Xinshun 1730

Chapter 704 Naval Battle ([-])

Thinking quickly about the current situation, this is the first time for Li Yan to decide the outcome of a naval battle, and he is nervous after all.

In his mind, he quickly sorted out what he had learned over the years, some common sense about Liu Yuer's command, and his own understanding of the navy.

His official position is the governor of the navy, and he is a commander, not a general.

To be handsome, one must have an overall view, one must know the strategy of the imperial court, and one must know the purpose of naval battles.

Just like when Japan was attacked back then, is the navy useful?It can’t be seen on the battlefield, because the only battle result of the navy fleet is a few closed ships of the Three Kingdoms, Jin and Southern and Northern Dynasties. It’s okay for those broken things to cross the Tsushima Strait to North Korea. The navy is embarrassed to say that it is its own battle result.

But in that war, the strategic nature of the navy could not be replaced.

Corresponding to this trip to Nanyang, what is the navy for?
Is it the transport team to safely transport the marines to Ceylon, Malacca, and Ambon?
Is it a mobile battery, helping the marines shell the Dutch coastal defense battery?
Or... a real, ocean-going strategic navy?Firmly controlling the sea, so that the Dutch have absolutely no ability to harass in Southeast Asia, or even east of India?

This is the key and is directly related to the choice of tactics.

On the side of the Privy Council, from the placement of people to the Batavia sugar factory, to the instigation of the slave labor uprising in the sugar factory to force the Dutch to immigrate to Ceylon, and finally to besiege Cirebon in the last step to force the Dutch army in Nanyang to assemble, what is the purpose? ?
Isn't it because the sea is vast, once the Dutch fleet slips away, they have been operating here for more than a hundred years, and the charts and sea conditions are far more familiar than Dashun's, so there is nowhere to catch them?

Therefore, the key is the Dutch fleet in front of us.

If your own ship sinks, you can rebuild it.Only when the Dutch fleet is left behind, or dragged back to Lingdingyang for repairs and enlisted in the Dashun Navy, or sent to the bottom of the sea, can the navy complete its mission.

After clarifying this key point, Li Yan's thoughts suddenly opened up. Instead of using a probing tone, he raised his one eye and looked at Liu Yu firmly, and said confidently: "The enemy If you move, I will move too. But don’t bite his tail, that would be mobilized by him.”

"We must take advantage of the Dutch's turn and use the most taboo T-shaped vertical pole to directly penetrate the Dutch fleet."

"From us being transferred by the Dutch, to us transferring the Dutch."

"The Dutch have two choices."

"Or, worry that we will insert into the middle of their fleet and divide them. Then they will have to change their formations to deal with our tactics. Once they change their formations, there will be chaos."

"Or, they feel that they are a horizontal team and we are a column. We can't hit them, but they can hit us, so they choose to bombard our lead ship."

"If they choose the latter, of course we have a risk. The lead ship may be fired by the Dutch, or even completely lose combat effectiveness. But even if the lead ship sinks, as long as we can complete the division of the Dutch fleet, victory will belong to us .”

Liu Yu neither nodded nor shook his head, and said with a smile: "Then please give orders, Your Highness."

After finishing speaking, he raised his binoculars and ignored the messengers around him.The officer in charge of passing the order was stunned, and turned the small notebook that was waiting to record the order to Li Yan's position.

Li Yan took a long breath, feeling extremely happy and proud, but he did not recklessly issue rough and vague orders, but took the battlefield situation information of the naval staff officers around him into his hands.

The speed of the enemy ship is about six knots at this time.Once turned, it is no longer completely tailwind, and according to estimates, it will drop to four knots.

The wind direction is still northwest, and the speed of the Dashun fleet is now about six knots.

The distance between the two sides has also been estimated. To achieve the effect of going straight into the center of the Dutch fleet, the turning angle is the key.

After all, the geometry and application problems in these years are not in vain. The navy is a military branch that needs a mathematical foundation more than the artillery.

In addition to the need for professional mathematics knowledge, but also because Liu Yu could not get the British navigation clock, he pinned the hope of the Dashun Navy's ocean-going hegemony on the Academy of Sciences team led by Euler.In the battle of longitude, the British school of engineering defeated the school of science; while Dashun couldn't make a nautical clock, so it could only be the school of science and defeated the school of engineering.Although you can look up the table in the future, a lot of mathematical knowledge must be mastered.

Sitting on the chair, Li Yan quickly made a picture on the white paper with squares and compasses, then turned out the translated trigonometric function table that Dashun brought back from Europe, and began to look up the table.

During the whole process, Liu Yu didn't say a word, just silently watching the Dutch fleet in the distance.

Li Yan calculated and ordered: "The fleet is divided into two. The Tianyuan and the follow-up fleet turned to the north by 75 degrees to the east; Chen Qinghai led the cruiser behind and turned to the north by 60 degrees to the east."

"At full sail, the columns attack the Dutch fleet. Divide and encircle."

Although Dashun has gradually risen in the past few years, after all, Europe, where the navy studied, is incompatible with Dashun's habits, such as north by east instead of east by north, which has become one of the symbols of the navy's language.

This is a very clear command, a simple trigonometric function problem, but it can guarantee accuracy.In a battle at sea, vague orders cannot be adopted.

Just when the messenger was about to send the news and was about to ask the messenger to hang the flag, Li Yan said, "Wait a minute."

He stopped the messenger and asked Liu Yu, "What do you think, Hou Jing? Is it feasible?"

Liu Yu smiled and said, "Your Highness's trigonometric calculations are pretty good. For today's battle, I still have to thank Xu Guangqi from the previous court. I think it's fine."

Seeing that Liu Yu also supported it, Li Yan said, "So, let's do it!"

The messenger repeated the order again, and the messenger on the mast quickly hung up the flag.

Instead of turning south to bite the Dutchman's tail, the fleet turned northward, taking advantage of the moment when the Dutchman was about to turn and slow down, and charged with all his strength.

The Tianyuan took the lead and rushed towards the middle of the Dutch fleet. According to the speed, when it rushed to the front of the Dutch fleet, it should be near the tail.

Chen Qinghai was at the back, commanding the cruiser to separate from the fleet at a slightly wider angle than the one turning at the front.

The fleet that was originally a one-way column changed into a two-way column after a slight turning adjustment, and moved towards the Dutch fleet.

…………

The Dutch fleet was amazed at the strange behavior of the Dashun fleet.

"These Chinese are crazy? They are rushing this way, and the sidestring cannons can't shoot at all. Isn't this a living target?"

He never thought that the T prefix that must be snatched in a naval battle, he didn't even snatch it, and Dashun's fleet on the opposite side took the initiative to send it over.

"Gunner ready! Once the enemy ship is within the range of the bombardment, all ships will attack the enemy's lead ship. Speed ​​and heading, turn according to the established plan!"

At about [-]:[-] in the afternoon, the Tianyuan was close to the shooting range of the Dutch fleet, and the follow-up fleet was still in a column mode, like a sharp knife, piercing towards the Dutch fleet.

At the same time, the Dutch gunners had already lit their torches, waiting for the order to shell.All the artillery on the left string of the fleet were aimed at the Tianyuan.

boom……

The left string artillery of more than a dozen armed merchant ships and auxiliary ships resounded like continuous thunder on the open sea.There is no echo of the mountains here, but the cannons cannot be fired at the same time, and firing at the same time may tear your own ship's side.

The momentum looked scary, and a cloud of smoke rose above the Dutch fleet.

However, the effect is far worse.

There are no large warships, and the Dutch ships are equipped with 9-pounder and 12-pounder guns, which can make a hole in the oak hull of the Tianyuan, but that's all.

It is too difficult to attack below the waterline in this year and month. It is too difficult to sink a warship.

The Tianyuan continued to advance against the Dutch artillery and did not stop.But it has absolutely no possibility of counterattack at this time. The hull was hit by several shots, but the hull is still intact.

With a suitable angle and an unsuitable wind direction, the Tianyuan can still maintain a speed of nearly five knots, and the distance between it and the Dutch warship is constantly getting closer.

The Dutchman's rate of fire is not fast, and the accuracy is not enough.An excellent naval gunner can only be fed by countless gunpowder.In order to save money, the East India Company recruited many Javanese or Chinese as crew members because it was cheap.

In theory, the Chinese are the most cost-effective.

However, the number of Chinese is not very large, because of the incident that happened in Luzon back then.In the previous dynasty, the Chinese sailors rioted and killed the Filipino governor in Spain, hijacking the ship and fleeing. Since then, in Southeast Asia, there are no European ships with all Chinese sailors, even if the price is extremely high.

The East India Company wanted to save even this little money, and it was even more reluctant to use too much gunpowder to feed the gunners out.It looked like there was a lot of smoke and the sound of the cannons was like thunder, but in fact, very few shots hit the Tianyuan.

Although the wind direction is not very suitable, it is not an absolute tailwind, but the old bosuns on the Dashun side have practiced for more than ten years, and they still kept the Tianyuan at a speed of nearly five knots, rushing towards the Dutch fleet.

To the north of the Tianyuan, the cruiser led by Chen Qinghai, who was assigned to insert obliquely into the head of the Dutch fleet, had already penetrated into the front of the Dutch fleet and cut the Dutch fleet apart.

The Tianyuan was also very close to the Dutch fleet. The captain shouted orders, and the sailors on the deck squatted on the deck, holding tightly to the hammock tied on the side of the ship with one hand. They knew that the ship was about to shake violently. .

The rotating cannon on the bow was also full of grape shells, waiting to wash the ground against the deck of the Dutch warship at the moment of the wrong body.

The Minie shooter on the mast has also begun to aim at the people on the deck of the Dutch warship, especially the captain commanding on the deck. At least a dozen muskets are aimed at his chest.

In the gun bay, the loaded gunner calmly waited for the moment when the Tianyuan penetrated into the Dutch fleet.

The speed of five knots is not fast, but the time left for them to fire their cannons is very short. The moment they miss their positions, they must ensure that the artillery hits the stern of the Dutchman on the left or the bow of the Dutchman on the right.

The thirteen or fourteen-year-old trainee sailor who was in charge of carrying the gunpowder participated in the battle for the first time, holding the gunpowder bag or iron bullet nervously, and made sure to send the gunpowder there at any time.These children have already started to retch. At such a young age, they just saw an extremely bloody scene.

During the assault, a shell hit the gun bay.An unlucky gunner was directly smashed by a shell and broke his leg, and the shattered oak plank with its huge inertia tore his stomach open.

The old sailors, who were stirring food in a pot, were sure that he would not survive, and one person lifted his legs, and two people carried the remaining body, and threw them behind, calling for the twelve or thirteen-year-old apprentice sailors behind Folks, drag this shattered body of flesh behind you.

This is the rule of the code of conduct.It is already kind enough, because if the array is shooting side-by-side, it is impossible to move backwards, but it will be thrown into the sea directly from the muzzle after it is determined that it will not survive.Because the gun bay is small, nothing is allowed to block the delivery of gunpowder and shells during the battle.

A 13-year-old kid just had his arm run through by sawdust.There was no severe pain in the instant piercing, but numbness and no feeling. The child looked at the huge sawdust on his arm and his completely uncontrollable hand, and cried out loudly.

He knew he was done.

What was waiting for me was the amputation of my limb by the military doctor in the officer's room.

There is no anesthetic, no disinfectant, whether you can get infected and whether you can survive depends on luck.This penetrating injury shatters the bone, leaving no other option but amputation.

And an old gunner with a broken leg and a wooden prosthesis in front, seeing the crying child, smiled and knocked on his wooden leg without sympathy, and said jokingly: "Damn it, it's good to cut off your hand, you can Received a subsidy. I have a broken leg, and I have to continue to fuck here. It’s hard to say whether I can survive until I receive a pension. I suspect that the ship’s doctor turned out to be a butcher. Damn, he can do nothing but amputate. It’s okay, Jinghou has already prepared a lot of good wood, waiting for us to be disabled, and then I will install a mahogany for you..."

While making life-and-death jokes without caring about other people's feelings, he grabbed a piece of sawdust and threw it at the stunned candidate trainee sailors, shouting: "What are you doing standing there? Take his seat and get ready to get gunpowder!" "

The stunned trainee sailor spat out the pasty meal he ate at noon, while digging off the pieces of meat sticking to his face, he ran to the back to get the gunpowder pack.

And some old gunners who were selected from the hungry people were much calmer.The scenes they saw back then were not battlefields, but the catastrophe in which the entire village died looked even worse.The sound of cannons is much more pleasant than the explosion of those bloated corpses.

They were extremely calm and didn't care about the casualties just now.Even if he knew that if he died, the end would be similar, but it didn't matter.

Or chewing your own sailors.

Or take out a lot of pendants from the neck, the Buddha statue consecrated by the monk, the amulet from the Mazu Niangniang Temple, Xu Zhenjun's amulet of blessing peace at sea, and the cross from the Weihai Western Instructor Church, rubbing them one by one, thinking about it Who should be in charge of this place in Cirebon?Thinking that we might have to fight some people in the future, do we have to ask the Hui people to ask them to find the imam's little father and ask them if they can consecrate or get an amulet?The gods are in charge of each other, don't worship the wrong temple.

The gunner's shout came again, and the gunners grabbed the fuzz cables, waiting for the moment they passed by.

"Thirty feet!"

"Twenty feet!"

"Ten feet!"

The first sidestring artillery near the bow of the ship pulled the flint leaf spring at the moment the Tianyuan passed through the middle of the Dutch fleet.

boom……

The ship shook violently, and the heavy short copper cannon with 30-jin shells was pushed backward by the huge recoil force, and was pulled by the rope hooked on the ship's side, and the pulley hook on the ship's side hook cable creaked. sound.

(End of this chapter)