The steel behemoths of the sea lined up in a neat line, and the commanders of both sides gave the order to shoot almost simultaneously. The observers stood behind the scopes, intently observing each other's warships.

The hardware comparison between the two sides has not changed particularly from previous wars, and the tonnage of British warships is larger than that of China. China had four battleships of 14,000 tons, four heavy cruisers of about 8,800 tons. Eight battleships of more than 14,000 tons in one water of the British. In terms of artillery, there were a total of 32 300 guns on 4 Chinese cruisers, and 32 305 guns on 8 British cruisers. Armor-wise, the thickness of Chinese armor ranged from 160 mm to 210 mm. British armor was 356 to 406 mm, with teak support 102 to 203 mm thick

Even in the quality of the gunners, the British had the advantage. After two rounds of firing, a 305 armor-piercing shell hit the central armor belt of the Anqing, the flagship of the Chinese fleet.

The first to hit the enemy, which almost brought tears of pride to the eyes of the British Royal Navy. Perhaps the Chinese Navy pursues the accuracy and rate of fire of its artillery too much, and the caliber and power of Chinese naval guns are inferior to those of the British Royal Navy. The advantage of the Chinese Navy is only in the targeted damage of the brain, and the British Royal Navy did not expect the Chinese Navy to focus on the target of deck gun positions.

After suffering from the Chinese Navy, the design and manufacture of Sovereign-class battleships reached an extremely high level. If the Chinese Navy continues to play those little tricks, the Sovereign-class battleships can teach the Chinese Navy a good lesson with their balanced battleship offensive and defensive capabilities, and let China know what it means to be a warship with good firepower and protection. By now, the script is undoubtedly playing out according to the design of the British.

Excited British observers screamed: "One hit the enemy!" ”

The fleet commander, who heard this great news, waited for further good news, is it to penetrate the armor of Chinese warships? Or even hit the ammunition depot inside the Chinese warship, so that the Chinese warship was blown into two pieces directly from the inside? The commander was waiting, and the officers inside the command room were holding their binoculars high and trying to observe the results. Hit by British 305 shells, the Chinese warship could not have escaped unscathed.

Waited for half a minute, waited for a minute, waited for a minute and a half. The officer holding the telescope high in the command room finally spoke, "Oh God! My God! ”

Seeing that no one had reported the results of the battle for a long time, an extremely ominous feeling permeated the chest of the fleet commander.

"Sure! British warships still use refined black huo medicine! Observers from various Chinese warships shouted into the telephone microphones almost simultaneously. Listening to this report, everyone in the fleet headquarters and the ship headquarters breathed a sigh of relief. Even if the black huo powder is developed to the limit, it is not comparable to smokeless gunpowder, and the muzzle velocity of the shells on both sides is completely different. The kinetic energy of the fast speed is large and the penetration is high. If the British fleet had used smokeless gunpowder, the Chinese navy would have been terrible.

Although the ship was hit twice, Ding Ruchang still looked calm. The British's armor-piercing shells fired with black gunpowder failed to penetrate the nichrome carburized armor, and the shells were shot off by the solid armor and fell into the sea. Lieutenant General Ding Ruchang said in a flat tone: "Let the British know what an artillery battle is!" ”

This kind of non-standard order made the communications staff officer stunned, and Ding Ruchang's words were not so much an order as incitement.

Seeing the expression of the communications staff officer, the political commissar immediately followed, "Just send this to everyone!" Both the commander and the commissar said so, and the communications staff officer immediately carried out the order. The radio between the ships soon received the order of the flagship, and under such incitement, the guns of the ships, which were already highly excited, burst into unprecedented passion.

The Chinese warships took the initiative to move closer to the British Navy from a distance of 2,500 meters, and the gap between the two sides was quickly shortened to within 2,000 meters. At this distance, the artillery sights of the Chinese Navy were significantly improved. The first to suffer was the Empress of India, two 300-gun armor-piercing shells crossed a distance of less than 2,000 meters in four seconds, directly penetrating the 406 mm composite steel armor of the Empress of India.

The doom did not depart because of the Indian Queen's bullet, and the Chinese warships continued to attack the Indian Empress like sharks smelling blood. Within five minutes, four armor-piercing shells from the Anqing and Hangzhou opened four more gaps in the side of the Empress of India. While the main guns of the two Chinese warships began to turn to other British warships that were firing heavily on the Chinese warships, the ship's 150 guns opened heavy fire on the Indian Queen. In a short period of time, 10 150 guns on the side fired two hundred shells, and at least five 150-caliber bursting shells flew into the hull of the Indian Empress through six huge holes. The violent explosion completely rendered the Empress de India incapacitated, and the British damage control personnel showed great skill and impressive determination. While trying to extinguish the flames in the ship's hull, they closed the watertight door leading to the powder magazine, and the wheel room was in full swing, allowing the Empress of India to get out of the range of the Chinese navy as quickly as possible.

The Chinese Navy did not aim to completely sink the British warship, and the other seven warships of the enemy were firing fiercely at the Chinese warship, and the armor-piercing shells did not work, so they replaced them with burst shells. It is very useful to learn from the Chinese electric fuse, as soon as the shells hit the Chinese warships, they exploded violently, and even if the shells hit the sea, a considerable part of them exploded.

But these did not make the British Navy turn defeat into victory, the battleship Resolve was the second unlucky, the two salvos of the Chinese warship blew up the upper deck of the Determination, three armor-piercing shells hit the command room, the command room was bloody in the blink of an eye, the command headquarters headed by the captain was basically wiped out, and the deputy command room had to take over the command, reluctantly commanding the wheel room to begin to turn away from the battle line.

Four against eight turned into four against six, and the morale-boosted Chinese Navy aimed at the next target, the Royal Oak. The demonic armor-piercing bullet soon opened several large openings on the upper deck. Not only was the 150-gun emplacement on the side lost, but the main gun turret on the foredeck was also hit by an armor-piercing shell, and the rotating part failed. At this point, the Royal Oak had to start breaking away.

"If only all eight warships were battleships!" Lieutenant General Ding Ruchang sighed. The rate of fire of the 300 gun was not high, but the power of the 300 gun was sufficient. The power of the 150 guns is insufficient, but the Chinese fleet can also rely on the high rate of fire of the 150 guns to suppress the firepower. In the ongoing naval battle, the 260 guns of the heavy cruiser looked almost the same as the 300 guns, but in fact, the armor-piercing shells could not penetrate the enemy's armor, and the damage caused by the bursting shells was very limited because of the insufficient rate of fire and the low hit rate. In the face of the enemy's 305 guns, the heavy cruisers lacked armor and did not dare to confront the battleships of the British. This made Vice Admiral Ding Ruchang, who had high hopes for heavy cruisers for a time, very disappointed. The battleships of the British fleet on the opposite side are the real kings.

The praise and recognition of the commander of the Chinese fleet was meaningless to the British fleet, which confirmed that the Chinese navy had made a new breakthrough in artillery technology. The Chinese can determine from the first dozens of shells that the British used refined black medicine, and now it has been almost an hour, and no matter how dull the British are, they can see that China has used a new type of hair medicine. This hair medicine is greatly superior in power to the refined black medicine in England.

The British hit at least sixty or seventy shells from the Chinese warship, and none of them could penetrate the Chinese warship. The British Navy did not lose the will to fight because of the loss of three battleships, and the warships were still fighting hard. The 305 guns fired hard at a rate of two minutes, hoping that the British artillery would work miracles in battle.

It's just that if you want to create a miracle in this material world, you must first have a physical basis, and the kinetic energy provided by refining black medicine is so high, and this kinetic energy is impossible for artillery shells to penetrate China's armor under any circumstances.

Vice Admiral Ding Ruchang's incitement to "let the British know what an artillery battle is" stimulated the Chinese Navy, and the artillerymen's will to fight was even better than that of the British Navy. The fourth to suffer was the battleship Sovereign. The battleship Fuzhou, together with the battleship Nanning, fired at the British warship, which had already been hit twice. The god of luck did not take care of the Sovereign this time, and in two consecutive rounds of shelling, the Chinese armor-piercing shells broke through the armor, and 300-mm bursting shells followed from the breaches.

There was an in-ship ammunition tunnel between the bow and tail gun mounts of the Sovereign-class battleship, and British artillerymen were running through the artillery tunnel with ammunition carts. The high-temperature flames released by the huge explosion of the exploding shell instantly ignited the gunpowder on the ammunition truck, and the gunpowder gas rushed along the artillery passage like a hurricane at high speed. The high temperature of nearly 1,000 degrees made the British sailors involved in it instantly turn into human-shaped pillars of fire, rolling with the stench emitted by human burning, and these high-temperature gunpowder gases rushed into the gunpowder magazine opened in the gate, and ignited the refined black huo powder in the gunpowder magazine in a blink of an eye. The entire powder magazine then turned into a huge bomb.

Soaring flames poured out from below deck, and a huge tongue of fire erupted hundreds of meters from the cracks in the turret of the Sovereign. Then the 14,500-ton flagship Monarch broke into three pieces in a minute and sank into the sea with the fleet commander and the fleet command.

The battleships had by this time become four against four, and four Chinese heavy cruisers fired heavily at the British battleships with 260 guns at a distance of 3,000 meters. The flagship flag was soon raised aboard the Revenge, and the ships were ordered to begin retreating, rather than fighting bravely to the death.

The three wounded warships had already begun to retreat in the direction of the Red Sea, and after the British battleships, which had not yet suffered significant damage, broke in the back, the Royal Navy of the British Empire began to try to flee the battlefield.

The Chinese Navy did not abandon the pursuit, and both sides sailed at a speed of 15 knots. The rate of fire of Chinese warships has also been somewhat reduced. Regardless of the outcome of the battle, the number of shells in the Chinese navy was only half of that at the beginning of the war, and if the battle continued like this, the British warships would have a chance to turn defeat into victory in an hour.

After four hours of pursuit, the Remilis suddenly slowed down. The battleship Revenge, which was in charge of the broken rear of the fleet, soon saw the flag of the Remilis, "Our ship's boiler is faulty and we can't keep up with the fleet." Now after deciding to break off alone, I wish the fleet luck! ”

After making sure that the flag was being seen by the other British warships, the Remilis turned around and slammed into the pursuing Chinese warship with the maximum horsepower that the remaining boilers could provide. All the guns that could fire were firing heavily at the Chinese warships, and judging by the resolute attitude of the attack, if the Remilis had the opportunity to ram the Chinese battleship, it would not hesitate to rush forward and die with the Chinese battleship.

The Chinese battleship formation was also taken aback by this courageous action, and the warships, while dodging, turned their guns and opened heavy fire on the Remilis. Reflected in the eyes of the current flagship Revenge is the heroic figure of the Remilis relying on armor to carry the Chinese siege while fighting to the end. The Commander of the Trust Fleet could not hold back tears as he respectfully raised his hand in the direction of the Remilis. After a moment's notice, all the people in the command room saluted the British Navy, who had sacrificed themselves for the fleet.

Thanks to the heroic sacrifice of the Remilis, six British warships escaped. Three of the six battleships were seriously damaged and three were wounded. Along the way, they encountered not only British warships, but also warships from other countries that had caught up with them after learning of the departure of the British Grand Fleet and tried to watch the naval battle. Seeing the wounded British fleet, the navies of France, Germany, Italy, and even the Ottoman Empire had their own thoughts in their hearts.

The news of the defeat of the British Navy soon shook Europe. Chinese Ambassador to Britain Lu Cheng waited until the British newspapers had to announce the news, and then went to meet the British foreign minister again.

"Your Excellency, I think it's time for us to show our sincerity in China, and if Britain is willing to recognize the reality and restore peace with us, we are willing to cooperate with the British Royal Navy in naval cooperation." Lu Cheng said in his usual sincere tone.

The British Foreign Minister wanted to fight back with harsh words, but he finally held back. It is natural for the defeated to ridicule the victors, but this only proves the weakness and helplessness of Britain. Mr. Foreign Minister chose the most dignified way possible to fight back, "Is China willing to transfer warship technology to Britain?" ”

"If peace can be restored between China and the UK, if comprehensive cooperation between the two countries can be promoted, the transfer of point military technology is not a problem." Lu Cheng said briskly.

The British Foreign Minister stared at Lu Cheng's face, wanting to see the malice and deception from Lu Cheng's expression. But Lu Cheng's expression was sincere, and he continued: "I once said that His Majesty Comrade Wei Ze of our country thinks that Britain is a very great country, and we in China hope to be able to coexist peacefully with Britain and work hand in hand. At such a time, is Britain really willing to trade the fate of the whole of Britain for a victory over China? ”

Even if it no longer wants to make peace with China, Britain will need time to repair warships and build new ones. Having learned of the defeat of the British Royal Navy, other European countries will certainly be ready to move.

On November 11, 1881, China and Britain announced to the world that China and Britain had begun formal negotiations to end their war relations.

On November 17, 1881, the negotiations were inconclusive. U.S. stocks have plummeted, and European financial centers are selling off shares of American railroads. As the largest supplier of railways in the United States, the shares of British steel companies and railway companies began to plummet. The financial crisis, which had narrowly escaped in 1979, erupted in full swing at the end of 1881.