When John Tropp's head came out of the water after taking a few mouthfuls of the salty and bitter sea water, what he saw was a scene that would make him suffer for a lifetime. His beloved Dutch Flying Fish speedboat was burning with fire and smoke. The sail was burned into a torch. The bow of the ship was nowhere to be found. There was a big hole in the gun compartment, and smoke and fire were constantly pouring out. During the explosion The surviving sailors jumped into the water like dumplings...
Just when he was saddened by the tragic situation of his precious speedboat, several more roars swept through the undulating sea and reached his ears. He quickly turned his head to follow the sound and saw three or four hundred yards away. Another speedboat was blown up by enemy rockets!
In addition, he also discovered that the raft blockade composed of wooden rafts and fishing boats strung together had become a raft fire line, and many of the ropes connecting the rafts and fishing boats had been burned. Many burning rafts and fishing boats were floating on the sea.
Of course, the burned blockade could not stop the continuous influx of galleys and assault boats, let alone the impact of hundreds of Malayan clippers! Through the moonlight in the sky and the firelight on the sea, John Tropp saw a quite despairing scene - what made him despair was not the Ming army's Jianghai type, let alone their assault boats, but the fast speed. Malayan Clipper, they are hard to hit and each ship has two anti-ship infantry!
Although the rockets fired by these anti-ship infantry are relatively small and not enough to cause a fatal blow to the sail battleship, they are still enough to open several holes in the battleship... The wooden planks of the battleship cannot block the sugar rockets at all. Play! Although it won't sink, it will hurt a lot if there are a lot of holes in it! Although the battleship can't scream, the gunners and oarsmen in the cabin can't stand it! Once these people suffer heavy casualties, the battleships will lose most of their combat effectiveness, and the galley battleships among them will even lose more than half of their maneuverability and become targets that can only be beaten.
Obviously, the control of the Malacca Strait, which is calm and not suitable for high-speed maneuvers of sailing warships, has fallen into the hands of the Ming Empire because of the emergence of this kind of anti-ship infantry that can board the Malayan Clipper... And this Tactics, Westerners simply cannot copy them here in Malacca, because there are not many Westerners in Malacca, but there are hundreds of thousands of pirates, merchants and other immigrants of Chinese origin.
After all, this is the backyard of the Chinese Empire!
Thinking of this, John Tropp could only sigh, and then swam towards the shore of nearby Johor.
...
Deep in the Johor Strait, on the British battleship Britannia, Campos, the governor of the Dutch East India Company, was standing on the stern deck of the ship, trying his best to look towards the direction where the fighting was taking place at the western entrance of the strait. His three third-class battleships and twelve galleys were blocked there - although he commanded the so-called Eight-Nation United Fleet, the ships from the three countries did not come at all, and did not even exist... Among the ships from the five countries, the ships from Britain, France, Switzerland, and Portugal all came to help for the sake of God! How can we let them take the lead? God won’t even agree!
Therefore, what was blocked in front was the property of the Dutch East India Company, while the ships of Britain, France, Switzerland, and Portugal were all huddled in the Johor Strait. Needless to say, everyone is watching the situation at the western entrance of the Strait of Johor right now.
If the Dutch warships can block it, then everyone will have a sense of justice and rush forward to bring justice to the Dutch. If the Dutch warships cannot stop...the Ming Emperor's "Celestial Sanctions Order" made it very clear that the Dutch family will be sanctioned! Britain, France, Switzerland and Portugal can still make money.
One side is making money, the other side is being beaten to death! As long as you have a sound mind, you will know what to choose...and as a Christian, if you choose to be beaten to death instead of making money, is it tantamount to committing suicide? This is going to hell!
So Campos was looking intently at the battlefield three or four nautical miles away, with a black heart in his throat, and silently praying to God in his heart.
Never lose...Amen!
Boom!
Before Krampus could cross himself, a series of huge fireballs once again rose on the battlefield ahead, accompanied by thunderous roars!
By the light of the moonlight and the various ships and rafts burning on the sea, Campos discovered that the big explosion just occurred was the third-class battleship USS Batavia - this was not the original Batavia, but An 80% new third-level battleship that was recently eliminated by the Dutch Navy has seventy cannons, twenty of which can fire 12-pound explosive shells with a mixed charge (sugar, nitrate, carbon, and sulfur). It’s so powerful!
However, the seventy cannons of this third-level battleship are used to bombard small Malay clippers and assault boats. It is a bit like using cannons to fight mosquitoes... If it is in an ocean with enough wind, this three-level battleship will As long as the battleship hangs full sail, it will have no problem running a speed of ten knots. Although the so-called Malayan Clipper can also reach this speed, how can the endurance of "Popeye" compare with the sea breeze? Moreover, there are oars and sails used together. When the wind is strong enough, the speed can even reach fifteen knots. The oars and sails are used together with the speedboat for cover. There is no need to be afraid of a ship like the Malayan Clipper, which is mainly driven by oars. This kind of ship There is only one small longitudinal sail, which cannot make full use of the wind.
But in the Strait of Malacca where there is little wind, the third-level battleship seems a bit clumsy and fragile... and four galleys are not enough to protect a third-level battleship from a large number of Malayan clippers and Trooper attack.
At this time, the battle at the western entrance of the Johor Strait has reached its climax. One of the two wooden raft fishing boat blockades deployed by the Eight-Nation United Fleet has been completely burned, and the other has long been ignited by incendiary bombs and broken into several pieces. knots, burning and floating on the sea.
Three of the twelve Dutch East India Company galleys seemed to have completely lost their combat effectiveness and turned into three blazing fire ships. They seemed to have given up completely and were just waiting to be burned to ashes. The remaining nine speedboats also fell into a hard battle. They were besieged by hundreds of Malayan speedboats and assault boats. Although he tried very hard to resist with fire, he was already showing his defeat!
Six of the nine speedboats were on fire, and the remaining three were also hit by bullets and had holes punched out one by one!
Although the sub-cannons and 6-pound guns equipped by these nine Dutch speedboats also hit many Malayan speedboats and assault boats, compared with the absolute numerical advantage, this loss is not worth mentioning... ..And the Malayan clippers and assault boats hit by shotgun shells or projectiles were not necessarily doomed. In fact, those Malayan clippers or assault boats were still able to grit their teeth and persist in fighting after being bombarded and losing some personnel - even the Chinese pirates in Malacca knew that tonight's battle would decide Can they and their descendants become the masters of the "toll plaza" in Malacca!
This is a life of lying down and winning from generation to generation!
If we don’t fight now, when will we wait?
In addition to these hundreds of Malayan clippers and assault boats, ten galleys of the Ming Navy, which were larger than the East India Company's clippers, also participated in tonight's battle. Gu Jiao
These elite warships of the Ming Navy were even more aggressive. They actually took advantage of the opportunity of the Malayan clippers and assault boats to fight with the Dutch galleys and launched a full-speed charge, directly overtaking the first ship of the Eight-Nation Fleet. The second blockade pounced on three Dutch third-level battleships!
The three third-level battleships nestled in the strait had no maneuverability at all at this time - in the absence of wind, the large sail battleships could only be towed by galleys. Facing the ten Ming army galleys that rushed towards them, they could only use their side guns to block and fire. These three third-level battleships were crossing the strait one after another. They not only blocked the waterway, but also had 105 cannons that could fire at the ten Ming army galleys rushing toward them at the same time.
A salvo of more than a hundred cannons, this scene is certainly quite spectacular!
As for the Ming Dynasty Navy, the main firepower of the Jianghai-class galleys is a ten-unit rocket launcher installed on the bow turret. Ten Jianghai-class galleys can fire a hundred rockets in one salvo. This scene looks better than three battleships. The volley of hundreds of cannons looks even more terrifying!
Moreover, these hundreds of rockets were fired in volley, all aimed at the Batavia located in the middle of the three third-level battleships! However, they did not open fire immediately. Instead, they used the close-range shooting tactics used in queuing to kill. Under the cover of night, they moved forward against the constant shells. Although three or four galleys were hit, none of them survived. Hitting the critical point - now the bows of these ten ships are all facing the enemy, so the rowers' deck is not easy to be hit, leaving only the rocket turret located at the bow of the ship as the critical point. In order to protect this key point, the sailors also built sandbags in front of the fort. Even if it is directly hit by a shell, the fort can still be saved.
Since the shells fired by the three third-level battleships could not cause fatal damage to the ten galleys, Zheng Cong, who was supervising the battle on the rear galley, became bold and delayed in issuing the order to fire until these ten galleys The galley was about to hit the enemy ship, and then the signal flare was fired.
Hundreds of rockets rose into the sky, making strange screams and roaring towards the Batavia, which was more than a hundred steps away.
Without wind power, the Batavia could not maneuver at all. It was just a floating target, and it was covered by intensive firepower from hundreds of rockets. It took thirteen or four rockets at once. The penetrability of these rockets driven by the burning of sugar powder is not weak, and some directly penetrate the weak points of the ship's plate and penetrate into the body of the battleship. Some were stuck into thick oak baffles. After a while, eight of the rockets began to explode one by one!
This time the Batavia was in bad luck. Fireballs shot out one after another on the ship!
Although eight rockets exploded, the one that really caused fatal damage to the Batavia was a rocket that hit the second-story gun compartment of the Batavia.
I don't know where the "power" of this rocket came from, but it actually penetrated the thick baffle of the gun cabin, penetrated into the belly of the gun cabin, and opened a center.
This is a gun cabin that houses 12-pound long guns. Although these long guns are not used to open the shells, there is still a lot of black powder used as propellant in the gun cabin!
Only a loud bang was heard, and the rockets burst into the belly of the gun cabin and exploded! The shrapnel and various miscellaneous fragments produced by the explosion were carried by the huge air waves that were also produced by the deflagration of sugar and medicine. They flew wildly in the cabin with limited space, sweeping over the gunners' bodies like a violent storm. Almost turning the entire gun cabin into a hell on earth! Everyone was knocked to the ground, some were killed directly, and some were beaten to a bloody pulp, but they were not dead yet, they were just rolling in their own blood!
Although some were not fatally injured, they were frightened crazy by the tragedy that happened in front of them. They screamed loudly and ran outside like crazy.
All the people in the gun cabin on this floor were either dead, about to die, or were so frightened that they lost their minds. No one cared about the unburned sugar pills that splashed out from the exploding rockets. Fires were lit everywhere... The fire quickly spread throughout the gun cabin where black gunpowder was scattered everywhere. It soon burned more and more fiercely with the help of black gunpowder, and in a blink of an eye it burned outside the warehouse where the gunpowder was stored. Although the door of the warehouse has been closed, it still cannot prevent the hot tongue of flame from igniting the wooden door and wooden walls of the gunpowder warehouse!
The fire spread to the gunpowder magazine, and then ignited a little more than a ton of black powder piled inside...
"Ba, the Batavia is over!"
Seeing the Batavia turn into a violently burning floating fireball after a big explosion, Governor Campos' heart almost broke.
Although the Dutch East India Company has no less than 200 large and small ships, there are only six third-class battleships among them. Now one has been lost. If the other two are lost, the Dutch East India Company's position in the South Ocean and the Indian Ocean will be compromised. That's a huge discount.
Thinking of this, he loudly ordered: "Quickly, order all the galleys to go to the west exit of the Johor Strait. We must fight back..."
As soon as he said this, he suddenly stopped there. Because he found that the sailing battleship Britannia under his feet was moving...moving deeper into the Johor Strait!
Campos quickly turned to look at the ship's mast. There was no sail on the mast, and there seemed to be no wind... But how did the ship move?
This question certainly did not trouble Campos.
The Britannia must have been dragged deeper into the channel by a British galley and was escaping!
"Baron!" Krampus shouted, "The Britannia is moving... who did this?"
"The Governor," answered the question was Sir Child, the Governor of the British East India Company, "it was an order from the Baron (Churchill)... Governor, after all, we are English, and England is not in the Ming Empire. Within the scope of the Chinese sanctions, we can freely enter and leave the Strait of Malacca!"
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