"Clear the deck quickly and cut the ropes!"
Villeneuve saw the British sailor climbing up from the rope, unwrapping the oil paper bag and revealing the musket.
They soon occupied a small section of the deck, facing off against the French musketeers across the conning tower.
Since several machine guns on the ship were removed by the Ming Dynasty, cleaning the deck could only rely on the muskets in the hands of the sailors.
Sporadic gunshots rang out, and Villeneuve became increasingly anxious.
Time is not on France's side.
Nelson's encirclement was getting smaller and smaller, and the gaps between Royal Navy ships were getting smaller and smaller.
And these hooks tightly hooked the Brest, although the surging power of the steam engine made the battleship move.
However, the large merchant ship and the Brest were connected together, performing a "two-ship turn" on the sea.
Even the hull of the ship tilted.
Upon seeing this, several French sailors gritted their teeth and quickly rushed out from behind the command tower.
"Bang bang bang~"
There was a sound like fried beans, and both sides suffered casualties.
But the British sailor was well prepared. He threw the fired flintlock aside and pulled out the short musket from the oil paper bag.
The France at this time was not the France during World War II.
Seeing the critical situation, several people rushed forward regardless of their own safety. Sailor Philips pulled out his dagger and rushed to the side of the ship.
The lead bullet shattered his left arm. He endured the severe pain and tried desperately to cut the rope.
There was a "whoosh" sound.
The cut rope was stretched straight and was suddenly thrown in front of Philips, blinding one of his eyes.
As the ropes disconnected, the remaining ropes could no longer cope with the increasingly powerful battleship power and gradually disconnected.
By the time the French sailors rushing from behind took control of the situation, Philips was already unconscious on the deck, with the Ming Dynasty Medal shining brightly on his chest.
The Brest's hull began to regain its balance, watching Philips gradually slide off the deck due to inertia.
His comrades rushed forward, grabbed his ankles, and successfully rescued him.
After the deck was cleared, Villeneuve's eyes were filled with tears after counting.
The original 167 people on board the Brest now have less than 80 people left.
Several of them were seriously injured, and whether they could survive was a question.
These people are all good prospects who have studied abroad in the Ming Dynasty and received orthodox training.
Half of them were lost in just one battle.
Villeneuve could imagine the wrath of Napoleon he would face when he returned to France.
But for the sake of his family, he had to return to France to await trial.
All this is because of the temptation of 30 million taels of silver and nearly 900 tons.
The gunfire from the merchant ships gradually stopped, and Villeneuve knew that none of the French sailors might have survived.
On the Brest, the sailors were eerily silent.
Villeneuve scolded and took all the responsibility on himself.
"The responsibility is all mine. There is no time to be sad. The enemy is right in front of us. We have to rush out and take the Brest with us!"
In the distance, on the Victory.
Nelson held up the telescope and secretly cried out what a pity.
Unlike ordinary sail warships, the Brest has cast-iron hatches. As long as the hatches are closed, it is basically impossible to seize the ship.
Fortunately, the Royal Navy used this time to successfully complete the encirclement.
In order to deal with the Brest, ordinary solid iron ball shells cannot cause damage. These iron balls will be bounced off when they hit the armor.
Therefore, Nelson made a suggestion to George III to concentrate all the British explosive bombs and use the explosion to damage the Brest's superstructure.
Then use the huge fleet to surround them and engage in gang-hopping battles.
Therefore, HMS Victory and HMS King's Power, two of Britain's largest sailing battleships, were refitted at the shipyard and equipped with a large number of explosive bombs.
And this is almost the entire family fortune of Daying.
After all, flower bombs are complicated to make, and even Great Britain doesn’t have many of them.
At this time, the Brest opened fire.
Due to the massive attrition, only the bow main gun could fire smoothly.
The two shells spanned a distance of 6 kilometers, landed in the battleship group, and successfully destroyed a sailing battleship.
Nelson's siege was too dense.
So much so that the gunner of the Brest could smash the shells into the battleship group with his eyes closed.
over time.
Nelson's fleet fought with huge casualties and compressed the distance to within 200 meters.
The Brest's shells were gradually running out.
"Report, there are three main gun shells left!"
A sailor reported to Villeneuve loudly, with a cry in his words.
It's not that the sailors are afraid of death, but that the Brest, which accompanies them day and night, will become a prisoner of the British.
From the moment they boarded the ship, the sailors have regarded the Brest as their home, even their "wife".
The "wife" was captured by the enemy, and the enemy inspected the texture in various ways...
The sailors couldn't help but feel sad when they thought of this.
There are even sailors preparing to open the sea valve.
At this time, the explosive shells from the Victory and the Royal Power began to greet the Brest.
Because of the internal fuze structure of these explosive bombs, their center of gravity shifts and their ballistic trajectories are erratic.
Most of them missed, and even crossed the Brest and hit their own ship, becoming teammates' killers.
However, a small number of shells hit the Brest.
Some weakly armored cabins, especially the fire-fighting compartments on the deck, which were only two or three millimeters thick, were blown open, and all kinds of fire-fighting equipment were scattered on the ground.
To make matters worse, a bomb exploded near the bridge conning tower.
The armor of the command tower is thick enough to withstand these fragments.
But the glass on the window side was not explosion-proof glass. Even if the glass had a certain thickness, it was shattered by the shock wave.
The fragments carried broken glass and swept through the entire command room.
Philips woke up from a coma, endured the pain and opened the door of the command tower, prepared to report to Villeneuve, and saw a tragic scene.
The helmsman's face was covered with broken glass and blood was flowing, but he gritted his teeth and controlled the rudder.
Several officers fell to the ground, and some sailors covered their faces and screamed.
Villeneuve, on the other hand, lay straight on the ground, with large amounts of blood flowing from his shoulders.
"captain!"
Philips flipped him open with one arm.
But they saw that Villeneuve's face seemed to have been hit by a shotgun. A twisted piece of shrapnel penetrated his cheek diagonally, and his neck was cut open, extending to his left shoulder.
The aorta connected to the heart was exposed, and the blood was pumping blood to the brain like crazy, spurting all the blood out of the body.
Villeneuve, the French admiral and commander of the French-Spanish fleet defeated by Nelson five years later, died.
"Sir, according to wartime regulations, you are now the highest-ranking officer on the Brest, and you will temporarily take command of the captain..."
The helmsman gritted his teeth and controlled the battleship to plunge towards the flagship of Nelson's fleet, the Victory.
"Sir... Captain, are we preparing for the final battle now?
We still had three shells, and if we were close enough, the gunners would be confident of detonating Victory's powder barrels.
Send the pride of the Royal Navy, HMS Victory, into the sea to feed the fish! "
Philips could no longer care about the tragic situation in the command room. After being reminded by the helmsman, he must do something now to change the status quo.
Several sailors rushed into the command room and began to evacuate the seriously injured and collect the bodies.
Philips looked outside the window at the densely packed sail warships and the overwhelming cannonballs.
In the light of the explosion, he saw the pointed bow of the Brest, which shone with metallic light.
An idea flashed in my mind.
The Brest is an all-steel battleship, and its hull is much stronger than a sailing wooden ship.
Although it is not equipped with a collision angle like the Dingyuan-class battleship.
But it is still very easy to hit the wooden boat.
The training received in Daming was mainly based on long-range artillery bombardment, and no impact drills were ever conducted.
So much so that sailors have almost forgotten the tactics of battleship ramming in the age of sail.
Thinking of this, Philip's eyes flashed, and he ordered.
"Attention all crew, collision warning!
The Brest, moving at full speed, knocked these old sails away.
Let's go home! "
