpowder are not very easy to deal with. Gu Dachun didn't use these things in the past, and after finding a lot of connections, he found a workshop in the countryside of Qinzhou that specialized in private casting of cannons and bird guns. He bought them at a price of 40 taels of silver each. More than a dozen cannons.But gunpowder was hard to come by, so Mr. Zhu helped him get a few barrels from the navy in Leizhou, and he managed to buy some himself.It can be regarded as equipping all three of his ships.However, they don't have qualified gunners, and the pirates are not good at serving this thing. They are very wary of this kind of thing that jumps back when it is fired, and sometimes blows itself to pieces, so the battle will still be based on jumping gangs. Hand-to-hand combat is the main one.Now this group of pirates has gathered on the deck, holding all kinds of equipment in their hands, ready to jump up and fight.

Whether the pirates attacked the Big Whale head-on or engaged in a siege, this must be a battle with extremely different strengths between the two sides.Lelin put down the binoculars, only to feel chills on the back of her neck.

Among the ten ships of the other side, it can be seen that there are three large two-masted ships with three to five cannons installed on them.The remaining seven ships have one mast and two masts, but the tonnage is relatively small, similar to the common coastal fishing boats here.There is no sign of artillery installation.But on the deck of the ship, there were densely packed men with dark skin. Although their expressions could not be seen through the telescope, the glint of the weapons in their hands under the sun was enough to make people feel terrified.

The opponent had eleven to fifteen cannons.There are only four cannons on the big whale to fight.More than 100 sailors on board had to fight with 800 people.It must be a battle of disparity between the enemy and ourselves.Of course, the Big Whale enjoys a certain artillery advantage, which is enough to deal a heavy blow to the reckless enemies-as long as they don't get too close and keep a certain distance.Large whales can gradually eliminate them using accurate artillery fire.

In short, the crossing people must do everything possible to avoid fighting on board.Once this situation is encountered, in the end, the number of people will definitely prevail.When fighting at sea, once a hand-to-hand battle occurs, the number of both sides is more important than when fighting on land-there is no way out in a battle on a ship, and escape is death.

Another half an hour passed, and it was obvious that the fleet had taken another step, approaching the big whale.The big whale is still advancing at the original speed.He seemed to be ignorant of his fate.

Xi Ya could not stop observing the actions of the pirates.It looks like the enemy didn't realize it was a trap.The battle preparations on board were quickly made.Sailors and gunners, everyone is in their positions and stick to their posts.The gunners concentrated on measuring the distance of the ship and adjusting the angle of the artillery; the sailors lay in ambush behind the straw bag barrier, biting through the ammunition bag in a hurry to reload their Minie rifles under the command of the officer.As this was a battle on a ship and bayonets were inconvenient to use, all the sailors and sailors distributed a machete.

"Send a message to Detachment A: Ten enemy ships are approaching our ship continuously, at a distance of 1.5 nautical miles." The second telegram was sent out.

At around [-]:[-] in the morning, the pirate fleet had already moved one nautical mile upwind of the Big Whale. Even though the pirates were illiterate and hadn't learned any naval warfare tactics, the strategy for gaining the upper hand in naval warfare was still clear.They rowed the boats with big sculls.The Big Whale headed south, maintaining this direction.Gu Dachun's fleet lined up and rushed forward: three large two-masted ships were in the center, and the other seven ships were arranged on both sides, three on the right and four on the left, trying to outflank the whale from the side and surround it in the core.First use artillery bombardment to kill and injure the personnel on the deck, and then rely on the ship to fight and seize the ship.

"We must not let them get close to our ship." Xi Ya said to Le Lin, "First concentrate all the firepower to repel one of the wings." He looked through the binoculars, "All shoot to the starboard."

(End of this chapter)