Crusade against the Pope

Chapter 406 Henry of England
Before the battle, Walter said a few final words to Brian.

"Brian, I remember I should have told you that if you want to engage in a battle with the enemy, whether it is a land battle or a naval battle, you can't always try to occupy an absolutely safe position."

"When your advantage is too obvious, few enemy troops will take the initiative to launch an attack and run into a wall."

"That's why I didn't gather more fleets here even though I knew there was a greater chance of a battle breaking out here. I did that just to lure the other side into a fight."

"And now, as we are outnumbered, you must prepare for a tough battle, and I will live and die with the ship you command."

Walter patted Brian on the shoulder. The command of the ship lay with the captain, not him, the admiral.

Feeling the heavy burden on his shoulders, Brian had nothing to say. After receiving the order from Walter, he went to the bow to check the final preparations before the war.

And I prayed silently in my heart that the ship would win the first battle.

The first-class battleship under his feet was named Tyre to commemorate the Battle of Tyre.

But the ship was actually built in the port of Latakia.

It’s not that there are no forests in the Levant. The further north you go, the more rainfall there is, and the more lush forests there are to provide sufficient wood.

The winds and waves in the Mediterranean are far weaker than those in the Atlantic, so even if the wood is not of good quality, it is enough to build a 40-meter-long ship.

Water has deep feelings for this ship, which was considered a giant in the Mediterranean at that time.

I hope this battle can be won safely.

With the numerical disadvantage, all Watt could rely on were the cannons on the bow.

Coincidentally, the Egyptian fleet actually thought so.

Just as Watt lamented the enemy's advantage in the number of ships when he saw the enemy, the Egyptians also subconsciously lamented the huge size of the Jerusalem fleet when they saw the Jerusalem fleet.

Compared with the Jerusalem battleship, which is 42 meters long and 6 meters wide, the Egyptian standard warship of 33 meters is two sizes smaller.

Although there are more ships on our side, the difference in size always makes people subconsciously shudder.

Those galleys cruising on the sea like three Leviathan monsters are not something that ordinary warships can deal with.

You can't just rely on boarding battles. Just think about the fact that the opponent can stack hundreds of people on three layers of plywood for combat. It's best not to think about winning by hand-to-hand combat.

As the commander of the Egyptian side, Henry smiled self-deprecatingly in his heart, and then patted the cannon beside him.

"In this day and age, we are still pursuing the size of ships. Isn't this a bit too much?"

In Henry's view, the blind pursuit of ship size was a hobby of the classical era, and now with the emergence of cannons.

Smaller ships can challenge larger ships without boarding them.

As long as there are enough of them, they can use the flexibility of the ships themselves to surround and shoot at the large ships.

The larger the ship, the wider the area it will be bombarded.

As for larger ships, since the galleys needed to have oars on both sides, it meant that they could not accommodate more cannons.

When the width of the bow and stern is not much different, the advantages brought by multi-point shooting should be more obvious.

As an Englishman, Henry obviously has his own unique insights on naval warfare.

For him, the emergence of artillery is undoubtedly a subversion of the previous naval warfare order. Only the party that knows how to use artillery better can become the overlord of the seven seas.

There is certainly nothing wrong with these ideas.

But how can I put it? When he estimated that the distance between the two ships was at least 300 steps, he heard the enemy firing. No, why did they fire at this distance? !
At a distance of 300 steps, or 450 meters, it is quite difficult to fire on land.

It's not that it's impossible to hit the target at a distance of 450 meters, but in today's situation where artillery technology has almost not developed, if you want to shoot in a curve instead of a straight shot, it's like relying on fate.

After all, during this period, except for Jerusalem, no other country had ever combined mathematics with artillery, and the study of ballistics did not exist at all.

Naturally, the sound of artillery fire comes with artillery shells.

Jerusalem's 18 galleys fired at least 60 shells in this round of salvo.

One of them landed on the boat to Henry's right.

The planks burst, and fragments flew into the crew like arrows.

The soldier's body was torn apart and he fell to the deck with blood and screams.

That tiny bit of blood was not enough to dye the sea red, but the fear that came with it hung in the hearts of everyone who saw this scene.

After all, this ultra-long-range artillery hit means a considerable advantage.

If this continues for a few more rounds, many people will fall into hysteria.

"Damn it!" Henry whispered through gritted teeth.

He quickly adjusted his orders, dispersing the fleet to both flanks in an attempt to outflank the enemy with numbers and mobility.

This is undoubtedly correct.

With the speed of the current entering the sea and the power of the wind, coupled with the hard paddling of the rowers, their fleet managed to reach a speed of nearly 8 knots.

A speed of eight knots is actually 15 kilometers per hour, which means 4 kilometer of travel every 1 minutes.

A distance of 450 meters means that if both sides are moving towards each other, they can engage in battle in just about a minute.

By that time, Egypt can take advantage of the larger number of ships.

But is this really the case?

Under the orders given by Watt through flag signals, the Jerusalem fleet began to retreat to the north in an orderly manner.

This was accompanied by another round of artillery fire.

Overall, since the Jerusalem fleet was changing from a stationary state to a sailing state, its speed naturally could not be increased for a while.

However, this pulling-and-pulling combat method undoubtedly delayed the time for close combat between the two sides, thereby reserving more rounds of artillery fire.

Moreover, things were happening that made Henry feel a little desperate.

Although the Egyptians may have more artillery pieces overall, their firing frequency was far less than that of the Jerusalem fleet.

On his bow deck, the gunners were busy loading shells, and various mistakes and omissions occurred frequently.

The first shot should have been fired within half a minute to a minute, but it took nearly two minutes to fire the second round.

However, Jerusalem's artillery was able to fire a round or half a round of salvo almost steadily every 40 seconds.

In this nearly 4-minute chase, the Egyptian fleet had suffered significant losses. Although this was not enough to affect the battle situation, it cast a shadow on Henry's heart.

(End of this chapter)