Isn't the fireship itself supposed to catch fire?

That being said, the fleet had barely sailed into the sea, and was still six or seven miles away from the port, and the steamships laden with dead grass and grease and wood were burned first, and by the time they reached the port they should have burned out.

Besides, there are people on board!

Naturally, the sailors on the two fireboats were not willing to set fires, and the mines exploded on the side of their ships, knocking down the oil lamps on the ships, and the fire could not be stopped, and no one could do anything.

However, at least for the time being, it seemed that the two fireships might still be able to fulfill their mission, and Drake saw from the mast that although the enemy had prepared shore defense gun positions on both sides of the coast and in the harbor, there were only a few ships in the harbor, and it seemed that the Ming army did not intend to engage them in a naval battle.

Drake knew before he left Plymouth that the Ming army had a lot of armed merchant ships, but now they don't know where they have gone.

In the opinion of Howard, the queen's cousin and fleet commander, although his fleet was blown up by the small boxes left at sea by the Ming army, the shipwrights would repair it to the right level as soon as possible, and it would still be enough to support the fleet to break through the port, but the explosion did cause a lot of trouble.

The biggest trouble a mine does not cause is to blow the hard hull of a battleship, and this level of damage is nothing to a huge warship, even if a boulder the size of a human head is laid below the waterline of the hull. They had just filled the holes, and the boats could continue to move as long as the boatsmith nailed a few planks.

It doesn't even matter if some seawater leaks into the hold, it's too difficult to scoop the water, just throw the ballast out.

In the explosion of the mines, each of the two dozen small oars boats dutifully carried the news back and forth between the battleships, and many of them carried the mines directly to the boats, and some of the oarboats were rowing next to the mines.

When the mines began to explode, people realized that the wooden crates floating in the sea were a weapon, and some people struggled to paddle away from the mines, and some jumped into the sea, but to no avail.

Not to mention being hit by a flying boulder, even the waves of a mine blowing up next to it were enough to overturn a small oared boat.

The loss of the communication boat made it extremely difficult for the sailors of this fleet to convey the message of the commander, and the ships behind could see the sailors in the stern of the ship in front of them bent over and wagging their arms, but they could not hear his hoarse shouts, let alone what kind of instructions they wanted to convey to the commander.

It seems that the command ship was aware of this problem as well, and Howard's ship was successively raised with the coat of arms of the Howard family and the Protestant cross.

Blinded the boat behind.

"What does he mean that we should charge after him as if we were on land?"

"To raise the flag is to charge, right? But we're not an army. ”

The navy was a new concept for England, or for all of Europe, except for Spain, which was a kingdom with a proper division of naval divisions, and at least by law, there were always two commanders on board the Spanish ships, one for water warfare and one for land warfare.

As for the fact that the commander in charge of water warfare always fights in the form of land warfare and that the sailors are inferior, it is only a problem left over from history, but they do clearly distinguish between the two divisions.

The navy of England was still in its infancy, all built by the Hawkins family of Plymouth, and the idea of warfare came from Drake's pirate career, using artillery to defeat the strong to avoid attacking fortifications and taking sides, and the ships were full of gunners and sailors.

Confused, but effective, at least a few ships close to it can read what this means.

It's not easy to be far away, and when you are two or three hundred meters away from the flag, normal people can't even tell whether the flag is a wolf or a husky, let alone the choppy sea.

However, Li Yuxi, who was condescending on the cliff on the shore, could clearly see that this tobacco merchant had a heavy responsibility, and he rarely wore armor on his body, and with a telescope, he saw the approaching enemy ships in the bay, especially the first two fireships that gradually slowed down, and said to the left and right: "They have entered the firing range and set up the dragon flag." ”

With the order, in the three directions in front of him, six conspicuous red-bottomed dragon flags were raised, and the first to receive this information was the defenders on the west bank of the Haikou River Bay, which was stationed a battalion of 400 Muye Baojia and 130 Ming merchants.

Under the orders of the battalion commander, they came out of the woods, removed thirty-six green cotton cloths from the furlong cannons that had been unloaded from the ships and placed them on the shore, and under the control of the merchants, they sailed past them from the flanks and rear of the ships at the end of the British fleet and began to bombard.

Makino Hokashi waited for an opportunity to hide in the sand, some guarding with crossbows and ring knives, while others went into the hidden fortifications dug in advance on the beach and dragged ropes, and they laid mines and traps on the beach.

Then there was the east coast, where artillery positions and minefields were also placed, and the Francos guns were used to bombard enemy ships.

There are reefs on both sides of the river four or five miles wide, and only the narrow channel in the middle can be used for ships to enter the port, and from this distance to launch a shot at the ships in the river, in fact, it has little effect, that is almost the maximum range of the Fran cannon, so that there is no difference between the merchant shooting or the Makino armor shooting, even if the Beiyang gunner is changed, whether it can be hit depends on whether the enemy ship is well received or not.

Li Yuxi's idea was to use mines and Fran cannons on both sides of the river to defeat the morale of the enemy troops to the greatest extent and make them panic, and he knew that the enemy army would definitely panic, because he had sunk four fortune boats in the Primm and Taima rivers on the east and west sides of Plymouth, completely blocking the river.

Plymouth is now a big pocket, and the enemy has a chance to survive except landing in white-knuckle combat, and no matter where they run, it is a dead end.

Sir Howard could already see the dense heads on the Plymouth coast, and the first thing that caught his eye was the Furlong cannon, which followed the stone steps leading to the beach, one layer below, one layer above, one slanting one floor, and behind three layers of low stone walls stood gunners, all of whom were aimed at the front.

But they didn't shoot, they just waited quietly, as if waiting for them to land.

The first fireships ran aground on the way because they had burned their sails too big, but more ships approached Plymouth, bombarding the harbor with their cannons, rapid-fire boom guns and powerful front-loading Dutch forged steel cannons raining cannonballs on wooden and stone buildings.

It was only one round to devastate the harbor, but at that moment the two boats that had been the first to turn downwind into the Prim River made a loud noise, and they ran aground on the bank of the river, the other at the mouth of the river, and two more boats crashed into it, hugging it together.

Behind them, there was a noisy symphony of war drums mixed with suona, and people saw the shadow of a huge warship in the distance sailing into the sea, leading several ships to attack them downwind.