Chapter 626: Battle of the Port
The annihilation of the main force of the 800 Dutch Army means that it has completely gained a firm foothold in this Beigang Town and occupies the entire Dongfan Island in sight!
The Dutch had more than 1,200 troops on Dongfan, and this battle was settled to two-thirds of their forces, and there was no big problem in capturing their governor alive and conquering the whole of Dongfan.
The next thing to do is to keep up the work and deal with the Dutch fleet moored off the coast.
Chen Yue led the army to the sea, and at the same time ordered someone to send a letter to Yang Zhengping.
Yang Zhengping didn't go far with the fleet, it was in a bay more than thirty miles north of Beigang. If his mission was for the Dutch fleet to attack the chicken coop, he would lead the fleet back to help, and if the Dutch attacked North Harbor, he waited for the opportunity to cooperate with the army to capture the Dutch fleet.
Li Yi led people to block the Dutch's retreat, but now it seems that it is useless, because no Dutch can escape back.
Chen Yue left 1,000 men to garrison Beigang, and after meeting Li Yi, he led an army of 4,000 to escort Caron and other prisoners to the sea.
In the evening they camped seven or eight miles from the harbor, and waited until dawn the next day to attack the Dutch fleet.
At this moment, because no soldiers could escape, the Dutch fleet was not aware of the battle that took place in the North Harbor.
The Dutch fleet was now commanded by Major Philip, with only two hundred soldiers guarding the flotilla.
Two hundred men were divided into ten ships, and each ship had twenty people, which did not even reach the minimum number of people needed to start the warship! So Philip left five soldiers on duty on each warship, and the rest of the soldiers were concentrated on the two main ships, because he had to guard against a possible attack by the Ming fleet.
Although the Ming fleet was defeated and fled north, who knows if they will return again, so Philip must have enough combat power to deter them.
The two battleships each had a hundred cannons, which was more than enough to deal with the Ming attack. It only needs to hold out until the next day, when Governor Caron will return after defeating the Ming army in Northport. Of course, the current Major Philip did not know that Governor Caron had been captured by the Ming army!
In order to contact Yang Zhengping's fleet, Liu Neng took two of his men to the bay thirty miles away in the evening to find Yang Zhengping, and passed Chen Yue's order to Yang Zhengping.
Chen Yue asked Liu Neng to go down to rest, and then gathered his generals overnight and began to assign tasks.
The tactic of attacking the Dutch fleet was very simple, which was to combine internal and external forces to seize the ships. Yang Zhengping led the fleet to attack the Dutch fleet from the open sea, while Chen Yue commanded his men to enter the port along Beigang Creek and attack the Dutch army from the inside.
Beigang Creek is the main river connecting Beigang Town and the sea, although the stream is shallow, it can also pass small boats, and there are dozens of large and small ships in Beigang Town, which are enough for military attack.
On the second day, the sky was slightly bright, and the shadowy shadow of the ship came from the north, which immediately woke up the Dutch soldiers who were watching, "bang", the gunshots rang out, and the Dutch troops stationed in the city woke up, and looked at the huge fleet that appeared in the north in shock, and at the front were five huge Galen ships, if only from the type of ship, it was no different from the Dutch fleet in the port, but the mast was hung with the flag of the Ming army.
When did the Ming army actually have the same Galen ship as their own? Major Philip was taken aback, but he didn't have time to think about it, so he ordered two fully manned warships to pull anchor and set sail to meet them, blocking the incoming Ming fleet. There were only eight other ships in the harbor, and come on, he didn't have enough men to move them right now.
The battle against the Ming army relied on powerful firepower, and Philip had less than 200 men, and even the artillery on these two main battleships could not be fully controlled, and it was not enough for each artillery to be equipped with only one artilleryman!
"Boom" "Boom" "Boom" ......
When the Ming fleet was still five or six nautical miles away, Philip had already ordered the artillery to be fired, and at this time he could no longer care about the accuracy of the shot, and he wanted to use powerful firepower to deter the Ming army and prevent them from approaching.
Philip led two capital warships out to sea to meet the enemy, and there were only eight warships left in the bay that swayed slightly with the waves, each with only five soldiers stationed on board. At this moment, more than forty small boats carrying more than 1,000 soldiers entered the bay along Beigang Creek.
"Ming Army!" A Dutch soldier exclaimed as he pointed to the Ming ships entering the harbor, and the others looked back in shock.
The sudden appearance of the Ming army from Beigang Creek and the attack on the fleet meant that all the Dutch knew that the governor Karon and eight hundred soldiers had been wiped out!
But what could they do with the Dutch soldiers stationed on the ship?
Defend? There were only five soldiers on each ship, how could they stop the rapid approach of dozens of ships of the Ming army!
All they could do was fire a gun to call the police, give a message to Major Philip who was meeting the enemy, and that's it.
However, at this moment, the guns of the two main Dutch battleships rumbled, the entire deck was filled with gunsmoke, and the gunfire of the Dutch soldiers in the harbor was drowned out by the roar of cannons, where could it reach Philip's ears?
So the Dutch soldiers who stayed behind saw in despair that their own warships that were meeting the enemy did not see what was happening here at all.
Jin Xin, Li Yi, Xiao Bing and others each led their own teams and attacked the Dutch warships anchored in the harbor in small boats.
The counterattack on the battleship was weak and pitiful, and only sporadic gunfire rang out, which did not pose much threat to the attacking Ming army at all.
Throwing grenades at the deck, taking advantage of the explosion, he shot his crossbow with a flying claw attached to the rope, hooking the towering side of the ship, and then the Ming soldiers pulled the rope and climbed up.
The Dutch soldiers stretched out their muskets from the side of the ship and opened fire, trying to stop the Ming army from climbing, but on each boat below, there were more than a dozen Ming soldiers holding muskets and pointing at the bow of the ship, and before the Dutch soldiers could fire, an overwhelming number of projectiles flew from below.
Outnumbered, the Ming army easily captured all eight Dutch ships. Then small boats came and went between the coast and the warships, and the Ming troops who had reached the coast were brought to the warships.
During the Japanese war, the two captured Dutch armed sailing ships were used as training ships, and more than 300 students of the Sailors Academy received strict training, and there was no problem in operating these ships.
Then eight Dutch battleships, more than forty small boats, sailed out of the bay and attacked the two battleships commanded by Major Philip.
Hundreds of Ming warships were attacking in front, and their own warships in the harbor were robbed by the Ming army.
In these years, the hit rate of naval artillery was very poor, and it was often impossible to hit a single shell even if a hundred shells were fired, and it was too difficult to catch up and annihilate if one side was bent on escaping. Chen Yue didn't think about sinking or capturing these two Dutch ships again, and it was a huge surprise to be able to capture eight Dutch ships. Now there are thirteen Galen ships under his command!
After rendezvous with Yang Zhengping's fleet, Chen Yue ordered the whole army to set off immediately, taking advantage of the northwest monsoon to head towards Reshalan City in the south of Dongfan Island, he wanted to take advantage of the ignorance of the Dutch in Reshalan City to take Reshalan City in one fell swoop!