Daming Hongxing 10th February 18th, early in the morning.

On the Osumi Peninsula in the distance, there was a faint sound of cannons, which passed for more than twenty miles in the humid air of the sea, and it sounded like bursts of thunder, boom, boom. This is a small armed Galen ship of the Eight-Nation Alliance, harassing and bombarding the battery on the western side of the Osumi Peninsula on the territory of the Tarusui Shimazu clan in order to attract the attention of the defenders of the Satsuma Domain.

This Sakura Island is called the island, but it is actually a peninsula, surrounded by sea water, only the eastern corner of the Osumi Peninsula is not very wide, it is more than two miles away, and it is all mountainous, but it is not impossible to pass. On the western side of the Osumi Peninsula, there is a beach on the boundary of the Tarusui Beach, where you can land on it. After landing, the troops marched along the coastline towards Sakurajima, and they reached the gentle slope of Sakurajima and Kagoshima Castle in the distance.

The main body of Sakurajima is an active volcano, with an altitude of more than 1,000 meters, and the mountains on the east, south, and north sides are relatively steep, and there are many cliffs along the coast, so there is no way to land, only the west (southwest and northwest) is relatively gentle, and there are many beaches and fishing villages, which can be used for landing operations.

However, the Shimazu family and the Spanish fleet had long been aware of this, and built the Sakurajima Fort on the gentle slope directly east of Sakurajima, and also built a fort on the seaport east of Kagoshima Castle at the foot of Joyama opposite Sakurajima. The two batteries were separated by only seven leagues, about five of which were the surface of the Sakurajima Strait, which was very narrow and completely covered by the fire of 24 12-pounder cannons on the Sakurajima and Kagoshima Castle batteries.

It is this narrow strait that divides Kagoshima Bay into two parts: the inner and outer parts. As long as the enemy can't capture the Sakurajima Fort, then Uchi-Kagoshima Bay is an absolutely safe anchorage. Outer Kagoshima Bay was too open for the artillery of this era, and the narrowest area around Shibusuksu had a sea width of more than 20 li. Even if the Eight-Nation Coalition occupied the land on both sides, it would not be able to block the shipping lanes with artillery.

As for the blockade with the fleet, it will work in a short time, but a long-term blockade is impossible. First, the number of warships of the Eight-Nation Coalition in the East is still insufficient, and if you don't count the Ten Thousand Stone Bird Ships, which are too slow to serve as armed transport ships, the coalition fleet has only seventy-one armed Galen ships in total. Although almost twice as many as the Spaniards' more than twenty armed Galen ships.

However, these ships had to take on too many escort duties, so only some of them could be used for the blockade of Kagoshima Bay, and they could not be used all year round, and even if people could afford it, the sailing ships would need to be repaired, maintained, and replenished. So once a long-term blockade mission is carried out, the ships have to take turns on duty. At present, the total number of armed Galen ships used in the operation in Kagoshima Bay is only thirty, and after another rotation, I am afraid that there will be only twenty.

With this number of armed Galen ships, you have to be careful of the main forces of the Eastern Armada of the Spaniards......

Therefore, the capture of Sakurajima is still the first choice of the Eight-Nation Alliance!

On the sea of Outer Kagoshima Bay south of Sakurajima, the main force of the Eight-Nation Allied Fleet, as well as the transport fleet loaded with the main force of the First Division of the Ming Army, had already set up a landing formation in a murderous manner.

Previously, a part of the ships was used to control the Goto Islands, Nagasaki Port, and Tanegashima. A portion of the light Galen ships were also set aside for harassment and vigilance duties. Therefore, the ships that are now concentrated in the ocean south of Sakurajima are 27 armed Galen ships and 45 Mangoku large bird ships.

In the early morning of 18 February, when the sky was bright, 72 Galen ships and bird boats were in the middle of the Tasman, Zheng Jiangong, David. Under the command of Jones and others, the formation has been completed. Among them, 45 Mangoku Orochi ships went to the front line, all of them facing the enemy with bows, and began to rush to a two- or three-mile-wide beachhead southeast of Sakurajima.

Although this kind of large bird ship is not suitable for warships (too slow), it is very suitable for landing battles and bombardment of shore targets.

Unlike traditional birdships, this type of ship had a relatively wide bow tower, and on the deck of the bow stood a mast with a hard sail, which was open under the mast and could hold two 24-pounder guns side by side.

Both 24-pounder guns were placed on wooden annular rails and could be turned left and right, one of which could be fully turned to the right and the other to the left.

In addition, two 24-pounder guns are placed on the amidships, one behind the other, and can rotate 360 degrees. In the aft, a 24-pounder gun is housed that rotates 360 degrees.

In other words, a total of 5 24-pounder guns on a 10,000-stone large bird ship. When firing forward, there are 2 guns that can be used at the same time, when firing left and right, there are 4 guns that can be used at the same time, and when firing backwards, there are 1 guns that can be fired.

Although there were 5 guns on the whole ship, considering the power of the flowering shells and the more stable trajectory of the shells equipped with wooden supports, these bird boats were still very powerful when shelling in formation.

Now the 45 bird boats were divided into two groups, and in the southwest sea where the beachhead was scheduled to land, two diagonal fronts were formed, and the bows of the 45 ships were all aimed at the beachhead, and a total of 90 24-pounder bombardment guns were aimed at the front. The shells that had not yet been fitted with woodpipe fuses had been hoisted up from below the deck of the bow tower, and could not be hoisted more, only two at a time - this thing was going to explode!

So the ships that installed the bombardment guns moved the bomb bays to the bottom of the gun emplacements, and also stored the shells in a fixed thick wooden box along with the porcelain bottle filled with seawater - once the wooden box was hit, the porcelain bottle would shatter, and the sea water inside the bottle would wet the shells to reduce the chance of detonation.

In addition, on the side of each bombardment, two wooden barrels filled with seawater were placed. This is used to prevent the failure of the bombardment to fire - the wooden tube fuse used by the wooden shell is stuffed into the hole in the shell after the fire is lit, in fact, it is a kind of delay fuse, and it will explode at the point! If the shell is not fired, it will explode in the chamber!

Therefore, it is necessary to prepare a bucket of water to extinguish the fire next to the cannon, and if it does not work, pour water into it from the muzzle......

Basically, these fire and explosion-proof preparations have been made, and the bombardment gun is still a weapon that is very dangerous to their own people, so they dare not install more, and under the current circumstances, a boat can be equipped with five doors at most. It was also necessary to reduce the area of the lower gun deck to make room for a dedicated bomb bay.

As a result, the number of guns carried by ships equipped with bombardment guns was significantly reduced.

......

Zheng Jiangong stood on the stern of his temporary flagship, the Fuqing, with a 24-pounder bombardment gun facing the rear.

He was holding a telescope at this time, carefully observing the beachhead ahead.

More than a dozen sampans released by the big bird boat were carrying the first batch of marines rushing to the beach at this time, breaking the waves and rushing to the beach.

The beach was silent, not a single ghost.

However, Zheng Jiangong's brows gradually twisted into a ball. Because he knew that the only beachhead southeast of Sakurajima that could be landed could not be defenseless.

Saskatchewan samurai can't be that stupid, and Spanish Admiral Garcia is even less stupid. The soldiers of Saskatchewan must be hiding somewhere near the beachhead!

Zheng Jiangong shouted in his heart: Hurry up, Samurai of Saskazhou!

At the same time, Saskatchewan samurai Saigo Takayu poked his head out of a trench in the woods near the beach, squinting at the Eight-Nation Alliance warship on the sea not far away.

Saigo said in his heart: There are so many warships! There are at least seventy or eighty of them, and they are all over the sea! But it doesn't matter, no matter how powerful the warships of the Eight-Nation Alliance are, they can't board the land of Japan.

Because on the land of Japan, there are countless hot-blooded samurai like yourself!

Thinking of this, he clenched a Spanish light musket in his hand hard. Saigo, who was born in a family of Sashu feudal clansmen, is in his early thirties this year, and although he has the status of a samurai, he has never had the opportunity to become a priest (his father is a feudal clan, but he also has two older brothers), so he can only gnaw at home while practicing various murder and arson techniques, waiting for his own troubled times.

Now it's finally time for your chance!