The night was dark, and nothing could be heard on the surface of the sea except the sound of the rushing waves. The silver moonlight shone on the vast expanse of the sea, adding a touch of brightness to the darkness, but it seemed too little for the vast ocean.

Eleven hilly-shaped warships anchored on the leeward side of a harbor, letting the waves crash against the ship's side.

A little dim light could not shine hundreds of meters away, and the light of the wind lantern was difficult to shine even tens of meters, and in this era when the searchlight in the true sense of the word had not yet been invented, the night was completely foreign to the naval fleet.

In the original time and space, in 1879 in the Western calendar, the American Edison invented the first electric light with use value in the real sense. And what about this plane now? Will the Lighthouse Nation last until 64 years from now? That's impossible.

On February 11, 1847, there would be no more American nations, nor would there be the so-called "Town of Milan" in Ohio. It is more likely that Edison would not have appeared in this world at all, and his father or grandfather may have died on the battlefield in the Americas.

It was late in the night, and the garrison of Americans, British, and Spaniards, with the exception of a few on duty, fell asleep.

This is the island of Estados. The southernmost part of South America is still further south on Tierra del Fuego.

The coast is steep and the climate is cold and rainy, which is not conducive to farming, so it is uninhabited. The Europeans built lighthouses and havens here.

Their small fleet was located on the island of Estados, not in the Woollaston Islands, where Cape Horn, which divides the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. The latter is more turbulent and the environment is even harsher than that of Estados.

Outside the bay, where eleven European warships were moored, within twenty nautical miles, two British cruisers roamed. And further away there are two other cruisers.

Although they did not feel that there was any danger at the moment - no one could carry out a sneak attack in unfamiliar waters and nights, there was no shortage of necessary precautions.

The Malvinas Islands, 700 miles northeast of Estados, are now home to the main forces of the British, Spanish, Portuguese and Swedish fleets.

The eastern part of the island was first settled by the French fifty years ago, and the British followed suit the following year. But just five years later, the British were expelled from the Falklands by the Spaniards, and the Spaniards paid for all the property rights in the French settlements. It can be said that after the British were driven out by the Spaniards, the entire Falklands came under Spanish rule.

But the Spaniards were not hard-nosed, and soon the British returned to the Falklands, and after they threatened war, the Spaniards relented, and the British quickly restored their outposts on West Falkland, but within a few years the British withdrew from the island for economic reasons, but the British left, but did not give up their claim to the Falklands.

The island's inhabitants hovered below 500 all year round, and if history had followed the course of time and space, it would continue to be so for another decade or two. But now the Falklands have become the main base of the South Atlantic Fleet - the two forks correspond to the Drake Strait and the Strait of Magellan, and in a short time the Europeans have built a ship repair plant and more than a dozen material warehouses on the Falklands, not to mention the military here, but to say that more than a thousand workers have been relocated.

However, the island of Estados is long and narrow from east to west, and its distance from north to south does not exceed 30 miles, while the distance from east to west exceeds 100 miles.

When the Europeans sent their fleets to garrison the island, the news became known to the Military Intelligence Agency.

After all, the width of the Delek Strait is close to 2,000 miles, which is extremely vast, and if you send a fleet to blockade the entire blockade, the cost will undoubtedly be huge. The Europeans would not have wasted their military power so unwisely, so they stationed their fleet defending the Drake Strait on the island of Estados. The fleet for the defense of the Strait of Magellan is deployed in Greck, which is the narrowest area in the entire Strait of Magellan, and is taken by the Europeans in the first narrow waterway, the sea surface width is only 7 miles, the water depth of the channel is generally not more than 50 meters, there are many shoals and reefs on both sides of the channel, and the width of some sections is not more than 1 nautical mile, especially the sea current of the first narrow channel is rapid, which is the most difficult part of the strait to navigate.

If the Europeans had not been able to deploy shore artillery on the cliffs on either side of the First Narrow Waterway, they would not have gathered a large number of warships in this area, and they would have spent huge energy and money on building a naval base on the Falklands.

With a waterway of 25 miles long, a sea less than 7 miles wide, and a channel less than 4 miles wide, it was really easy for the Europeans to block it. It's just that they don't dare to take it lightly, and if they really let the Chinese's large fleet sail to the Gulf of Mexico, they will be in big trouble.

And in a small bay at the western end of Estados Island, the seven Chen Han Naval Division warships that had traveled all the way and worked hard to make them here were recuperating.

The sailors on the ship are fighting at night, seizing the time to repair the wounds of the warship. Although they were lucky enough to pass through the Strait of Delek, the battleship was hit by some ice floe, and even the watertight compartment of a sailing ship was broken by two of them.

They did not need to conceal their whereabouts, and as an advance team, the greatest task of this fleet was to attract the attention of the Europeans. If the Europeans had arranged an observation post at the western end of the island, they would have definitely been discovered by now.

But now it is night, and the commander-in-chief of the previous fleet, Cai Lian, is a hundred sure that the Europeans will definitely not set off overnight, and even if they want to set sail, they will have to wait until dawn tomorrow.

Even Cai Lian wanted to send a sailboat to provoke the Europeans tomorrow.

The bridge of the Liu Yu was brightly lit, and seven or eight people were pointing around a chart.

"Grande Bay, our battleships going north must pass through Grande Bay as quickly as possible."

"It is unlikely that the war will reach Buenos Aires. But the Bay of San Matthias has to be lively. ”

The previous fleet, as a target to attract Europeans, was tasked not to take the European fleet to hide and seek in the vast ocean, but to mobilize the European fleet and get them out of southern Argentina.

There was no way to go through the vast seas, and the fleet could have been divided into two after provoking the Europeans, one part going north, and the other part pretending to be an obstacle to confuse the Europeans.

"Then let's concentrate our forces first, sink a few of his warships, and let them know how powerful ......"

"The Europeans' ocean-going aircraft and sailing warships have not yet formed combat effectiveness, and they are now mostly using sailboats, and we have an advantage in speed. I suggested that we just let the sailboats come out, and then split the plum blossoms, and turn them away little by little, and then ambush them due south of the island, and we would do a good job with them. ”

"Our sailboats have watertight cabin structures, which are far more resistant to sinking than Western-style galleons, and can lead them to the southwest of the Scotia Sea. There's a lot of icebergs there......"

At present, Western ships in this era do not have watertight compartments, and the Western world in the original time and space also had the design of watertight compartments after the middle of the 19th century, because Western galleons do not need watertight compartments, and the hull design of the latter greatly affects the arrangement of artillery emplacements.

When Chen Han designed Western galleons in the early days, he deliberately built many experimental ships to integrate the essence of Eastern and Western shipbuilding techniques, but in the end, the watertight compartment was taken down by Chen Ming from the Western-style sail warship. Knowing the appearance of the sailboat, the watertight compartment can be regarded as reappearing in the rivers and lakes.

And Western-style sailing ships without watertight compartments, as long as the waterline is knocked out of the hole by an iceberg under the waterline, then their business will sink.

Therefore, the three sailing ships that were going to lure the enemy led the Europeans to the icebergs to the south, and even if they could get out, they would be more or less traumatized, just like the fleet of Cai Xian that passed through the Drake Strait. Although fortunately no battleship sank in the wind and waves, the hull and sails of several battleships were also damaged. This is undoubtedly going to affect the battle in battle!

The night is deep.

On the Egret sailboat, Guan Tianpei opened his eyes and looked straight at the roof of the room within reach.

It's going to be tomorrow!

My biggest wish to apply for the Bafu Shipbuilding School is about to come true. Guan Tianpei was very pleased that he could get a real naval battle before he was promoted to the rank of general.

Since graduating from the Harbour Master School and entering the army, he obviously has no identity background, and if he has divine help, he has become a captain of Fubo in just over ten years, which is only one step away from the general.

Guan Tianpei is now thirty-five years old, sitting in the position of plus captain, to be honest, he is not satisfied at all, on the contrary, he is still a little ashamed.

Although there are generals in the army who are younger than him, they are people who have really been on the battlefield and have made meritorious achievements. And what about him? The military rank Bai has been promoted to the plus captain, and he is still the top 'Fubo' among the plus captains of the water division. Guan Tianpei was only ashamed in his heart. Captain Fubo, who fought in exercises and training, if he further became a general, he would be a big joke.

Guan Tianpei is a hundred people who are willing to fight this battle. He is thirty-five today, and he has been a plus captain for two years, and maybe he will become a general next year, or even in the second half of this year. This is not his delusion, but it is really a very possible thing, Guan Tianpei sometimes feels that he is the illegitimate son of God, otherwise how can he be so open? In the past 10 years or so, we have gone through a situation that 99 percent of the people in the army cannot touch. But Guan Tianpei really doesn't want to be a 'out of tune' general like this, it's a shame. He has a burning desire to fight!

This time, he was the deputy commander-in-chief of the advance fleet, and now he is also the commander of three sailing ships.

A major turning point in Guan Tianpei's life was that he was transferred to the sailing fleet, before his promotion was only a quick one, and then his promotion was straight into the sky.

The so-called good borrowing of the wind will send me to the clouds. In Chen Han's sailor, many people fell to the sailboat in the debate between sails and sailboats, not only because of the straightforwardness after the comparison of data, but also because some people were the good luck of people like Guan Tianpei. For example, Chen Huacheng, the heart of tomorrow of another sailor, is now Chinese New Year's Eve nine years old, and he has been a general for three years. Guan Tianpei was called Xiao Chen Huacheng at the beginning!

However, now Chen Huacheng is already the commander of the second detachment of the Oriental Fleet, and all of his subordinates are sailing ships, and the number is not only three sailing ships, but a full twenty.

Guan Tianpei didn't think about life and death at all now, and the fear of death was only an occasional ripple in his sleep. How to improve the combat level of the warship, how to repay the grace of this encounter, how to make his military position worthy of the name, and wash away the shame on his body, this is what he wants to do the most in his heart.

Like Guan Tianpei, he couldn't sleep, and there were many more warships in the bay. Even in the Strait of Magellan, thousands of miles away, I don't know how many families of officers and soldiers of the Chen Han Navy Division were also tossing and turning.

……

The Egret is one of the sailing ships built at Mawei Shipyard. The displacement of 2,000 tons, taking into account the firmness of the hull, the stability and speed of the hull, the maneuverability, etc., is already the pinnacle of the Fujian Mawei Shipyard. The Mawei shipyard in China at present, although not the top, but definitely the first-class shipyard.

The Egret has a horsepower of 550 horsepower and a speed of 8 knots, and can run at a high speed of 10 knots with the sails open, and after changing from paddle wheel to propeller, the Egret can still reach a top speed of 10 knots, but if it is in a headwind or under pure steam power, the speed is only about 7 knots. In addition, this battleship with a displacement of 2,000 tons has only 54 guns and a crew of more than 300 people.

The captain of the Egret is Guan Tianpei, and the first mate is a young officer named Zhang Bao. As far as Guan Tianpei knows, this person has no big background, his ancestor is a native of Xinhui in Guangdong Province, and he is slightly involved in the Zheng family, which was prominent in the early days of the founding of the People's Republic of China. But time has passed, and the Zheng family has long been out of the army, focusing more on business, and the only children in the army have also been transferred after the previous canonization. This Zhang Bao must not have a close connection with the Zheng family, otherwise Zhang Bao would have gone to the Americas.

The Egret sounded its whistle early in the morning, and the other two sailing ships also sounded their whistles, and as three warships to lure the enemy, they would now sail out of the bay to meet the elite of the Europeans in the sea.

At 6:30 a.m., the sun rising in the east shone on the sea. Two thousand officers and men of the naval division were already standing on the bridge decks of the four sail warships in full suit. From Cai Lian down, everyone watched as the Egret and the other three sailing ships slowly accelerated and sailed away from the bay.

It may be that when the sun rises again, many of the people present today will no longer be in this world, and even this fleet may not be there, but this cannot be frightened.

Raise soldiers for a thousand days and use them for a while. Chen Han has trained water masters for more than ten 'thousand days', and now is the time for them to show their skills.

Eleven capital battleships, four cruisers, and the European squadron, located in the central part of the island of Estados, had already set sails and swooped towards the western part of the island as early as the sun had just risen. As Cai and the others had predicted, the Europeans deployed observation posts in the western and central parts of the island, and they used the size and number of smoke columns during the day and fireworks and lights at night to convey messages. The Europeans had already received the news last night, but it was impossible for them to set sail in the dark.

And after the next day, the moment came for the European Navy.

But to their displeasure, the Europeans stopped in the north of Estados Island, which prevented the Chinese from sticking to the island's coastline to the west, although the northern part of the Drake Passage is more windy and rough, but close to the coastline. In that case, the Chinese would definitely go for the 30-kilometer-wide Le Maire Strait between Fuego and Estados. But Cai's detachment came from the southern part of the island......