"I announce the official start of Operation Billingbag."

As soon as Fang sat down, Wen Desi couldn't wait to issue the first order, as if he had lost face earlier because of Xi Yaya's words.

However, Xi Yaya had apparently returned to his own ship, and could not hear this.

At half past nine a.m. on July 1, 3690 A.M., the Hong Kong Reporter discovered one of the targets of the operation, the San Andres, an old acquaintance of the last year's voyage to the Americas, northeast of the San Bernardino Strait.

Information about this ship is readily available, with a displacement of 1020 tons, 38 light and heavy guns, and a full crew of 437 people.

There is at least one galleon with him, which should also be in the nearby waters, and the ship's data will not be too far behind this one.

Naturally, these two sail warships would not remain as full as their 'companions' who fought against the Dutch in the waters near the Philippines, and considering the silver from the Americas, the number of crew on board would not exceed two-thirds of the full load, and Wen Deji even thought that the number of enemies might be only slightly more than half of the full crew.

Of course, it is still necessary to anticipate the enemy's leniency, and there are several biggest problems that cannot be avoided in this operation.

First of all, since the name is capture, the enemy ship cannot be sunk, and the various primitive bump-to-fuse explosives that the Ordnance Superintendent has tried to produce in the past two years will be useless, otherwise it will be more than worth the loss if it accidentally causes the explosion of the ammunition depot of the Galen ship. Fortunately, with the maneuverability of the Tiangang-class warship and the power of the Zhurong B-type naval gun, it is not too difficult to deal with such a sail warship, but it will take some time and energy.

However, the Tiangang-class warships are only 114 fully loaded with personnel, and each ship has less than 100 combatants, and this is not counting the artillery, and the actual combat members are not many except for the command and necessary technical personnel, and I am afraid that it is also a number of five or five. The opposite ship had at least 300 men, which was overwhelmingly numerous, and had to fight hard in a complex hull, and both the Spanish and Dutch always had three or four thick decks. Although the Galen's in-cabin combat Fubo Army had been specially trained to restore the scene, it was not a real combat after all, and it was difficult for the Privy Council to have enough confidence in the reliability of its operations.

Finally, there was the question of how to solve the problem of how to deal with the prisoners who numbered more than two warships, and the Senate would not allow senseless massacres, and the result of these people should be to participate in the necessary hard labor arranged by the Senate along with their Spanish compatriots who had invaded Brunei earlier, or to pay a ransom sufficient to compensate for the material and moral losses of the Fubo army, and the question before the Fubo army was how to transport the two ships back to a port under the control of the Great Song Dynasty smoothly and safely.

But despite this, the atmosphere in the conference room was still very relaxed, after all, these happy annoyances only slightly increased the difficulty of the trip, brought some long-sought challenges and adjustments to the elders, and were not enough to negate the efforts of many of the previous participating departments.

The scent of lilies permeating the room is intoxicating, and the iced drink makes the stuffy atmosphere more cheerful.

"Comrades, maybe it's just a coincidence, on this day we twelve senators gathered on the boat, except for the South Lake turned into the South China Sea, I always feel that this indicates that the gift to the Senate of this operation will be unusually rich."

Lin Shenhe adjusted the atmosphere of the scene in a unique tone, and the elders who knew him well knew that this was to defuse the tension before the war, which was a sense of narrowness that was about to start a new game, and had nothing to do with fear.

"The target position is confirmed, longitude 124°35'E, latitude 12°75'N, about 20 nautical miles away from us, and the flagship and the shooter will form a 5 nautical mile wide horizontal column to search for the target position. ”

The Hong Kong Reporter had been at a reasonable distance from the San Andreas, outside the naked eye but within radar control, waiting for the rain and the shooter to arrive.

The ship's detection equipment initially ignored this faint and slow-moving point of light, which was a mistake made by Sun Liangyu, perhaps because of this detail last year, when he was manipulating other aerial reconnaissance equipment to the west, while others focused on the mapping of the seabed hydrology here, and it was Yangzhou, the most useless person, who discovered the target with the naked eye.

After being confirmed by high-powered birdscopes, the red and white flag of the King of Castile on the mast once again confirmed the identity of the target, which was indeed a galleon belonging to the Spanish royal family from the Americas. With this discovery, Sun Liangyu also quickly found another target 15 nautical miles behind him through the radar, the same light point with a weak signal, moving the same slowly.

The distance of 20 nautical miles is not too far for the Tiangang-class warship, and it only took them more than an hour to complete the rendezvous with the oncoming Hong Kong Reporter, and Yangzhou waved excitedly in the direction of the San Andreas. Maybe it's because he was the first to spot his prey, and the whole person seems to be a little excited.

The Hong Kong Reporter turned its head elegantly, drew an elegant arc around the stern of the Shiyu, and soon walked to the front of the team to guide the direction.

Immediately following the Hong Kong Reporter, Shi Yu rearranged the two warships in a column to meet the northeast, and after getting some forward, the Hong Kong Reporter left the queue and went around to the rear of the target. The yacht's freeboard was too low, the ship lacked decent heavy artillery firepower, the automatic rifle alone could not do any damage to the galleon's hull, and with some vital supplies stored in several of his cabins, it became its main task to monitor another sailing ship and send the battle to Labuan.

The main boilers of the two battleships finally turned on to the maximum and quickly began to move closer, and a quarter of an hour later, Shi Yu and the shooter entered the range of walkie-talkie talkies, and Wen Desi directly began to command.

'A suspicious target has been spotted, and the fleet is in the midst of enemy movement, with a southeasterly wind and a wave height of one meter. ’

After the last telegram sent by the Hong Kong Reporter to Brunei, the eager commanders on the bridge of the Shiyu finally saw the target clearly through the binoculars, as if rising from the bottom of the water, the three masts and the sails on them gradually rose from the sea level in the scorching sun, and then the stern and the foremast, and the tall bow and stern of the Spanish galleon finally emerged, and the gold decoration seemed to be a little mottled, indicating the long journey of the voyage.

However, the almost full draft finally relieved the veterans on the ship, such a behemoth would never let them run in vain.

'Raise the flag and prepare for battle!! ’

The 12-horsepower auxiliary steam engine was immediately turned on, and the wheels on the rigging were adjusted with the propulsion of the propellers, and the white sails and the black hull formed a strong contrast, taking advantage of the solemn atmosphere. Wen Desi's voice was still echoing in the walkie-talkie, and almost at the same time, the Morning Star Flag and the 'Ready for Battle' signal flag were raised on the two ships, and the red color of hunting and flying in the sea breeze made this order vivid, and the actual combat conducted by the Australian and Song Navy for the first time completely using the naval equipment independently developed in this time and space finally kicked off in this full sense of ceremony.

'Attention the whole fleet! …… Take the flagship as the benchmark and change the direction to the right in turn! ’

The voice fell, and Shi Yu took the lead in turning the rudder.

'Attention the whole fleet! …… Turn left at the same time! ’

Ten minutes later, the two ships sped up to the gifts that came from afar in order to form a horizontal line.

The galleon seems to have finally spotted the oncoming enemy, as it was clear that it was trying to turn left against the wind, and the captain of the San Andreas must have sensed the threat from half a mile away, believing that he would not want to flee after seeing the speed of the rain, as such a judgment would be an insult to the captain's confidence in his nautical profession.

The artillerymen of each gun position are nervously using the angle disc with the sight to measure the distance to the target, and the other two people are responsible for the wind vane and the anemometer respectively, and the results of all the calculations are finally gathered in the hands of the calculation soldiers of each gun position, and they began to quickly look up the numbers in the firing table under the command of Lin Shenhe, and it took less than ten minutes to complete all this.

'2,000 meters away, confirm the shooting of Zhu Yuan!' …… Load a grenade! …… One salvo from each cannon! ’

In addition to the stern, the ten naval guns on the decks of the two warships opened fire almost simultaneously, but after a moment, Wen Desi's face began to brighten. The shells did not reach the target at all, and they were spread extremely widely, setting off only a few considerable columns of water in front of the galleon. Lin Shenhe was also a little embarrassed, and the effect of the actual combat seemed to be much worse than that of the ordnance superintendent's test firing. But if he complained to Su Yao about this, he didn't know how long he would be scolded, because of various interference factors in actual combat at sea, it was not easy to hit at such a long distance.

Fortunately, this opponent is not strong, and fortunately, Shi Yu and the shooter's ammunition are quite sufficient.

'Get closer!' ’

Lin Shenhe ordered loudly, and Wen Desi also made the same request to the shooter in the walkie-talkie, and the distance soon closed again.

'1000 meters away, grenade!' …… All-fleet salvo! ’

This time, the San Andreas was finally shrouded in a curtain of water, and it was clear that the other side could not fire at this distance.

The fleet began to cross the bow of the galleon, and the San Andres was clumsy like a baby in front of Shi Yu and the shooters, because the steering was so slow that its thirty or so broadside guns had been completely furnished since the beginning of the war.

'Shoot the whole ship!' ’

The order for a third salvo followed, and with the first two rounds of test firing, the grenades that roared in with more accurate Zhuyuan finally lived up to expectations, and all but the five columns of water that still appeared around the galleon, all five hits. The obstructed view even made him worry for a moment whether the galleon's waterline had been damaged, which would have caused a lot of trouble for the capture, but a loud bang interrupted his thoughts.

When the smoke and water had cleared, the senators were surprised to find that the midmast of the San Andreas had been broken, and most of the mast had slammed into the deck with a crisp thud with the sails, and then slid to the port side with a creak.

"Ijiri...... Who hit the ......"

I don't know who shouted first.

For a moment, there was silence on the foredeck of the Shiyu, and then a burst of cheers rose.

[References]

1、《Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce 1450-1680》Anthony Reid

2, "Sea Language" Huang Zhen

3. "Nanyang Yearbook"

4. "A Preliminary Study on Zheng He's Spread of Islam in Java and Other Places" by Xu Younian

5, "Emperor Ming Shi Law Record" Chen Renxi

6. "Zhucheng Weekly Consultation" is strict and simple

7、《The Rise of Ayudhya》Charnvit Kasetsiri

8, "History of Overseas Chinese in Nanyang" Chen Bisheng

9、《Chinaese in Southeast Asia》Victor Purcell

10. "A Brief Discussion on the Conflict between China and the European Powers on Southeast Asian Affairs in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries" He Aiguo

11. The Influence of Chinese Immigrants on Southeast Asian Languages and Daily Life in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries by Zheng Fuhong

12、《Statistics for Ship Arrivalsand Departures 1565-1815（by Year and by Decade）》

13、《Alphabetized List of Galleonsand Other Ships(with voyagedates)》

14、《Summary In form ation of Galleon Arrivalsand Departures 1565 through 1815》

15、《The Manila Galleon》Jason Schoonover