The long-abandoned ditch is covered with silt. The shallowest part of the www.biquge.info is only half a foot deep, and it has been out of navigation for decades.

Although the voyage has been cut off for many years. However, the main structure of the channel is basically intact, if you do not plan to do a century-old project, just simply repair and desilt, restore the navigation capacity, the speed of construction is not slow, and the canal can be passed through the big ship in about half a year.

At present, the Lingqu has only been under construction for more than two months, and all that can pass from the Lingqu are small sampans. At present, on the Xiangjiang River, the main warship of the Ming army is a standard small sampan three zhang long and four feet wide, which has ten officers and soldiers of the naval division on this sampan, and the weapons are bows and arrows, bird guns and hand-to-hand combat; The largest warship was a five-zhang long, seven-foot-wide galleys sloop, with 20 sailors on board, and a small 100-pound Franc cannon at the bow and stern.

The Hunan Naval Division of the Qing Army on the Xiangjiang River had both hand-to-hand combat boats of 100 materials, small gunboats of 200 materials, and gunboats of 300 materials, 400 materials, 500 materials, and 600 materials.

Not to mention the 600-material gunboats like the hill, those four battleships are simply giant-like existences in the Xiangjiang River, let's just say that the small gunboats of 200 materials, compared with the small boats of the Ming army, are all behemoths! Even a hundred-material hand-to-hand fighting boat is much larger than the small sampan of the Ming army.

Shipbuilding needs to dry wood for many years, and the Ming army has just entered the Yangtze River system from the Pearl River system, and it is impossible to build new ships, so they can only drive small boats from the Ling Canal, plus some small boats collected in Yongzhou.

It can be said that the Green Battalion Naval Division of the Qing Army in Hunan is still quite a powerful naval division, and there are more than 300 large and small warships of the Qing Army attacking this time. Although the Ming army had more than 800 warships, most of them were small sampans, and even the largest sloop gunboat was just an enlarged sampan.

Bai Wenxuan looked at the hill-like Qing warship in front of him, and asked worriedly: "Liu Junmen, can you win this battle?" ”

"Please rest assured!" Liu Guoxuan arched his hand, "Although the last general is not talented, he has also experienced strong winds and waves for many years, why are you afraid of the Tartar sailor in this bathtub?" What's more, there is also artillery support from our army on the shore. ”

Bai Wenxuan glanced at the Ming artillery position on the shore with some suspicion: "This Xiangjiang River is not a small river, the river is wide, and the cannon is placed so far away, can it only hit the moving boats on the river?" After a while, the water battle begins, and the enemy and us are staggered, and the artillery will not accidentally damage their own side, right? ”

Liu Guoxuan smiled with confidence: "The prince just rest assured!" Let's see how the end will break the Tartar Water Division! ”

The cannon roared on the river, and the Qing army's Hunan naval division warships relied on the advantages of their large ships and long artillery range, and first opened artillery bombardment on the Ming warships on the river.

Rows of shells fell on the river like rain, raising columns of water that soared into the sky. The small sampans and small warships of the Ming army did not have enough range to open artillery and counterattack. However, these officers and soldiers of the Ming Army Naval Division, who were born in the Zheng Family Army Naval Division, were experienced, and the soldiers shouted, rowed small boats, and bravely attacked the Qing army's big ship.

Riding a small sampan for ten people on the river, the boat is very fast.

The Qing army's cannonballs kept smashing over, and from time to time there were unfortunate small sampans that were shot, these small boats were hit by a cannonball, and the flesh and blood on the boats suddenly flew sideways, and several Ming soldiers fell into the river screaming, and the boats were also smashed open a hole and slowly sank. The soldiers of the Ming army, who did not die, jumped into the river and swam to the shore with all their might.

The artillery positions of the Ming army on the bank of the "boom" river also spewed white smoke, and the artillery of the Ming army's land division opened fire.

The officers and soldiers of the Qing Army's Navy Division still didn't think so, and a Qing Army commander laughed: "The thieves opened fire from such a distance, can they hit us?" ”

But his smile quickly froze on his face: four shells whizzed from the shore with a piercing screech, and two shells fell into the water, raising white columns of water. There were also two shells that accurately hit a 200-gauge gunboat, and the Qing gunboat that was hit by the bullet was as if it had been chiseled by a huge chisel, and the sawdust on the ship flew sideways, and more than a dozen Qing soldiers fell on the deck. The shells continued to drill into the lower cabin and cut a hole in the bottom of the ship.

"The thieves' cannons are too accurate, aren't they?" The Qing Army's sailor Qianzong gasped.

The Qing army did not know that it was the Ming army's three-pounder rifled gun, with high precision and great power, as long as it could hit the target, a shell could send a small boat to the bottom of the river. Even if the Qing army's 600 large warships hit by five or six shells, they can sink to the bottom of the river to feed the fish.

It's just that the Ming army only has four front-loading rifled guns, which are slow to reload and slow to fire, and they failed to pose much threat to the Qing army, so the main force of the water war is still the Ming army's naval division.

The smoothbore artillery of the Ming army on the river bank also opened fire, and almost all the direct-fire field guns spat out tongues of fire one after another, billowing gunpowder smoke curled up on the bank, and the overwhelming shells fell into the river, and a forest of water columns appeared on the river.

The hit rate of smoothbore guns is indeed not high, but the smoothbore guns of the Ming army have a high degree of smoothness and accuracy compared with the previous smoothbore guns, and they have almost reached the limit of smoothbore guns! In addition, there were a large number of artillery, with more than 200 cannons firing in a salvo, and many Qing warships were also shot on the river.

A number of hand-to-hand combat boats of the Qing army were shot, cannonballs smashed on the boats, sawdust flew sideways, blood splashed everywhere, and the Qing soldiers on the ships screamed and fell into the water. Some boats were smashed in two and sunk into the water.

A large battleship of 500 materials was hit by several shells, and the Qing soldiers on the deck were killed and wounded, and what was more serious was that the shells fired by the Ming army were all heated, and they fell on the ship, immediately igniting flammable materials.

The firepower of the artillery of the Ming Army Army on the shore made up for the advantage of the lack of firepower of the small boats, and covered the large ships of the small boats close to the Qing army.

"Boom" The artillery on a big ship of the Qing army spewed fire, and the rainstorm of shotguns swept over, and the small boat that approached the big ship of the Qing army immediately flew with flesh and blood, and almost all the Ming troops on the boat fell into the water, leaving only two soldiers with bloody faces, still rowing a small boat, and rushing straight to the big ship of the Qing army in front.

On the big ship, a platoon of Qing soldiers appeared, armed with bows and arrows, aimed at the small boat that was rushing up, and the arrows shot at the boat like a rain of projectiles.

However, the two Ming soldiers on the boat had already jumped into the water and hid behind the boat, using the cover of the boat to dodge the arrows and projectiles in the sky.

The two soldiers pushed the boat in the water and continued to move forward, and it seemed that they were about to get close to the big ship of the Qing army.

"Beware of thieves! Get out of the way! The Qing officer on the big ship shouted.

However, the Ming sailors in the water pushed the boat along the water, and the speed was fast, and the big boat of the Qing army did not have time to dodge, so it was hit by the small boat. Before the Qing soldiers could understand, they heard a loud "boom", and the small boat that hit the big ship of the Qing army exploded violently, turning into an orange-yellow fireball, and a column of water several feet high rose on the surface of the river.

This is a mine explosion on a small boat! The power of the explosion was very great, and dozens of pounds of gunpowder exploded violently, and the 300-gauge Qing gunboat was blown into two at once, and sank into the water in a blink of an eye, leaving only a huge whirlpool on the river. Many Qing soldiers on the boat did not even have a chance to jump into the water to escape, so they were brought to the bottom of the water by the big ship that sank into the water. Some of the Qing soldiers had already fallen into the water, but they were still sucked in by the whirlpool.

"The thieves attack the ship with great power!" Qing Jun Qian's face changed.

"Quick! Fire! Don't let the thief boat come closer! The boat is up to you! Stop them! The general of the Qing army's naval division shouted hoarsely.

Countless small boats went down the river, like arrows on the river, shooting straight at the Qing fleet.

The hand-to-hand boats of the Qing army's sailors rushed out of the large fleet, and the Qing soldiers on the boats rowed hard and rushed towards the small boats of the Ming army.

The sampans of the Ming army and the hand-to-hand boats of the Qing army leaned together, and the two sides first shot at each other with bows and arrows and bird guns from a distance, and then the hand-to-hand soldiers armed with large swords and axes jumped onto the other party's boats, and a fierce battle on the river began.

After all, Liu Guoxuan's sailors have experienced a hundred battles, and they are all veterans who have followed King Yanping all the way, and in hand-to-hand combat, the Ming army has the upper hand. The Ming soldiers who jumped onto the Qing army's boat desperately slashed and killed the Qing soldiers, cutting down the Qing soldiers on the Qing army's hand-to-hand combat boat one by one on the deck, or driving them into the water.

A number of hand-to-hand fighting boats of the Qing army were captured by the Ming army, and the Ming soldiers rowed these relatively large boats and continued to rush towards the Qing army's big boats. There were also dense small boats rowing up behind, rushing straight to the big boats behind the Qing army.

The cannon roared, and the small gunboats of the Ming army also caught up, providing fire cover for the small sampan with a hundred-pound franc machine.

On dozens of small sampans, Ming archers lit rockets, and arrows flew like locusts at the Qing army's big ship. The rocket stuck in the ship, although it could not burn the Qing army's big ship, could force the Qing army sailors to draw water to extinguish the fire, causing chaos, so that the gunners on the Qing army's big ship could not concentrate on attacking themselves.

Constantly the small boats of the Ming army were shot and sank into the water, the river was stained red with blood, and the small boats of the Ming army suffered a lot of losses.

But the Qing army was not much better, the artillery fire of the Ming army on the shore gave the naval division strong fire support, and the Qing army's warships were constantly shot, and the solid shells with huge kinetic energy exploded pieces of debris on the wooden hull. The broken planks beat the flesh and blood of the soldiers.

More than a dozen small sampans, under the cover of other sampans, fought out of the formation, went down the river, and soon entered the artillery dead corner of the Qing warship.

Although the large warships of the Qing army had fierce firepower, the hull was too high, and they were fighting against the current, moving slowly, as long as they were drilled into the dead corner by the small boats of the Ming army, the naval guns of the Qing army would lose their effect.

On the small sampan, the Ming soldiers dropped wooden boxes, which fell into the water and drifted down the current, drifting towards the Qing army's big ship, which was only more than ten steps away. The Ming soldiers on the small sampan rowed desperately and retreated.

"Boom" a wooden box collided with a Qing army ship, the trigger fuse collided with the Qing army ship, and the steel wheel flint ignited the primer in the fuse tube, which immediately triggered a violent explosion.

Explosions sounded one after another on the river, and one after another the big ships of the Qing army were blown up by mines. (To be continued.) )