The Qing Dynasty is about to end

Chapter 584 There has never been any century-old navy!
In the telescope of Vice Admiral Van der Hoeven, a 1,000-ton three-masted steam ship suddenly appeared, speeding towards him. The veteran who had participated in the Java War immediately rang the ship's bell: "Raise the battle flag! Full sail on the port side to the wind!"

On the other side, Liu Shaoting, who had just seen the Dutch fleet lineup, broke out in cold sweat on his palms: "Brother Ding, the Dutch have at least four Batavia-class ships, and it seems there are also several steam sailing ships, and several more..." Before he finished speaking, the Dutch flagship "Java Man" two nautical miles away had already fired the first round of salvos. The 24-pound shells stirred up a three-meter-high water column 200 meters on the left side of the "Lan Fang".

Ding Xianda's Anhui Mandarin pierced through the roar of the engine room: "Keep the course! Pressurize the engine to twelve atmospheres!"

Liu Shaoting, the general manager of the Nanyang Trading Company, saw that it was useless for him to stay on the bridge, so he simply rushed down the bridge, ran to the gun position, and watched a gunner carefully unscrew the safety pin of the picric acid shell.

At this time, the four "Maluku" class ships sailing against the wind were clumsily adjusting their sails and had no time to encircle the "Lan Fang".

Before the naval war entered the steam engine era, this class of sailing frigates was known for its flexibility, high speed and power, and was definitely the best among its class. If it was operated by the navy soldiers of the traditional naval power Netherlands, even if this ship could not defeat the opponent, it could still escape with its own flexibility and high speed. But now they have no chance to keep up with the steam-powered "Jianghai" class armed merchant ships!

The length of the "Jianghai" class ship is 56.4 meters, the main engine power is 392 horsepower, and the coal carrying capacity reaches 80 tons. Not to mention how fast it can run with full sail, its speed under pure steam power can reach 8 knots. When fighting at sea, it is not affected by wind direction at all, and can run as it wants.
But even so, the "Lan Fang" was still reached by a Maluku-class frigate!
"Enemy ship. Two chains away!" The rangefinder's voice trembled.

Twenty sparks suddenly burst from the side of the Dutch Maluku-class frigate, and lead bullets rained down on the deck of the Lan Fang. A steam pipe was blasted open, and the boiling white mist instantly engulfed the mizzen mast.

Ding Xianda didn't even look at the white fog behind the ship. He just turned the rudder to the right and drove the "Lan Fang" towards the "butt" of a "Batavia" class ship!

The Lan Fang turned sharply, and the Dutch warship's broadside guns suddenly lost their firing angle. Ding Xianda's pupils reflected the Batavia-class cruiser Sulawesi more and more clearly, and he could even see the silk medicine bag that the enemy gunner stuffed into the gun barrel in a panic.

"Two hundred and fifty meters!" The rangefinder's scream was drowned out by the roar of the bow gun.

Two yellow-painted picric acid shells whizzed towards the enemy ship. The first one exploded a huge green-yellow fireball with a diameter of seven or eight meters at the bow of the "Sulawesi". The second one directly penetrated the porthole of the gunpowder magazine. The entire battleship was like firewood split by the gods, and the 300-ton mizzen mast with a burning Dutch flag fell into the sea.

With just two shells, a sailing cruiser with a displacement of thousands of tons was sunk!
Vice Admiral van der Hoeven's sword fell to the teak deck with a clang. He opened his mouth and stared, watching the burning wreckage follow the ocean current and crash into the flagship of the second column, the Madura. His mind was blank.

His understanding of the navy completely collapsed at this moment.

The century-old navy and the maritime tradition are nothing compared to the steam engine and picric acid shells!
Times have changed! The navy no longer needs tradition, nor does it need the combat experience of the sailing battleship era. What it needs is advanced and huge productivity!
"Continue to load picric acid shells." Ding Xianda ordered while maneuvering his steamer to the next target. At this time, two Dutch chain shells brushed past the chimney, and the half-broken cable hit his back, instantly tearing a bloody wound, but he was completely unaware.

Liu Yanting, who had returned to the bridge from the bow gun position, suddenly pointed to the starboard side and shouted, "Sishui-class steam gunboat!" A new Dutch warship equipped with six 24-pound guns was coming from the flank with black smoke. Ding Xianda wiped the sweat off his face and handed the rudder back to the helmsman: "Turn the rudder degrees to the left and turn the stern gun over!"

When the Lan Fang completed the thrilling Z-shaped maneuver, the 32-pound gun at the stern had been loaded. Gunner Zhang Ada was a veteran of the Opium War. He squinted his eyes to estimate the surge difference, and suddenly pulled the fuse. The picric acid shell drew a pale yellow track in the air and accurately drilled into the paddle wheel compartment of the Sishui-class battleship meters away. With a loud bang, boiling steam mixed with iron pieces gushed out from the ruptured hull, and the paddle wheel compartment was blown up to the sky. The Sishui-class battleship instantly lost power, and a scary big hole appeared in the center of the hull, and a fire broke out, instantly turning it into a wreck.
Van der Hoeven's hand froze as he grabbed the telescope. He saw the devilish Chinese warship suddenly raise the blood-red Taiping Heavenly Kingdom flag, the bow looming in the smoke, and rushing towards him. Even more terrifying was that the three Guang ships that were originally lagging behind had completed the encirclement with the southeast wind, and the gun ports on one side of the ship had been opened, and the 12-pound naval guns were aimed at the stern of his flagship "Badavia".

Aren't they also equipped with those terrible shells?
"Withdraw from the strait!" The lieutenant general's roar was filled with tears. "The Chinese shells are too..." Before he finished speaking, the 21 12-pound cannons on the three Guangzhou ships had already fired, but they were just ordinary solid bullets.

"Not bad." Feeling that his flagship was not hit by those terrible "devil shells", the Dutch Navy Vice Admiral breathed a sigh of relief, but heard the first mate of the "Batavia" shouting in despair: "It, it's coming!"

"Boom boom" came two deadly picric acid shells! One of them hit the bow of the "Badavia" directly, blowing off half of the bow and creating a hole with a diameter of three or four meters, with flames coming out.

However, having half of the bow blown off was not a fatal injury to the wooden sailing ship, and the "Batavia" also completed the turn, from headwind to tailwind, and then raised the full sail and fled the battlefield without looking back.

Seeing the flagship run away, the other Dutch ships lost their fighting spirit and turned around and scattered.

Ding Xianda looked at the fleeing Dutch fleet and suddenly felt a sharp pain in his back. He grabbed the copper megaphone and was about to order a pursuit when a wail in Fujian accent suddenly came from the engine room: "The pressure valve exploded!" The young captain Ding grinned and said, "It's okay, we've already won!"

After the news of the Battle of Karimata reached Japan, Moore wrote in his notebook: "This naval battle, which lasted for dozens of minutes, proves that the Industrial Revolution has completely changed the laws of naval development. Only countries with advanced industrial productivity can have a truly powerful navy. The navy and sea power will become by-products of industrialization!"

When the remaining masts of the Dutch fleet shrank into trembling black dots on the skyline, the steam engine of the Lan Fang finally let out its last roar, and the pointer of the boiler pressure gauge hit the zero mark. Ding Xianda, who had bandaged his back wound, exhaled and ordered through the megaphone: "Hold the sails, and we will repair the steam engine while heading to Java!"

The next day, more than 200 nautical miles away in Batavia Harbor, Wei Jun was holding a telescope against his eye socket. In the smoke rising from the breach in the bastion wall, he could vaguely see three red flags embroidered with golden hoes - the militia of the Third Javanese Farmers' Association had broken through the Dutch's last line of defense. He suddenly remembered what Luo Yaoguo had said to him when he left Tianjing: "The mission of the True Contracting Party is to seize fertile land with our foreign guns as plows."

He put down the telescope and said to Liu Lichuan beside him, "Old Liu, we have taken Batavia. Semarang and Surabaya should be soon! When the Lan Fang arrives, you will take it to Borneo, and then take a British ship to Tianjing to report the victory to King Wu and my brother. Also, ask them for instructions on how to deal with the aftermath of Java Island?"

Liu Lichuan asked: "Archbishop, do you have any plans?"

Wei Jun frowned deeply. "We can take over Batavia, Semarang, Surabaya, and the whole of Java. The Dutch will not accept defeat. They have earned too much in the Dutch East Indies, so they will definitely fight back." His tone suddenly became cold. "I'm afraid the natives on Java Island will not agree with us!"

"What do you mean?" Liu Lichuan looked at Wei Jun.

Wei Jun just said coldly: "We will eventually dominate Java!"

At this moment, in the Makassar Strait, the British merchant ship "Albatross" is about to enter the Sulawesi Sea.

Moore dipped the tip of his pencil on the tip of his tongue to ink, and recorded his experiences on Java Island in his notebook under the swaying kerosene lamp. Finally, he wrote: "This uprising proves that when Western colonists cannot control the productivity of the colonies, they will eventually lose their colonies. Then, can we deduce conversely that if Western colonists firmly control the productivity of the colonies, then even if they leave on the surface, they still control everything in reality?"

"Moore should be the judge of this matter!" The hatch was suddenly pushed open, and Bai Siwen walked in with Friedrich. "Moore, Friedrich and I were arguing about whether the Chinese outsiders squeezed out the natives of Java and Malaya through hard work. I think this is no different from what you white people do. But Friedrich believes that it is the labor of the Chinese that created most of the wealth in Java and Malaya, so they are progressive, civilized, and creative rather than destructive."

Wen Xian was reading a Japanese novel called The Tale of Genji, in which was a map of the spice routes drawn by the East India Company in 1739, with the Ryukyu Islands circled in red ink. Hearing Bai Siwen's words, he just smiled faintly: "The weak will eventually be eaten by the strong! The great age of navigation opened by us Westerners is nothing more than allowing the strong in the old world to possess the weak in the new world!"

(End of this chapter)