Chapter 731 When you see the Flying Eagle Flag, you have to go around

Since its birth, the Navy has been a bottomless pit that burns money. Isn't Britain's 200-year world hegemony based on a powerful navy? Conversely, as the cost of supporting the navy continued to increase, Britain remained a colony after World War I, but could no longer support its large navy.

In the navy of this era, every ship is precious, because its construction period is very long. The battle had only been fought for half an hour, and a dozen or so ships were either sunk or injured in one go, and the loss was a bit unbearable. It wasn't that the British navy wasn't brave enough to fight, or that the British pirates lacked courage. is really a pirate-born British, and in his bones he is a bully who is afraid of the hard. Isn't it a pirate who grabs a handful if he fights it, and runs away if he can't beat it? Insidious and cunning, ruthless, these things are not lacking in the British, otherwise how can they be worthy of the title of "-stirring stick".

The above reasons are not actually the main one, the main thing is that there is no hope of victory, or that they are frightened. At the beginning, the bombardment of the 105 guns did not make Blake feel too afraid, and this artillery fire just rushed forward. Isn't the tactic of the British Navy to seize the T-shaped head and wash the opponent's floor with the guns on the side of the board after approaching?

When the 75 artillery group fired, Blake was really scared half to death, sixty 75 mountain guns, firing at a rate of six rounds per minute, and none of them were solid shells, a high-explosive shell of water, as long as it was a boat, one shot was seriously injured. It's just that Chen didn't make a bitter sour, otherwise the sail battleship would be a fireship that would have caught fire at one point.

There is another detail that is even more terrible, Blake found that the warships of the Ming Empire, even when they were turning and facing the enemy head-on, the guns in the bow did not mean to stop, and at the end of the turn, the guns in the stern of the ship continued to bombard. What kind of tactic is this? What kind of fire is this? The British ships also had cannons in the bow, but they were short-barreled, large-caliber smoothbore guns, which were used to penetrate the oak deck of the enemy with huge solid bullets after approaching the enemy. The warships of the Ming Empire are just the opposite, and the guns are always at both ends, which is beyond his understanding. People are always afraid of things that they can't understand, and once this kind of things that can't be understood are superimposed, the fear becomes irrepressible.

Blake, who was frightened, saw that the situation was not good, and his first reaction was that this battle could not be fought, the gap was too big, and he immediately ordered to lower the Z-shaped flag, and it was important to turn around and run, and it was still scattered and run. Naval warfare is almost like this, when it fights, it is called a fleet, and when it runs away, it is scattered by birds and beasts. This guy decisively made Li Heng unprepared, leaving behind thirteen battleships that could not be moved because of battle damage, and the other ships scattered and fled.

After Li Heng reacted, he just sneered a few times, ran just right, and asked Zhang Guangde to give the order to attack the flying clipping fleet and find an opportunity to destroy the enemy. The main force turned around and killed the combined fleet on the other side. Those immobile "pirate ships" on the sea should be handed over to the armed merchant ships hiding behind to clean up.

The Briton ran so swiftly that it far exceeded Knight's expectations, and there was no doubt that this was the triumph of the new cannon. The area around a kilometer, because of the dense and rapid artillery fire, taught the British a hard lesson.

"Is this the latest naval gun of the Ming Empire?" When Knight saw this, he was in great pain. The reason is simple, the sea belonged to the time of the Europeans and is gone forever. In the past, compared with the Ming Empire, the Dutch were not so convinced, but today's battle was fought, and only ten ships inflicted heavy damage on the British Navy, and the scene of an easy victory made Knight completely dead. The gap is too big, it's not that it can't be compared, it's simply standing downstairs, others standing above the third floor, looking up can't see the gap clearly.

Ten battleships puffed up their sails, drew a circle on the sea, and did not go to reinforce the battle of the detachment at the first time, but circled around the sea and ran to the flank and back of the combined fleet.

The battle is over here, and the other side has just begun. The distance between the two sides was about 800 meters, and the detachment that took the lead in making a turn launched an attack with fierce artillery fire from the side of the fleet, and the fleet battleships were lined up in a Z-shape, and when the enemy side of the battleship was tilted, the cannon roared, and the gun hatches on the side spewed out gunpowder smoke one by one.

At a distance of 800 meters, the hit rate of smoothbore guns can be imagined, but there are always a few unlucky people who are hit by solid shells from naval guns, and the power of the old rifled guns in naval battles may not be the greatest, but at a distance of 800 to 500 meters, it is enough to turn the oak armor of any warship in this world into an ornament.

Five hundred meters, the fleet had completed all the turns, speeding in the direction of one side, maintaining the distance between the two. The Combined Fleet desperately tried to get closer, but this move was undoubtedly futile. The naval superiority of the Ming Empire was not only reflected in the range of the naval guns, but also in the performance of the warships. The warship, which was more reasonably designed and more scientifically staffed, was one or two knots ahead of other warships of this era in terms of speed, and easily maintained a suitable distance.

If you can't catch up, you can only be beaten passively, and the combined fleet at this time also found out that something was wrong, especially after accepting the battle on the other side, it found that it couldn't hear the cannons, and the British pirates couldn't be seen in the telescope, and the fool knew that he was betrayed by his teammates.

The fierce fighting on this side lasted for almost an hour, and the casualties of the combined fleet were not too great, but six ships lost their combat effectiveness. The lethality of solid shells is incomparable to that of high-explosive shells. The Combined Fleet, which was not of one heart in the first place, reacted immediately after discovering that the British had run away, and it was the Portuguese who were the first to retreat. Then came the French, and the last to run away were the Spaniards who were in danger of the Ming Empire's navy in the colony, they rushed to the front, and found that after running away, the thirty-three warships of the entire fleet were fiercely attacked by the Ming fleet, and the white sails of the main force of the Ming fleet appeared behind the side.

At this time, for the Spanish pirates, the pain of being betrayed by their teammates is no longer the most important thing, the important thing is that they have missed the best time to escape. If these people had worked together, this battle would not have been so easy today. If the British entangled the main fleet regardless of casualties, how could they hold out for a few hours, after all, it was a naval battle in the era of sails, and the accuracy was really limited. In the past, it was able to cause a large number of casualties, not because of the accuracy of the shot, but because of the element of luck.

At this time, the strength of the Combined Fleet did not suffer much loss, and if everyone persisted, how could they destroy more than half of the armed merchant ships that were not fully loaded with arms. It's a pity that Blake was frightened, the rate of fire of the 75 gun is definitely a rapid-fire gun in this era, plus how can you shoot a 105 main gun with three rounds in a minute, this thing next to each other is the consequence of the shipwreck. In this way, everyone will be afraid that in the naval battle of the sail era, it is too difficult for a ship to be sunk, and it will take three or five hours to sink the ship, which is still something that will happen in a large-scale brawl.

The result is that the Ming Navy does not perform according to the script, and the new naval guns use high-explosive shells to teach people wooden boats, who can stand this? By the time the Spaniards wanted to run, Li Heng had already touched up with the main fleet, and after approaching a distance of five hundred meters, a fierce artillery fire directly scattered the three unlucky eggs, and there were seven ships on fire, all of which were masterpieces of 75 guns. You say that it is not allowed to go farther, but if you approach it directly to a distance of 500 meters, it is almost like putting a bayonet on the cannon, which is not sure that it is a strange thing. Even at these five hundred meters, the Spanish artillery could not cause damage to the battleship, and a solid projectile hitting the target at this distance was the result of weakness, not to mention that it would be difficult to hit at five hundred meters.

Under normal circumstances, in European naval battles, the real distance between two and three hundred meters is between two and three hundred meters, and this distance of short-barreled large-caliber smoothbore guns can exert great power. But at a distance of five hundred meters, the role can be ignored. The real lethality is still the shotgun that approaches 100 meters, this thing washes the floor of the superstructure, and by the way, washes people. When the sail is damaged, losing power is the most feared thing in naval warfare, otherwise it will just run.

It must be said that the Spaniard was unlucky, and after being betrayed by his teammates without being able to greet him, he was attacked from front to back. The detachment is a little better, it is difficult for dense solid shells to inflict fatal damage on the battleship, at most it is to pierce a few holes, and it can continue to run if it is blocked. But the main fleet was dying, especially the 75 guns, which were fought quickly and urgently, and the damage was still powerful, and the sixty guns fired thousands of shells in one go, and in less than half an hour, there were no good Spanish ships on the sea. Either it fell apart, or it caught fire and circled on the sea, and it was soon surrounded by the Ming fleet.

The commander of the Spanish fleet, Francisco, gave the order to raise the white flag and abandon resistance. The naval battle did not end here, and the armed merchant ships, with the cooperation of the clippers, surrounded and beat the British ships that had lost their damaged Yan zhòng, and refused to stop even if they hoisted the white flag. The clippers named the two 75 guns in the bow one by one, and the marines on the merchant ships used rifles to name the struggling British pirates at sea.

After the battle of the main force of the fleet, there were no British ships in sight on the sea, all of them were broken into pieces, and there were corpses floating everywhere on the sea.

"Do you want to pursue?" Zhang Guangde looked at the other warships that escaped unsatisfactorily, Li Heng sighed: "Forget it, we still have a task, and besides, this battle has basically achieved its goal, and from now on, the warships of any country on the sea will have to go around when they see the flying eagle flag of the Ming Dynasty." "That's right, the purpose of showing off force has really been achieved! R1152