After a while, Su Li and several Han officers entered the cabin and saluted on one knee one after another, "Meet the Chief Soldier!" ”

"Get up." Kaha waved his hand and said, "The sentinel has found more than 50 Fujian warships west of Zhoushan, and I have summoned you here to discuss how to advance and destroy the enemy. ”

He also ordered the officer who had just been informed of the situation to give a detailed account of the enemy's situation.

Su Li immediately bowed his hand and said: "My lord, General Ma's soldiers are now besieging Xiaoshan and storming, and the enemy is willing to take great risks and sail into Qiantang, mostly to attack the grain and grass I transported to the south bank of Qiantang.

"If the grain ship is destroyed, it will inevitably drag down the situation in Xiaoshan. The subordinates thought that they only needed to strictly guard the line from Hangzhou to Xiaoshan, and every time there was grain and grass going south, they would make the warships go with them, so as not to let the enemy have a chance to take advantage of them. After the general army of Ma captured Xiaoshan, he could order the sailors to go out to find the enemy ships and suppress them. ”

A square-faced man with a dark face next to him immediately laughed and said, "Commander Su is afraid? But just fifty enemy ships, but my two hundred ships retreated to defense? ”

"You ......" Su Li glanced at him and couldn't help but be stunned, "What does Commander Niu think is appropriate?" ”

At present, the Qiantang Water Division of the Qing Army is all from the original Zhejiang Water Division, which has been commanded by Wang Wenkui, a Zhejiang officer. Unexpectedly, when King Lu's fleet was destroyed, the Qing court immediately handed over the sailors to the hands of Kaha, which made the old generals of Zhejiang extremely dissatisfied.

Although they did not dare to contradict Kaha, they always tried to find a way to trouble his henchmen Su Li and others.

This Niu Bin used to be Wang Wenkui's general, and he was one of the representative figures. When he heard Su Li's rhetorical question, he immediately snorted lightly, asked people to take a sea chart, pointed to the mouth of Qiantang and said: "The enemy ship is near here, we are only less than three hundred miles away from the southerners at this time, and we are going down the river.

"There are more than 200 warships under the command of the commander-in-chief, and there are as many as 20 large ships, but the enemy is no more than 50 ships. If you encounter an enemy ship, you can destroy it in two hours at most. ”

Su Li shook his head and said: "My duty as a sailor is to ensure that the grain and grass in Qiantang are safe, so why bother to take risks and seek war?" ”

The Zhejiang officer on the side said loudly: "Don't fight the battle that is sure to win, you are growing up others to destroy your own prestige!" ”

Although Su Li's power in the water division is not as large as that of Zhejiang, he also has some of his own people. Someone immediately retorted, "Hmph, march and fight, take stability as the top." The courage of the horseman, what is the scheming and strategizing? ”

The other side then sneered in a sarcastic tone: "What is the instability of going to suppress the enemy, I think you are just afraid......"

"You are nesting here, but don't stop us from killing the enemy and making meritorious contributions!"

"That's right! If you go downstream, you can achieve a big victory in one day, but you have to wait for ...... upstream."

Kaha himself didn't understand water warfare, and at this time, the two sides looked back and forth, but they couldn't make up their minds for a while.

A lean, short-bearded man seemed to be on another ship, and only then did he arrive, and seeing that the two sides were arguing hotly, he hurriedly whispered to the officer beside him.

"I've seen Commander Wu." The man hurriedly bowed, and then roughly talked about the discovery of enemy ships, as well as the situation of Su Li arguing with Niu Bin and others about the battle strategy.

The commander of this military force was also an officer of the Far Zhejiang Naval Division, but he was originally under Zhang Mingzhen's department, but he was coerced to join the Qing army.

Hearing this, he nodded, leaned forward again, and when he saw the location of the Fujian warship found in the chart, his eyes suddenly froze.

He lowered his eyes and thought for a moment, then separated from everyone and bowed his hand to Kaha: "Lord Commander, according to what the last general has seen, this group of Fujian sailors or the last batch of warships of the southerners, if you don't suppress them, when the situation in the southeast is settled, they will definitely fall to the wind."

"At that time, although the adults will lead a naval commander, they will be able to get a comment at most 'protect the grain and grass of Xiaoshan', and I am afraid that there will be no good opportunity to win the battle in the future......"

Exploits? These two words immediately scratched the itch of Kaha, and he did not hesitate at the moment, and waved his hand: "That's right! If this battle is not fought, there will be no chance in the future. Order, immediately wave your army to the east and destroy the enemy ship! ”

Su Li glared at Wu Yuanzhou fiercely, and then helplessly bowed his hand to Kaha: "Subordinates obey the order!" ”

Wu Yuanzhou waited for the crowd to disperse, but immediately returned to his cabin, hurriedly wrote a secret letter and handed it to his henchmen, ordering him to set up a sentry boat and send the letter to the vicinity of Xiapanshan as soon as possible.

……

On the east side of the Qiantang River, dozens of warships sailed out of the Zhoushan Islands, and Yang Fan headed towards Xiaoshan.

These boats were very different from the common sea boats in Qiantang in that their masts were more than twice as tall as ordinary boats, and they were covered with cloth sails that obscured almost the entire sky above them.

At the same time, the hull is slightly longer than the Junk ship in the Ming Dynasty, and the bow and stern towers at the front and rear of the ship are also extremely low, which is a feature that has not appeared in European warships at this time, and it was not popularized until the eighteenth century.

Although the bow and stern of this structure have fewer officers' rooms, it has many advantages, such as lowering the center of gravity of the hull to increase stability, reducing the area of side bullets, and reducing navigation resistance.

And the cabins of those officers were moved to the lower cabins by Zhu Linmiao. The reason why he was able to do this was because he optimized the hull according to the experience of later generations, and the wider waterline hull and the larger aspect ratio made the Galen warships of the Ming Naval Division much larger than those built by the Europeans today. As a result, it can accommodate more cabins or carry more supplies and ammunition.

However, the most novel thing about this fleet is the "windows" that are neatly recessed on both sides of the hull. However, only the people of the Daming Water Division knew that behind these windows were a large number of twelve or even eighteen-pound heavy artillery, more than three times the number of Qiantang Qing Army Water Division.

When the window on the side of the ship opens, that's when the nightmare begins!

The fifty or so ships of the fleet formed a standard triangle, and although they sailed against the current, the sailors skillfully adjusted the sidesails and spinnakers by crosswind, so that all the ships maintained a speed of nearly four knots and went west.

A knot is a unit of speed from Europe, and the speed of a knot is about 3.7 miles. In other words, this fleet of warships can now travel nearly 200 miles in one day. If the wind is more favorable, it can even reach the level of 350 miles a day.

This is the advantage of the large area soft sails of the Galen ship in the wide sea area. Compared with the traditional Junk ship in the East, it can travel more than 200 miles when the wind is downwind.

Of course, soft sails have their drawbacks. For example, in the case of changeable offshore winds, it is far less flexible than a junk ship. However, the Qiantang River is spacious enough to be suitable for the Galen boat, which is more excellent for long-sea navigation.

The Galen warship named "Shao Wu" at the head of the fleet was 500 tons, with two layers of artillery overtime and one open-air deck, and the number of cannons carried by this ship alone was close to the two artillery battalions of the Dragon Guard.

At this time, in the largest cabin of the stern of Shaowu, Zheng Chenggong was making pre-war deployments with Shi Lang, Liu Guoxuan and others in the face of nautical charts.