Thousands of miles away in the sea of Singapore, sapphire-like waters reach the horizon, and flocks of seagulls fly and descend, as if embroidering beautiful patterns on blue silk.

Under the blue sky and white clouds, an elegant warship sailed through the waves, the bow split the turquoise water, flooding with white waves, and the white sails ate enough to eat the wind, transmitting huge power to the streamlined hull. But not only did the boat use sails to drive it, but there were rows of oars sticking out of the sides of the boat, and because of the wind, the oarsmen were not fast paddling.

The name of this battleship is the Star Island, and the shape of the battleship is similar to that of the Arabian warship, but it is much more slender than the Arab warship, and the aspect ratio is somewhat similar to that of the flying clipper, which can be said to be a combination of a flying clipper and an Arab ship.

The galleys had a displacement of about 500 tons, and below the main deck, there were two decks above the waterline, and the upper deck was a gun deck, and there were twelve guns on each side, all of which were short-barreled Cullen guns, of which eight were 32-pounder short-barreled Cullen guns and four 64-pounder short-barreled Cullen guns.

The short-barreled Cullen gun has a very short firing range, but also because of the short barrel, the bore pressure is small, the barrel wall is thin, and the weight of the cannon is light; a 64-pound Cullen gun weighs only more than 2,500 pounds, which is lighter than the weight of a 24-pound long-barreled cannon.

The second advantage of the short-barreled cannon was the high speed of reloading and the stability of the flowering shells. Because of the short barrel, the speed of loading the shell is much faster than that of the long-barreled cannon, and the barrel is short, so it can be loaded like a mortar flowering shell, and the most reliable secondary ignition method is used to ignite the flowering shell.

The flowering shells of the long-barreled cannon rely entirely on the fuse in the wooden bullet stock set when the gunpowder explodes, and the explosion success rate of the flowering shell is very low, only two to three percent of the explosion success rate. The flowering shell of the short-barreled Karen cannon is the same as the ignition method of the flowering shell of the mortar gun, directly igniting the fuse of the shell at the muzzle, and then igniting the ****** at the tail of the gun, and adopting the secondary ignition method, the explosion success rate of the flowering shell is quite high, reaching eighty percent.

The biggest disadvantage of the Karen gun is that the firing range is too close, and the armor-piercing ability is too poor.

At the beginning, Albert and Wang Xinyu had a heated argument on this issue, and Albert proposed that if a warship was mainly based on this kind of gun, the close range would only be two or three hundred meters, and the range would be too close.

In this regard, Wang Xinyu retorted: "Aren't all the naval battles of you Europeans carried out within two or three hundred meters? The long-barreled cannon has a long range, but after exceeding three hundred meters, what about the hit rate? So it's better to increase the caliber. As for the shortcomings of too poor armor-piercing ability, it can be compensated for with flowering bullets. ”

Flowering bombs, it is precisely because of the advantages of flowering shells that Wang Xinyu gave up the long-barreled cannon and used the short-barreled Karen cannon. A 32-pounder short-barreled cannon with flowering shells is not inferior to a 24-pounder long-barreled cannon.

However, the short-barreled Cullen is just one of the weapons, and this fast ship also has another weapon, which is the rotating turret mounted on the main deck.

On the upper deck of the Star Island-class clipper galleys there are four rotating turrets, which are mounted on the base of circular rails and iron wheels embedded in the rails, and the lubricated iron wheels have little friction, allowing the gunners to easily push the rotating turret to turn. The turret shell is made of thick, resilient oak wood, which is covered with a thick layer of copper plate to protect the turret.

Inside each turret, a 150 mm long-barreled cannon protrudes from the bore firing hole, which means that this galley fast battleship has a total of four new cannons of a choice.

If you look closely at the muzzle of this cannon, you will find it very strange, because the inner wall of the barrel of this cannon is actually not round, but hexagonal!

The hexagonal cannon is a rifled cannon with the lowest technical content, which can be made without too high a basic industry, and it is completely possible to manufacture this kind of cannon at the industrial level of the seventeenth century, but the people at that time did not consider this at all, as long as they can imagine it, they can make it.

The caliber of this cannon was about the same caliber as that of a twenty-four-pounder cannon, but the shells were much heavier. Because the shells are long cylindrical, the weight of a single shell can reach an astonishing ninety pounds!

The hexagonal cannon is not only heavy in shells, but also has a very long range, and the shells are extremely powerful. Although this kind of gun is the simplest front-loading rifled gun, it is also a rifled gun after all, the range and accuracy of the rifled gun are far from being comparable to the smoothbore gun, the maximum firing range of this gun can reach seven miles, the accuracy is very high, and it can accurately hit the target one mile away. Not only that, but the rifled guns were very penetrating and could easily penetrate any battleship of the year.

Of course, the hexagonal cannon also has disadvantages, that is, the cost of the cannon is extremely expensive, and the cost of shells is also extremely expensive. Restricted by the level of craftsmanship at that time, the unit price of this cannon was as high as 20,000 taels of silver! That is, to build one such cannon, it is possible to build at least fifty or sixty twenty-pounder cannons. The four hexagonal cannons on the Star Island cost as much as 80,000 taels of silver.

There are two kinds of shells used, one is a solid shell, although it is a solid shell, but the cost is not cheap, the cost of a solid shell can be as high as more than 100 taels of silver. That's because the casting of shells for hexagonal guns is very troublesome, first of all, the shape of the shells is a bit spiral, and the requirements for molds are very high; Secondly, this kind of shell is rotated because it is fired, and it is necessary to ensure that the weight of all parts of the shell is uniform when casting, otherwise the shell rotates in the barrel when it is fired, which will produce deviations, which will lead to the accident of the cannon chamber.

And the other kind of shell is the flowering shell. Flowering shells are more expensive to build. Because it is a long shell, it is certainly impossible to take the method of secondary ignition like a mortar cannon, and the cost of the shell is too expensive, and it will not take the ignition method of the long-barreled cannon that ****** ignite the fuse, but the latest collision fuse!

In fact, the collision fuze is not a complicated problem, Song Yingxing and his son have created a lot of thunder gong, and with this kind of thing, they can make collision fuzes.

However, the gunpowder filled in the flowering bomb is still the old-fashioned black [gunpowder], not the latest high-power explosives, and there is no way to do it, the difficulty of making [sulfur] acid by manual laboratory method is too low, and the new explosives made by Song Yingxing and his son are used to make siege flowering bombs, ready to be used to attack fortified cities such as Wenzhou, Fuzhou and Guangzhou, and where is the surplus explosives to make artillery shells for the navy.

But even the most old-fashioned black [gunpowder] doesn't matter, a 90-pound cannonball, the kinetic energy itself is quite powerful when smashed up, it is filled with more than 40 pounds of black [gunpowder], and the explosion power is equivalent to the power of a 100-millimeter cannonball in later generations. With such power, not to mention the Dutch seven-provincial battleships, even the larger battleship of the British, the Sea King, is estimated to have suffered more than ten shells, and it is almost time to go to the bottom of the sea to feed the fish.

However, flowering shells are more expensive, and one shell costs more than 500 taels of silver, which is more expensive than a cannon in the army!

There is no way to adopt this method of almost throwing money to make new guns and shells, Wang Xinyu's powerful fleet is only strong in Asia, if the Dutch battleships come over, the Nanyang Navy will not even be able to see enough.

That is, because the cost is too high, Wang Xinyu's Xingdao-class clipper type oar-sail dual-purpose warships have only built two, and a total of eight cannons of this sky-high price have been built, and there are not many shells, and only 160 flowering shells and 400 solid shells have been built.

Albert knows the power of this new cannon, this new cannon has a long range, and the key is high accuracy! Of course, it is also known that this kind of cannon is too expensive, and there are fewer guns and fewer shells.

In the lower deck of the Xingdao-class fast battleship, a large number of Kunlun oarsmen sat down. These blacks, bought from the British, were fastened to oars, with shackles on their feet, chained to the floor, and could not leave. There are people behind to supervise their paddles, which can guarantee that the fast battleship will sail at high speed in the absence of wind.

Kunlun slaves are cheap, and as long as they are given a mouthful of food, they can be allowed to engage in heavy physical work.

"But with such strength, two fast warships, plus five fourth-class ships, more than a dozen fifth-class ships, and dozens of sixth-rank ships, can we beat the Dutch who have a large number of battleships?" Albert was still worried.

It will definitely not be able to beat it head-on, even if it is two Star Island-class fast ships, one can sink a seven-level battleship, which is already a very unnatural thing. In fact, the role of the Star Island class is not to sink the seven provincial battleships, but to break their masts and make them lose their ability to maneuver.

To sink, it takes a lot of shells, and expensive shells can be fired less than one shot.

In the upcoming naval battle, the role of the Star Island-class fast battleships is to use their fast speed to bombard the Dutch battleships from a distance, attack their masts, and blow them up. The Dutch fleet approached, and the fast battleships ran.

Of course, if the Dutch lard blindfolded their hearts to fight Singapore, then Albert was not worried at all, not to mention that the various heavy artillery of the Singapore battery would be enough for the Dutch. But the Dutch were not so stupid, and after suffering a loss in front of the fort, they would certainly not storm Singapore. Then the biggest possibility is that the Dutch will not fight Singapore, but directly through the Strait of Malacca to the north, all the way to the southeast coastal area, directly attack the Ming fleet, and even enter the mouth of the Yangtze River, and join forces with the Qing army to destroy the Ming army first.

Once the Dutch entered the mouth of the Yangtze River and joined forces with the Qing army, the Ming army, which relied heavily on maritime trade and sea transportation, would be dealt a fatal blow, deprived of supplies, and divided into small areas, waiting for the Qing army to concentrate its forces to attack.

Therefore, no matter how powerful the fort is, it will die. If you want to gain the initiative at sea, you can only win in naval battles.

But with such strength now, can the naval battle be better than the Dutch? Albert didn't know the bottom of his mind. (To be continued.) )