As French armored cruisers joined the siege of the Poitiers, the situation of the Poitiers became worse and worse. Although none of those shells could penetrate the armor of the Poitiers, they caused serious fire on the Poitiers. This fire poses a considerable threat to the warship, and if the fire is allowed to continue, the warship will definitely be destroyed. However, in order to extinguish the fire, it is necessary to enter an unsafe area outside of the armor defenses. Then the damage control personnel were constantly killed and wounded by shells from the armored cruisers of the French.

This situation caused the "Poitiers" to suffer a very serious attrition in personnel. On the other hand, even though the damage management personnel braved the artillery fire and tried to extinguish the fire, the fire was still not effectively controlled.

Lord George Kirkburn later mentioned in his memoirs: "I have to admit that, apart from the gap in basic knowledge and technology, the British battleships were far behind the French in terms of design ideas." I'm not here to put the blame for the defeat on our designers, in fact, they've done a pretty good job. However, in terms of design ideas, the French battleships are indeed far superior to ours.

For example, the French focused on defense design ideas, so that the French warships are comparable to or even slightly smaller than our warships in tonnage, but the armor defense far exceeds ours.

In addition, the preparation of French warships in terms of fire protection also far surpassed ours. Later, as an instructor at the French Naval Academy, I boarded one of their armored cruisers for the training of seafarers. This armored cruiser as a training ship had taken part in the Battle of the North Sea Strait, which seemed like a nightmare to me and many Britons, and by the time I boarded it, it had been replaced by more advanced warships. But for me, the ship still has a lot of curious secrets.

One of the secrets was the fire protection of French warships. One of the most impressive things about the French warships in the Battle of the North Sea Straits was their fire protection. In naval battles, many of our ships were lost due to fires that went out of control, such as the battleship Poitiers. Many of our cruisers, after being hit by French artillery, also broke out in serious fires. In fact, their losses are also inseparable from fires.

The warships of the French also caught fire under our shelling, but the fire was not large and was quickly extinguished. Obviously, they have a great technical advantage over us in fire prevention and extinguishing fire. I know some of the advantages, and some of them need to be seen on the ship.

When I got on board, I studied it carefully, and found that there were far fewer flammable materials on the French warships than on the British warships. For example, the French warships had almost nothing of wood, and their tables and chairs were basically made of iron. This is of course uncomfortable, but it reduces the possibility of fire. And in our case, perhaps out of nostalgia for the age of sails, although we have replaced with steel warships, we always hope to retain as much of the shadow of the age of sails as possible on the warships. For example, we like to use wooden tables and chairs, and even our cabins have a lot of wooden decorations - things that are not seen on French warships.

In addition, there were very few textiles on the French warships, and we even covered the walls with wall coverings for aesthetic reasons, which later became a fire hazard. Especially the things they use to stick them will produce a lot of toxic smoke in a fire.

In addition to this, the French have tried to minimize the number of vital pipelines in non-protected areas. This also makes the fire less of an impact on them, and they have more fire hoses and fire extinguishers on their warships than on our warships. This makes their warships much easier to face fires than we are......"

The fire went along various pipes into the interior of the Poitiers, which had not been penetrated by shells, and many of the systems were forced to shut down or were damaged by the fire, and in fact, even if the French suddenly retreated for some reason, the Poitiers would not necessarily return safely.

By this time, the "Trajan" had also regained its balance and began to shift its fire towards the "Poitiers". The situation became more and more unfavorable to the British, and it can even be said that the British fleet had fallen into despair.

"The battle has already been lost, and even if not a single shell falls on our warships from behind, and even if a sudden miracle now strikes and the French fleet suddenly retreats, just as the Mongols, who have already crossed the Danube, suddenly retreat on their own, it is impossible for us to continue our march and carry out the task of breaking the blockade of the British. Now, we should not allow the soldiers of the Navy to sacrifice meaninglessly. ”

It was not in this situation that Lord George Kirkburn made such a decision. Because of this decision, after he returned, he was used as a scapegoat for the defeat by the British government, and was sent to a military tribunal on charges of "fear of war" and "ineffective command".

Lord George Kirkburn denied all these accusations. But he was still sentenced to prison. Later, however, after a new peace agreement was reached between Britain and France, he was handed over to the French as a war criminal......

After Lord George Kirkburn gave the order to retreat, the remnants of the British warships began to turn around and try to escape back into the Irish Sea. And seeing that a great victory of total annihilation of the enemy army was already in sight, the French naturally refused to let go of the British fleet like this.

Now in the British fleet, the main gun firepower of the "Crecy" is completely useless, and the power is somewhat damaged; The secondary guns of the "Poitiers" were completely wasted, and the sights were completely wasted, but the power and main guns were still intact. In addition, the armored cruiser "Hope" missed a single shot, and its combat strength was complete. As a result, these two warships took on the responsibility of covering the retreat of the other warships.

The armored cruiser "Hope" inserted between the "Crecy" and "Trajan" at the fastest speed, and constantly attacked the "Trajan" with his artillery fire, although its firepower was almost impossible to bring much damage to the "Trajan", but the "Hope" like a fly still brought a lot of interference to the "Trajan".

The secondary guns on the "Trajan" fired fiercely at the "Hope", but because the "Hope" was very fast and kept making irregular turns, the result was naturally that not a single shell hit her, (of course, the "Hope", which kept firing at high speed, also did not hit anything) and the "Hope" also made a posture from time to time to hit the "Trajan", so that "Trajan" even needed to constantly adjust its course to dodge - after all, "Trajan" The ship already has four watertight compartments flooded, and if it gets knocked out of the way by one or two, it really can't hurt.

The other cruisers shifted their targets and fired at the Hope. Shells continued to fall around the Hope, and in many cases, the jets of water from the shells seemed to completely engulf the armored cruiser. But in the next moment, the boat rushed out of the water column in high spirits, and she was still unharmed except for the splashed water!

The transfer of fire from the French cruisers gave the Poitiers a rare respite. Although the Poisborg looked badly beaten, there were no major problems with his power and main guns. The fire was the greatest danger she faced, but when the French diverted their fire, the damage crew on board the Poitiers was able to extinguish the fire undisturbed. Although the fire was already large and difficult to extinguish or even reduce, the fire was at least somewhat under control.

Moreover, the captain of the "Poitiers", Colonel Valentine, also had time to make a serious judgment about the current situation.

Today's strongest enemy ship "Trajan" is clearly in trouble. Its power was visibly impaired, so much so that it slowed down to a mess. Today, however, Poitiers is still in good condition, which means that Poitiers is faster than Trajan.

So Lord Nelson's feat of leading the "Queen Elizabeth" to ram the "Imperador" suddenly came to Colonel Valentine's mind.

But Colonel Valentine also knew that the firepower of the "Trajan" was different from that of the "Caesar" or any other French ship, and that her cannons could really penetrate her own armor. And the closer you get, the more likely you are to be hit by them. In the unlikely event that a shell hits the ammunition depot, then the "Poitiers" will fly on the spot.

So, Colonel Valentin first gave such an order: "Fill the front and rear main artillery ammunition depots with water." The steam engine is forcefully discharged and pressurized, and we are going to sink Trajan! ”

So, the "Poitiers", which was burning with raging flames, began to accelerate, and with billowing smoke, crashed into the "Trajan".

Admiral Bruyes and the other officers on board Trajan were drawn to the Hope, they had never seen a ship so lucky. If it were to be replaced by the Hereafter, someone would surely shout: "Wife, come out to see God!" Or: "Network administrator, someone is hanging, you don't care!" ”

However, Admiral Bruyers's thoughts were different from those of later generations, and what came to his head was a rather blasphemous thought: "God, a whole thirteen straddles, not a single shell hit!" Could the captain of this ship be your second son, Jesus' own brother? ”

Because everyone's eyes were attracted to the ship, it was not noticed until the "Poitiers" got quite close and was quite fast. Trajan then turned to dodge with all his might, and at the same time opened fire on the Poitiers, while the other warships began to divert their fire and attack the Poitiers.

However, due to panic, the first round of attacks of "Trajan" failed to hit the target, and the salvos of other cruisers, although they were lucky enough to hit one or two shots, had little effect on "Poitiers".

As the "Poitiers" approached, the gunners on the "Trajan" showed a fairly good level of training, and in the third round of firing, they directly hit the main turret of the "Poitiers" and successfully penetrated it. However, this breakdown was of little significance, because the "Poitiers" had already filled the ammunition compartment with water when she launched this charge, and now her main gun was useless.

In the salvo of the fourth and fifth rounds, Trajan scored two more hits, but the distance between the two sides continued to shrink. Now "Trajan" could only pray that in the next round of shelling, one or several shells would destroy the steam engine of "Poitiers", otherwise......

However, God was not on the side of the French, after which the French received successive hits and breakdowns, and even one of the shells hit the ammunition depot of the "Poitiers", but the "Poitiers" rushed up with artillery fire and crashed into the "Trajan".

The impact damaged the two watertight compartments of Trajan and opened a gap about the size of a gap about the size of the kamikaze blow of the pole minecraft not long ago. At this moment, six of Trajan's watertight compartments were seriously damaged, and because the openings were too large to be blocked, it was estimated that the "Trajan" would have to abandon ship.

While the two ships were still connected, the French simply jumped on the "Poitiers" with all kinds of guns. In the previous battle, the "Poitiers" suffered almost half of the ship's sailors, and naturally could not withstand the attack of the French. The situation seems to be about to turn into the sinking of the British "Poitiers", "Trajan", and the sailors on Trajan have succeeded in capturing the British "Poitiers".

However, the British, who were unwilling to cooperate, raised their hands to indicate surrender, and at the same time quietly opened the sea valve.

Admiral Bruyes transferred to the Caesar, and by this time the "Cressy" had already sailed into the passage where it had come out, and even the "Hope" had turned to flee to the side of the passage.

The French were naturally reluctant to let them go like this, especially after paying such a great loss. So everyone chased after the British's ass. I'm going to catch up with them and annihilate them all. And then......

Then the situation that more fully illustrates that the captain of the "Hope" must have some kind of relationship with God reappeared. After discovering that the French were coming, the "Hope" deliberately left the safe passage and sailed into the minefield, and then the French followed into the minefield, and then, just now, the "Hope" sailed past the place where nothing happened, and when the French Navy ships passed by, there was a sudden explosion.

Within two minutes, the supercruiser "Hermes" was seriously damaged by a mine (sank an hour later), and the armored cruiser "Lorraine" was directly sunk by a mine.

The rest naturally did not dare to chase anymore, so they had to turn around and withdraw, and in the process, another armored cruiser sank.

This series of strikes made the French wonder whether the British mines had a friend or foe identification system. However, post-war research showed that the British did not have such black technology at all, and the only reason why the "Hope" crossed the minefield and then did not have bullshit was because he was too lucky.