"Father bless the King, Father bless Spain, Father bless us. Amen! Go ahead!"
De Velasco's Pacific Star had already docked on a 600-ton Ming Dynasty warship. More than a dozen ropes had been thrown up. Dozens of Spanish navy soldiers holding guns in one hand and knives in the other had already arrived. Get ready for gang war! Colonel de Velasco was their leader. After shouting a lot of God's blessings, he bit the machete in his mouth, then pulled a rope and started climbing.
"Father bless, Father bless..." De Velasco prayed to Heavenly Father in his heart as he climbed - don't let a row of flintlock guns stick out from behind the planking above!
Not to mention, Heavenly Father was very powerful tonight! Not a single flintlock gun fired at de Velasco until he took the lead and climbed onto the empty deck of the Ming ship.
Is this really an empty ship? A 600-ton Galenic warship was captured by him like this? Isn't this too easy? De Belasco still couldn't believe it and looked around with his eyes wide open.
At this time, several Spanish sailors who had boarded the Ming army ship had already lit torches. De Velasco quickly put the scimitar back into its sheath, took a torch, then held the torch in one hand and the handle in the other. With a flintlock pistol, he greeted a dozen more people and strode towards the stern of the ship...
...
"Commander, one of our ships was captured by the Spaniards!"
"I know it's the Anyuan. It has a load capacity of 600 tons and is equipped with 28 cannons... But it doesn't matter. They can't drive it away. The sails have been taken away and repaired."
"But they can still burn the ship with fire...the loss will be huge!"
"That's not our fault... Dinghai is not suitable as a fleet anchorage at all! There is wind leakage everywhere, and we only have 12 guns. How can we defend it?"
"But the higher-ups may not necessarily think so. I'm afraid this year's assessment..."
"How long has it been and you still want to take the exam? Come to work quickly and give me a better shot! If you don't sink a few Spanish warships and you don't have to wait until the end of the year for the exam, I can remove you from your post tomorrow!"
"How many ships have been sunk? Commander, my subordinates only have 12 24-pound cannons!"
"But you have the wooden support shells that were just issued! The power of this kind of shells in the last battle of Beijing was quite amazing...so you have to give me a good fight!"
At an observation post at the Shenjiamen Fort, while watching the "robbery and sabotage" events taking place on the sea, the people speaking were Navy Dinghai Commander-in-Chief Yuan Ruofei and Navy Shenjiamen Fort Guard Yang Weiming.
Yuan Ruofei was born in the Liao Army and served as Wu Xiang's servant. After he followed Emperor Zhu to the south of the Yangtze River, he has been responsible for the defense of the fort, and later transferred to the navy. However, he does not know how to operate a ship and has no experience in serving at sea. He is a land navy guarding the fort.
Under the Naval Department of the Generalissimo's Mansion of the Ming Army, there are now several "Navy Chief" positions, that is, base commanders. Because Yuan Ruofei was senior enough and relatively reliable in his work, he became the navy's commander-in-chief at Dinghai, responsible for the defense of the Dinghai anchorage and the defense of Zhoushan Island.
Yang Weiming, on the other hand, came from an artillery major. He was from Jiangnan. He was admitted to the Nanjing Lecture Hall, studied artillery, and served as an artilleryman for seven or eight years. Then he also transferred to the "land navy" and became a garrison at the Shenjiamen Fort. In fact, he is a battalion-level commander. He has four companies, a fortress artillery company, a field artillery company, and two fusilier companies.
Among them, the fortress artillery battery is equipped with 12 24-pound cast iron short cannons - if these artillery were placed at Wusongkou, they would be able to withstand the enemy fleet trying to invade. But here in Dinghai anchorage, there is really not enough to see. They can only be concentrated near Shenjiamen Pier to cover the naval berths.
But how powerful can 12 24-pound guns be? And not expensive long-barreled cannons, but cheap cast-iron short cannons—more like howitzers than cannons.
These days, naval battles are fought with hundreds or even thousands of cannons. Even the 29 warships of the Spanish Armada Oriental, which is not strong enough, are equipped with nearly 800 cannons, including a large number of 24-pounders. 30 doors.
If the 12 24-pound guns of the Shenjiamen Fort were to function normally, they would only be able to severely damage one or two two- to three-hundred-ton Little Galen.
It is possible to sink a ship only if you hit the jackpot - solid ammunition cannot be sunk. Arson bombs must be fired into the gun cabin to ignite the gunpowder, and then the fire will get out of control to sink a Spanish warship.
From a probability point of view, it is very slim... With only 12 guns, only three to four hundred rounds can be fired in the entire battle. It is very good to hit ten rounds.
However, the Shenjiamen Fort received a revolutionary artillery shell in March of the ninth year of Hongxing's reign - the wooden bracket shell!
This kind of artillery shell appeared long before the siege of Beijing, and it is said that it was designed by Emperor Zhu himself! It is to fix a cast iron explosive bomb on a wooden support and stuff it into the barrel of the gun. There is an opening in the front of the bomb, into which a wooden fuze tube can be inserted. Before firing, the gunner would ignite the delay fuse in the fuze tube and then insert the fuze tube into the opening.
Because the wooden support can stabilize the exit direction of the spherical shell in the barrel, and can also act as a breath seal to increase the initial velocity of the projectile, the shell fired from the 24-pound short-barreled gun can be fired accurately and far. And because the cannonball does not roll, it is not easy to fragment, and it will not ignite the gunpowder in the shell prematurely, causing the cannonball to explode prematurely.
The wooden tube fuze also reduces the probability of the shell exploding prematurely or even exploding in the bore.
The combination of wooden supports and wooden tube fuses makes the blooming projectile a truly practical and surprisingly powerful artillery shell.
And this kind of wooden support ammunition can not only be used to bombard enemy armies and castles, but also can be used to bombard enemy wooden warships!
As long as this kind of explosive bomb can penetrate the outer shell of an enemy warship and then explode inside, it can cause astonishing damage!
...
"Admiral, we have captured three Ming army warships! A great victory..."
"Boom boom..."
Captain Barbosa had just finished speaking when the 12 24-pound cannons on the Shenjiamen Fort roared in unison.
"They opened fire... 10 to 12!" Admiral Garcia muttered. "The target was Manila. No hits."
The 12 24-pound guns of the Ming army were all focused on the original flagship of the Philippine fleet, the 500-ton Manila. This warship did not seize the Ming army's warship, but was sailing in the direction of Shenjiamen Commercial Port. It seemed that They wanted to bombard the commercial port, but they happened to pass near the Shenjiamen Fort.
Captain Barbosa smiled and said: "No problem, 12 24-pound cannons cannot defeat the Manila. It is very strong!"
Boom boom......
As soon as he finished speaking, the Ming army's 12 24-pound cannons fired their second salvo.
Because the distance between the Manila and the fort was relatively close and the speed was relatively slow, in the second round of salvo fire from the Ming army's artillery, a 24-pound wooden support shell penetrated the Manila's thin ship impartially. Poop tower. The stern of the ship was not an important place, and there was no gunpowder warehouse, so both Garcia and Barbosa breathed a sigh of relief.
But at this moment, a big explosion suddenly occurred in the "butt" of the Manila! As a ball of fire rose up, the stern of the Manila shuddered violently for a few times, and then flames broke out.
How is this going?
Why did the butt of the ship explode?
What did that shell hit?
Could it be that a certain cabin in the stern of the Manila was used to store gunpowder?
Just when Garcia and Barbosa were dumbfounded, the 12 24-pound guns of the Shenjiamen Battery roared again. This time, two more 24-pound shells focused on the Manila, one of which shattered the Manila The ship's plank was not considered strong, and it rushed into the busy gun deck where dozens of 6-pound cannons were placed. It knocked away a 6-pound cannon, and finally landed among a pile of gunpowder packets. Then there was a loud bang...
The belly of the Manila was exploded!
