"Starboard ready, scattershot, put!"

At the sound of an order, the cannon roared.

The continuous roar of artillery resounded on the lakes of Nicaragua, opening up a completely independent and unrelated second battlefield outside the main battlefield on land.

The pirates launched a wild charge against the navy.

Among them, the Brigentin-class gunboat San Carlos, which has just changed hands tonight, is the attacker, but the attacker is only a 15-meter-class general-purpose Sloop ship that has been roughly converted at high speed.

Sloop sailing and sloop sloop, as the name suggests, is a full-sloop, equipped with sloops.

This type of ship has been around for hundreds of years.

In the obscurantist Middle Ages, when galleys dominated the Western seas, she was introduced to Europe via Arabia, and was favored by Venetian merchants along with Latin sails, and was not only used as the core of Mediterranean commerce, but also evolved from the Kirk-type dhow, which was favored by the Hanseatic merchants, and became the ancestor of all sailing designs in the contemporary European system.

For this reason, humanists often refer to Slop alongside Kirk, singing the praises of Adam and Eve at the time of the Great Discoveries. However, in the eyes of ship designers, the weight of Adam and Eve was very different.

Karen and Lorraine discussed these two fossilized dhows at sea.

In his argument, due to various minor reasons such as waves, forces, and keel structure, Kirk's ship type basically lost its development space from the beginning of its finalization, and its rigidity determined its potential, and its potential was destined to be replaced by the later multi-masted full-mounted sailing ships.

In other words, Kirk is already twilight, and when it becomes a historical term is only a matter of when ships of the same price will be able to reach or approach the volume of her hold.

Slopp is very different from Kirk.

Her designers are clearly staunch adherents of agnosticism, and her basic structure was designed to be dynamic and resilient from the outset in order to adapt to the changing circumstances that may arise and to harness the wind freely and efficiently on the Mediterranean Sea, surrounded by land.

Nothing can't be changed.

The length-to-width ratio can be increased, the freeboard can be heightened, the bottom can be flat or pointed, the mast can be front or back, as long as the designer can stabilize the center of gravity of the ship, everything else is negotiable, and the boat built still conforms to the general characteristics of Slopp's ship type.

This is enough to be praised by ship designers around the world, because for hundreds of years, she has been the "go-to ship" for the manufacturing industry to experiment with new designs.

Throughout the development of the Slupp ship, it can be roughly divided into three stages.

The first stage was the Mediterranean period, when Slupp was introduced from Arabia to the Mediterranean, and with its Latin sails on the girder, it was cumbersome but adaptable.

The second stage is the offshore period. During this period, the cumbersome Latin sails were increasingly replaced by the mainstream soft shangers in Europe, and a new sail structure was formed with a single or multiple sturgeon, with one or several steering trusses. Such a boat can control the minimum number of operators to 2 people, and has relatively good adaptability and a commendable sailing speed.

It was just that there were too few sailors to make her inflexible in dealing with emergencies, so Slop ships of this period were generally small and lightweight, and were mostly used for offshore transshipment, short-range trade, and shelf fisheries.

The third stage is the recent period, specifically the last five to ten years, which Karen calls the Bermuda period.

Unlike the design thinking of European shipbuilders, North American shipbuilders have always preferred small and medium-sized boats because of their constraints.

A high-speed revolution was quietly set off in the three centers of the North American shipbuilding industry, and the combined efforts of Boston's fluids, Baltimore's structures, and Bermuda's sails unwittingly gave birth to the Bermuda galleon, a seafaring monster that stunned European teachers.

The only characteristic of Bermuda is its speed, Slupp 18 knots, Skuna and Brigenting 16 knots, Bermuda Galen knots 13 to 14 knots, even if they only maintain a speed of 70 per cent, their sailing performance is far superior to that of their stiff and bulky cousins in Europe.

These deviant designs even gradually changed the way the maritime powers built their armies.

Only a few years ago, Slopp, who was naturally weak, could not be in the eyes of the admirals at all, and even in the choice of Brigentine and Brig, the great navies generally preferred the Brig type with a larger caliber and more guns.

Brigg's advantage over Brigenting is that they are slightly more self-protective and independent, and although these advantages are limited to their class, they are clearly better equipped to scout and communications in the role of frigates.

But the advent of Bermuda schooners changed that completely.

Bermuda Brigentine is 50 per cent faster than traditional Brig, and Bermuda Sloop has an ultimate speed of almost twice that of Brig and costs one-tenth to one-fifth of it.

Unbeatable value for money.

In the middle of the sea, an absolute speed advantage is enough to avoid most of the battles, which is the self-preservation idea of the Bermuda galleons, and it also means that the relatively clumsy Brig loses his advantage in scouting and communication functions in front of them.

For the first time, the tiny Slupp entered the procurement list of the great powers' navy, and in order to effectively distinguish this new type of sloop from the old type of sloop, the old type of Slupp ship has a new and special definition, "general-purpose" Slupp.

The pirate-flagged Slop ship heading straight for the San Carlos was a general-purpose Slop, the 15-meter class could barely be called large among them, and it was more stable than the medium and small ones, but the rudimentary materials and weak wave resistance still doomed her to not having minions.

Probably...... Consider reinforcing the bow and then pressurizing the stern, so that perhaps a four- or six-pound bow cannon could barely be placed.

Who would charge a gunboat with such a ship?

Even if the San Carlos was not known for its fighting skills, the Brigentin was still a gunboat, and the sixteen guns on both sides were anything but ornamental......

Is Blackbeard crazy?

Lorraine couldn't guess.

From the first contact, he found that Blackbeard's madness cannot be guessed by common sense, and tonight's attack on the Watergate Tower further proves this, proving that Blackbeard is a real maniac, thug, and gambler, and his bet is his unparalleled fighting ability with his subordinates.

So...... Want to take the board?

Lorraine looked coldly at the Slupp ship, which was surging in a reckless manner in the night, and suddenly realized that it was pointless to guess the idea of a madman for no reason. Because the reason for the madman's charge does not matter, as long as he knows that his ultimate goal is to take the ship, the only and ready-made way to deal with it is ready-made.

He spoke into the night, as if he were about to speak to Blackbeard, who was hundreds of meters away.

"You're dashing under the shotshots...... Blackbeard, no matter what sorcery you use to motivate your pirates, will it be effective when the deck is littered with shredded flesh and stumps? Can your ship move forward like this? All it takes is a direct hit......"

"Scatter loading, forward, put!"

Boom Boom!

Just as he was going to respond to Lorraine's words, the second round of artillery fire was rushed, and the projectiles spread across the entire lake on the starboard side.

Slopp in the charge was unavoidable.

The distance between the two sides was already very close, a distance of more than three hundred meters, even if it was dark at night, Lorraine could already see the situation on the deck through the wind lanterns on the opposite ship.

There were only a handful of sailors on that deck.

Two were responsible for the sails, one for the steer, and three for the heavy door panel-like object to protect the sailors in front of the operating sailors.

Are they actually laughing?

Before Lorraine could see it, the scattered bullets in the sky were splashed.

Straight hit!

I don't know if it was one or two shotguns, I don't know if it was six pounds or nine pounds of fire, the dense projectiles were mixed together, and at one time hundreds of iron balls swept across the deck.

The pirates of the guards propped up the door panel, but it was only a moment of silence before the seemingly heavy door panel was torn to pieces by the flying projectiles, and the human figure behind it flew out upside down like a sack, and it had long since lost its human form.

Six pirates, all gone, but the scarred Slupp had no intention of wavering or turning, only more pirates rushed out of the closed cabin.

Blackbeard walked in front of all the pirates, his fat body holding the handwheel himself, and the cruel smile on his face was the same as that of the night at the villa.

"Boys, they thought the shelling would drive us away!"

"Go tell them it's useless! Tell them we're going to kill them all! ”

"Blackbeard Pirates, broadside!"

At the sound of the order, all the pirates raised their heads to the sky and roared in unison.

"Board the ship of the Spaniards!"

"Avenge your dead brother!"

"Broadside! Kill them all! ”

"Whoa, whoa, whoa!"

"Broadside !!"