The sea breeze in the early morning was still a little cool, and the lookout soldiers tried their best to look at the sea conditions in the distance while they were still in good energy when they had just changed shifts today. Suddenly, he found a small black spot in the distance, and thought it was a seabird if he didn't look closely, but when he looked closely, he found a problem, because seabirds generally fly very fast, and this black spot is moving slowly, and the normal situation will not be fishermen who go to sea so early, unless it was an accident last night, and the Ming Dynasty is still implementing the sea ban system, there are two situations where there are sailing ships, either smuggling ships or pirate ships, and the lookout immediately reported the situation to the captain, Quickly informed the general soldier of Qi Jin on the flagship.

The fleet quickly advanced towards the target it had found, and when it was about ten miles away, it finally saw the situation clearly, and the black spot was indeed a large ship, but there were still seven or eight smaller clippers besieging it around it, and it was now quite dangerous, because it was clearly visible that the big ship had been surrounded by these small ships.

Qi Jin ordered the three ironclad ships to stop moving for the time being, because his telescope was better, and he could see more clearly, the big ship was a Portuguese merchant ship with a Portuguese flag on it, presumably just returned from trafficking goods from Europe or Southeast Asia, and unfortunately they had encountered pirates. The reason why Qi Jin let the three ironclad ships stay was because he was afraid of leaking the secrets of the ironclad ships, because Zhu Youxiao personally told him that he must completely annihilate the invading Dutch fleet, and he didn't want Western countries to start paying attention to his advanced ships now.

Seeing that there were seven or eight small clippers in the pirate ships, Qi Jin ordered the first squadron to go quickly except for the ironclad ships, while the rest of the ships continued to move at the original speed, and his flagship followed behind the first squadron. The captain of the first fleet was originally to use the ironclad ship as the flagship, but Qi Jin ordered the ironclad ship to stay, so the captain Xiao Hailong transferred from the ironclad ship to the ordinary warship to facilitate command at any time.

After half an hour of rapid marching, Xiao Hailong's first fleet finally came to a place less than a mile away from this battlefield. Xiao Hailong discovered a strange thing, it turned out that he saw that the pirates on the pirate ship were not wearing the clothes of the familiar Ming Dynasty, but wearing Japanese-style samurai clothes, it seemed that this was a wave of Japanese pirates. Xiao Hailong immediately reported to Qi Jin, and Qi Jin instructed to quickly approach all annihilation, and be sure not to let a pirate ship escape.

The first fleet has nine warships, and it is unrealistic to encircle them, and besides, they can run away everywhere on the sea, so Xiao Hailong ordered each warship to find a pirate ship as a target to destroy, and blow up the pirate ship first, and then say, the merchant ship can't outrun the warship anyway, and in the end, even if the pirates climb onto the merchant ship, they can't escape.

The nine warships of the First Squadron quickly locked onto their respective targets, those farther away in order to advance in preparation for artillery fire, and those closer began to prepare for range-setting. When all were in place, the pirate ship found the Ming Navy that was suddenly approaching, they had just patronized the attack merchant ship, found and tracked this merchant ship for several days, they were also a little exhausted, today finally found the opportunity to attack, and forgot about other dangers, in fact, there is no danger at all under normal circumstances, it is nothing more than other pirates taking advantage of the fire to rob, as long as it is not to meet the Dutch fleet there is no accident at all, this is still far from the Penghu Islands, they will not be here at all, That's why the pirates were so bold as to attack the merchant ship.

Unfortunately, the Japanese pirates encountered the newly formed Ming East China Sea Fleet. Xiao Hailong's flagship order flag waved, and the nine warships opened fire together, and the thirty mortars on each warship were not jealous, and the thirty shots flew over, no matter how poor the accuracy was, there would be a target at a distance of less than half a mile. The poor pirate ship has a displacement of two or three hundred tons, and the area on the ship is only more than 100 less than 200 square meters, and a shell will explode more than ten square meters, as long as a dozen cannonballs fall on it, the entire small boat will be covered, so in less than five salvos, the eight pirate ships were all destroyed by the first detachment of the Daming East China Sea Fleet, and either began to sink to the bottom of the sea, or ignited a raging fire, in short, it has completely lost its use value.

On the way to the Daming East China Sea Fleet, the pirates had actually taken control of the merchant ship, and the pirates on the eight pirate ships were just watching the ship, and most of the pirates had already transferred to the merchant ship, but seeing that their pirate ship was destroyed by the fleet that they had just felt in less than two quarters of an hour, the pirates were afraid and hated, and destroyed their own pirate ship at such a distance, and the pirates' muskets couldn't hit so far at all, so they could only look sad.

With the transfer of time, the nine warships of the Ming fleet gradually surrounded them, and the pirates on the merchant ships were lying on the boat gang and preparing to fight with the Ming naval soldiers who boarded the ships. How did they know that Xiao Hailong was not ready to fight at all, the Ming fleet stopped at a distance of about twenty zhang away from the merchant ships, and the naval soldiers lined up in a row and began to shoot at the pirates, after each row of gunfire, there were always a few pirates killed, and the pirates' muskets could not hit such a long distance, so they could only watch being shot, there was no way at all.

After nearly half an hour of shooting, there were no more pirates who dared to stand on the deck of the merchant ship, so Xiao Hailong ordered his flagship to move closer to the merchant ship, and after approaching, he put on the pedal, and let the three rows of soldiers cover with guns, and the soldiers in the front row began to board the Portuguese merchant ship, and the soldiers who boarded the ship were also in a state of covering each other. Xiao Hailong's arrangement was not superfluous at all, just when the first row of soldiers had just boarded the merchant ship, he saw that the middle deck was suddenly turned over, and dozens of pirates rushed out at once, holding * in both hands, and rushed towards the soldiers who had just boarded the merchant ship. The soldiers did not panic at all, and quickly lay down to shoot, and the soldiers on the warship behind immediately began to shoot in a row to cover, and the hand-cranked machine guns on the boat gang also began to strafe, and in less than two minutes, all the pirates who rushed out turned into corpses, and no pirates dared to rush out below.

In the following time, the naval soldiers of the Ming Dynasty successively boarded this Portuguese merchant ship, and the pirates on the merchant ship were already intimidated by the powerful firepower and good tactics of the Ming Dynasty navy, and no longer dared to have any resistance. The pirates were gathered in a corner of the deck, and there were less than thirty of them left, and the Portuguese on the merchant ships were released one after another, and in addition to those killed by the pirates, many of the living and wounded were also carried out, and they were still worried that another wave of pirates would take advantage of the fire and rob them, and they would fall into the hands of others.

Soon Xiao Hailong also boarded the merchant ship, he was a veteran of Qi Jin's army, and he also spent half a year in the Daming official school, and he also knew some Portuguese language, because the school hired a lot of missionaries, Xiao Hailong studied with them for a while, and simple language communication was still possible. Xiao Hailong quickly dispelled the concerns of the Portuguese merchants, told them that he was the navy of the Ming Dynasty, and rescued them, so that these Portuguese people were completely relieved, and they were also very surprised, when did the Ming Dynasty army also establish a navy.

There were many merchants who had lived in Macao for a long time, and they were also proficient in Chinese, and they recounted the process of being robbed by pirates, who had traded some goods from Japan and were about to return to Macao to sell. Xiao Hailong didn't care what the merchants thought, so he asked the soldiers to send more than 20 uninjured pirates to his warship, and the rest of the injured pirates were all beheaded and thrown into the sea. As for the merchant ships, after Xiao Hailong asked Qi Jin, he directly let them go to Macao.