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Chapter 1232 The First Day

When formulating the battle plan, the Navy Staff also thought of the possibility of fighting in the narrow waterways within the archipelago and made corresponding arrangements. The specific content can be summed up in two words: mines.

Humans are really perverted. No matter what brilliant ideas they have, the first areas where they are applied are basically all wars.

In other words, killing one's own kind more efficiently has always been humans' favorite thing to do. It is deeply engraved in their nature and has never changed in tens of thousands of years. There are even signs that it is becoming more and more rampant.

With the needle-piercing primer, the collision ignition mechanism is no longer a problem, and many new weapons have been born, such as hand grenades, rifle grenades, mines, and mortars that are in the experimental stage.

However, these weapons were often used by the army, and they were not completely useless to the navy, but they were not very helpful. Facing the strong demands of the navy, the Navy General Staff worked hard for more than half a year and finally came up with a new weapon, the mine.

As the name implies, a mine is an explosive floating in the water. The original design of the Navy General Staff was to imitate the ancient fireboat, making a sealed large wooden barrel with a sealed porcelain jar filled with ammonium nitrate inside.

Fine sand was poured between the wooden barrel and the porcelain jar to prevent moisture and heat, and 10 black powder detonation points were evenly distributed in between. When in use, the collision fuse was fixed on these detonation points, and the wooden barrel was placed in the water, using the buoyancy of the water flow to send the mine to the vicinity of the enemy ship.

As long as any of the 10 contacts is hit, the black powder will immediately ignite, which will then detonate the ammonium nitrate in the porcelain jar. Its power is enough to blow up the hull and keel of a Han-class battleship, basically beyond repair.

But after this design was submitted to the palace, it was ruthlessly rejected. It was not because it was unreasonable, but because it was not very practical. This kind of weapon should not be called a sea mine, but more like a floating mine, which would drift wherever it went along the water flow, which was too passive.

Moreover, this weapon can only be used upstream, and is useless when in the downstream of the water flow. If it does not hit a hard object, the ammonium nitrate will explode as the temperature and humidity increase. If it catches up with one's own ship, it will be a loss.

However, Hong Tao did not kill the navy's hopes, but made some minor changes himself. The main design of the mine was still the same as before, but an iron ring was fixed on the wooden barrel.

When in use, a stone anchor is connected to a rope and sunk to the bottom of the water, and then a mine is tied to it to roughly locate it and prevent it from drifting with the current. Originally an active offensive weapon, it was forcibly changed into a passive defensive weapon, and is mostly used in more dangerous ports to prevent enemy ships from attacking.

But since he was from the Lei family, he was rebellious from the root. Like land mines and hand grenades, sea mines can also be used for attack, or blockade. This time, the Navy Staff specially ordered an armed merchant ship to carry all the semi-finished raw materials to find an opportunity to test the actual combat effect.

Why semi-finished raw materials? Because ammonium nitrate is not very stable and is prone to explosion when exposed to high temperature and humidity, it must be carefully sealed and transported separately. It will only be assembled when it is determined to be used, and it cannot be recycled after assembly. It must be disposed of in time regardless of whether it is used or not.

"Well, you hit the nail on the head. Immediately notify the special transport ship to lay mines at the eastern waterway exit, but the prerequisite is to send a communication ship into the archipelago waters to find Captains Settle and Wu Bing, and have them lead the ship out of the dangerous area, preferably to return to the team."

As expected, Hong Tao was fooled. He did not pursue the responsibility of Bai Fan for his outspokenness and shifted his attention to the combat. He even praised Bai Fan's suggestion of laying mines.

He had long disliked the special transport ship, and always kept it away from the main fleet and the transport fleet when the fleet was sailing and anchored, fearing that it would explode at any time. Fortunately, Bai Fan reminded him in time, so he quickly threw away those unlucky things. The expeditionary fleet blocked the north and south waterways of the archipelago and delayed launching an attack. The Spanish fleet occupied the inner waterways of the archipelago and showed no signs of rushing out. The first day of the battle between the two sides came to an end as the sun gradually set into the sea level.

In summary, the Ming Navy took advantage of the situation, caught the Spanish fleet off guard by launching a surprise attack, damaged several ships and captured three, and trapped the main force of the Spanish fleet inside the archipelago, thus temporarily gaining the initiative.

However, it is too early to draw conclusions on whether the goal of total annihilation or severe damage can be achieved. In addition to the quality of personnel and weapon performance of both sides, there is another particularly important factor that cannot be controlled by human power: the weather.

The waters of the Galapagos Islands are located near the equator, where cold and hot ocean currents converge. The climate is quite special compared to other equatorial regions. It is not only not humid, hot, or rainy, but also quite dry.

But after all, this place is 1000 kilometers away from the mainland, and it is summer in the northern hemisphere, so the probability of tropical storms is still quite high.

If the Spaniards made a desperate attempt and ventured out to sail when a hurricane came, it would be a big problem whether the Ming Navy would fight with them or watch the enemy escape.

In this regard, the meteorological data held by the Ming Navy was still relatively scarce, and it was not enough to summarize the rules, so there was no way to make preparations in advance and it could only leave it to fate.

"Notify the fleet to retreat 5 kilometers to the south, increase the distance between them, and turn on the night navigation lights to prepare for drifting!"

In addition to weather factors, the Ming fleet is currently facing a more difficult problem: how to anchor at night. Some people may say, find a safe sea area to anchor.

This is a bad idea. There are not many places to anchor in the sea. The number of anchor chains or cables carried by sailboats is limited. It is impossible to anchor in waters hundreds of meters deep, and it is even more impossible to anchor without knowing the seabed structure. Once the seabed is covered with reefs, the anchor and cable cannot be pulled up.

Near all ports there is one or more sea areas called anchorages, which are where ships anchor. The port builders have explored the seabed structure and water depth, so they can anchor safely.

However, it is more troublesome to anchor in the sea without anchorage. The later practice is to rely on the positioning system to mark the mark and let the ship drift with the current. When it is found that the ship deviates too much from the mark, the ship will be driven back and continue to drift, so it is called drifting.

In the era of sailing warships, there was no positioning system. If there were no stars in the sky, it would be impossible to determine the location of the ship. What should we do?

If you are in the endless ocean and have to stop sailing, you can only increase the distance between ships to avoid collisions, then turn on the night navigation lights and let them drift with the waves, and then go to the assembly point to re-form the team after daybreak.

(End of this chapter)