open sea

Chapter 1298
There are strings of wooden boxes floating on the sea, especially if people watch them let them go, it is really scary on the only way to enter the port.

Even the most thoughtless gunners could not immerse themselves in the pleasure of bombarding the reef, which frightened the Ming army to swim. They scrambled to watch from the bow, holding muskets and spears to guard against the Ming army who jumped out of the box. .

Without the Ming army, nothing even happened when the bow of the ship hit the box.

People were curious about what was in the boxes, and the sailors hooked the heavy wooden boxes to the deck with ropes in the small paddle boats that were lowered, or tried to push the wooden boxes away with paddles so that it would not interfere with the boat. ship sailing.

The huge wooden box was dragged onto the deck by the sailors with great effort. The well-informed old sailor touched the cracks in the box, put it in his nose and sniffed it, and said to the boatswain: "Oil and ashes , Daming made it waterproof.”

The box is fixed very firmly, and it is not easy to pry it open with a sword. It takes an ax to smash the box body, exposing the gravel and scrap iron inside. He even pulled out an iron horseshoe.

The sailors and gunners who gathered around looked at each other, wondering what the Ming army wanted to do by putting these things in the sea.

These days people don’t know much about obsessive-compulsive disorder and matryoshka dolls. Looking at the neat arrangement of three floors inside and three floors outside the wooden box, they just feel strange. A big wooden box is surrounded by a small wooden box. A ring of pebbles and scrap iron, with a circle of larger stones inside, and a wooden box inside. The whole big box weighs [-] to [-] kilograms, and only a corner can be exposed when placed in the water, and it almost sank.

However, just when the sailors were about to open the wooden box inside, there was a sudden loud vibration below the waterline of the hull, which made the sailors on the deck unsteady and thought they had been shelled.

Some sailors ran up from the lower deck in panic and shouted: "We don't know what we hit, the port side is cracked!"

At this moment, the old sailor surrounded by people put his nose into the big open wooden box on the deck, looked at the gap exposed on the small wooden box, his nose smelled some strange smell, he frowned and said: " It's a bit like the incense used by the Spaniards, and it's smoking..."

In fact, it is not the Spaniards who use incense, but the Mingxi trade route that brought the incense to Spain. The Spaniards are undoubtedly enviable these days, so what do you say?Daming's cigarettes and incense, and Shinra's nut meals, the two empires can be served by one person, isn't that considered good fortune?

The unlucky ghosts in England did not have this kind of luck. Just as the old sailor finished speaking, there was a short chirping sound from the small wooden box, and the next moment a loud noise erupted on the deck, pebbles, scrap iron, and boulders became flying bullets and shells , with a sweeping force, cut the gathered sailors into a pool of flesh and blood, and smashed the sails on the nearest mast.

Sea mines, more than 200 wooden boxes floating in the sea are all sea mines.

Because it is too far away from the reef beach on the shore, it is not possible to use a more accurate rope ignition device. All mines are lit with incense. The length of the incense is determined according to the estimated distance. After the incense is burned, a small wooden box is covered and sealed on top. A large wooden box, in order to avoid being extinguished, there are a few feathers through the box through the outside.

In fact, there are more useful anchor mines. They use a device similar to a small cannon to place them upside down and fall underwater, and use wooden boards to provide buoyancy to suspend them in the water. When they explode, they will cause great damage to the bottom of the ship. A more ingenious mine.

To put it bluntly, they lack everything except gunpowder.

Due to the different lengths of the mines and the timing of their deployment, it is difficult for sailors to determine the exact explosion time of a mine. It is even more difficult for the British Royal Fleet to master this never-before-seen weapon. They detonated successively when passing through minefields.

For a while, the sound of explosions was endless. Some mines were picked up on the deck of the battleship and exploded, some were exploded among the crowd, some were exploded at the waterline on the side of the ship, and some were blown to pieces by the paddle boats that were trying to pick them up. More mines exploded completely missing their targets.

The Iroquois dressed as Miao soldiers on the shore looked at the results of the battle they had caused at sea, clenched their fists and cheered fiercely.

Even though they had nothing just three years ago, they also suffered from the faults of the Ming people in a short period of time-their general Du Kelu said that in our Daming, gunpowder is cheaper and can be made casually. Sinking one ship of the enemy's army counts as a profit.

In Du Kelu's mind, this is a math problem. The pension for the mercenaries of the Dongyang Military Government is ten taels per person; Li Yuxi's pension for recruiting Muye Baojia is five taels per person, but when recruiting Baojia, their Miao soldier instructors require only It is possible that the corpses of the soldiers must be brought back to Muye, which will actually cost more than the pension.

If you want to sink an enemy ship in a ship battle or water battle, you need to pay at least 200 lives, and this expenditure has exceeded [-] taels of silver.

According to the local price of gunpowder in Ming Dynasty, ten thousand catties of gunpowder is only 240 taels. Even if you don’t mention the thought of the benevolent and loving others, it is definitely more suitable to use gunpowder to blow up people and ships to death than fighting for human life.

In fact, in East Asia, the cost of gunpowder is so low that it is outrageously low. Their gunpowder is already difficult to convert by price. Basically, the price of the gunpowder is equal to the price of gunpowder.

The Baojia soldiers on the shore did not see any of the enemy ships being directly bombed and sunk, but nearly half of the ships were staggering in the sea, and it seemed that many of them were injured, and the first two ships caught fire. Doubt it's definitely a bargain.

Drake is still on board his Golden Deer, which has accompanied him through a difficult time. After returning to England, it has undergone new repairs and reinforcements, increasing the draft and tonnage. The displacement of more than 200 tons makes it It has stronger combat capability at sea.

No matter how good a ship is these days, it is relatively vulnerable below the waterline. England's galleons may be the best ships below the waterline for defense in the world.

It’s as if the first person in the world to realize the importance of air defense was the Mongolian Khan Court who was driven to Oala by Qi Jiguang. The enemy of the English was the Spanish Galen ship, which was good at rampaging. On the Iberian Peninsula, they would rush to the face when they saw the ship. Monsters who are fighting hard on board, so their ships have specially strengthened the strength under the waterline.

Even so, there will still be cracks in the boulder driven by the explosion of dozens of catties of gunpowder. The shipwright of the Golden Deer is frantically nailing planks in the lower cabin to repair the ship. Drake is not thinking about it. A 'cannonball' that exploded in water could only cause him trouble.

What was really bad was that he had been staring at the two smoking boats at the forefront of the fleet.

The watchmen who climbed together on the mast heard the captain gnashing his teeth: "Why is my fireboat on fire!"

　Good morning!

　　Today Chapter 2 will be posted at night.

　　
　
(End of this chapter)