After Ouyang Gui ordered the fleet to split into two, the main fleet began to turn to the left, preparing to meet the enemy fleet head-on, while the transport fleet led by Colonel Li Yanxi turned to the right, preparing to continue to cross the sea and land.

Although the transport fleet is full of unarmed civilian ships, and there are only two armed ships with less than 100 tons of warships to cover and support, the most dangerous is definitely not them, but the main fleet.

The main fleet consisted of 16 armed merchant ships and more than 30 small ships, and although this number seemed to be more than 50, in fact, the firepower of the entire fleet could not even match the firepower of a ship of five or six hundred tons.

On the opposite side, the Ming army sailors had more than 20 large ships and more than 30 small boats.

Of course, the ships of the Ming Army's naval division are not large, and the big ships are only ships of more than 100 tons, and the firepower of the equipment is just like that.

But there must be a fact that needs to be paid attention to here, that is, the Ming army sailors are weak, and they are also professional sailors, and the Datang Navy has only played the navy for half a year, and most of the naval officers and men in it are transferred from the army, except for a few small-scale inland river battles with the Ming army sailors in the Xijiang Valley, there has been no large-scale naval battle at all.

This can be seen from the formation of the fleets of both sides.

Although the Ming naval division on the opposite side had more ships, their formation was more dense, and the spacing between the ships was relatively balanced.

However, on the side of the main fleet of the Tang Navy, although the number of ships is small and the morale is extremely high, this still cannot hide the fact that they have no combat experience, and even the formation of the fleet cannot be maintained.

When the main fleet began to accelerate and sprint to gain the upper hand, the formation of the fleet was chaotic, and the sixteen large ships led by Ouyang Gui himself were all fine, but the more than thirty small ships became a mess.

However, the chaos returned to chaos, but they still rushed towards the Ming army sailors who were stronger, more numerous, and more experienced than them without hesitation!

If there is any advantage between the Tang Navy and the Ming Army Navy at this time, it is only morale!

Most of the army officers, whether they are officers or soldiers, are transferred from the army, but the Datang Army is the existence of the Ming army, whether it is confidence or morale is very high, so even after they changed careers to become the navy, it is still retained.

So even if they are in a weak position, they still rush forward without hesitation!

"The enemy ships are also starting to turn!"

"They want to gain the upper hand with our fleet!"

"Not good, their position is more favorable to seize the upper hand!"

In the command room on the Lianzhou, a group of naval staff officers used various tools to make calculations on the drawings, but the more they calculated, the more ugly their faces became!

Ouyang Gui naturally heard their words, and immediately turned around: "What's the matter, can't you grab the upper hand?" ”

At this time, Colonel Shi Dian, the chief of staff of the Second Fleet, walked over and frowned slightly: "Sir, the situation is not very good, the enemy fleet turned ten minutes ago, according to their course and speed, they will seize the upper hand position before us, which will be very unfavorable to our subsequent operations!" ”

Ouyang Gui: "What is their speed and heading?" ”

Shi Dian: "The enemy ship has a course of 315 degrees and a speed of 6 kilometers!" ”

Ouyang Gui: "What about us?" ”

Shi Dian: "Our course is 225, and the speed is 5 kilometers!" ”

Ouyang Gui paused slightly at this time, and then said: "Since you can't grab the upper hand, then don't grab it, turn to 180 degrees!" ”

Shi Dian looked anxious: "In this way, they will be able to seize the upper hand and deal a blow to our army!" ”

Ouyang Gui said: "They go to seize the upper hand, we will cross the strait directly, this is not just irrelevant, don't worry, what is the task of my main fleet, is to entangle the enemy fleet, not to annihilate the enemy fleet!" ”

At this time, Shi Dian showed a look of sudden realization: "Yes, why do we have to take the initiative to find them, just block them, this upper hand is not and there is nothing, they will definitely not sit back and watch our fleet directly cross the strait, they must give up grabbing the flavor and then kill to intercept us!" ”

Ouyang Gui said: "That's right, don't worry, this battle won't be over for a while!" ”

Shi Dian also nodded slightly and said: "What my lord pointed out is that with the speed of our two fleets gathering eight kilometers and five or six kilometers an hour, it will take an hour to get closer to each other, not three or five hours, this battle will not be over, and these few hours are enough for the transport fleet to cross the strait!" ”

Listening to Ouyang Gui and Shi Dian for an hour, one mouth for a kilometer, if it was the people of the Ming Army's sailors, they would be puzzled, they couldn't understand this!

This is naturally because the unit of measurement used by the Datang Navy Division is relatively special, not to continue to use the traditional old system, nor is it a foreign system commonly used by foreigners, but a new system advocated by Li Xuan.

The unit of measurement of the Tang Dynasty was originally used in the old system, but the old system was very unaccustomed to Li Xuan, and the regulations of the old system were not uniform, the same is one foot, and there are even various lengths, such as the construction ruler and the tailoring ruler, which are quite different from each other, and this is extremely inappropriate for the development of industrial technology.

Therefore, Li Xuan began to advocate the use of the new system as early as the Huangzhushan era, and put on the political propaganda slogan of the new dynasty and the new measure, so although no one except Li Xuan knew and used the new system of measurement units before, but now it is widely active within the Tang Dynasty.

Of course, it is not possible to completely replace the old system overnight, or even never.

Therefore, the unit of measurement of the Tang Dynasty is more complicated, and the old system and the new system are mixed, so it is often seen that when the troops use the distance unit, they use centimeters, meters, and kilometers, but occasionally they also use units such as li, zhang, and step, and at the same time, the weight unit still uses the old system, and the time unit is the old system and the new system in parallel.

In this regard, Li Xuan was naturally not satisfied, for the needs of scientific research, he had already asked people to formulate a set of new system promotion plan, to replace the traditional old system with the thorough metric system commonly used in later generations, and lay a measurement foundation for the subsequent scientific development.

Because the Ministry of Industry and the Army were established relatively early, it is more difficult to change their habits, but the new affairs of the Navy are easy to change, if it is not for the consideration of the unification of models, the Navy wants to change the weight statistics of artillery to the metric system, and it is also distinguished by the caliber and the length of the body tube, and it is no longer directly distinguished by the weight of the shells as in the past, nor is it distinguished by the weight of the artillery like the Ming Army.

Moreover, this idea has not been given up by the Navy, and the Navy will officially raise the agenda in the future, and Li Xuan also supports this.

After Ouyang Gui ordered the main fleet to turn to the 180 direction, the main fleet became sailing due south, and due south was Qiongzhou Island.

As for the transport fleet, it is about eight kilometers to the northeast of the main forces.

The Ming Navy Division on the opposite side also discovered the turn of the main fleet of the Second Fleet for the first time, after all, the weather is sunny now, and the vision is very good, even if there is no telescope on the side of the Ming Army Navy Sailor, but relying on visual sight can also be the first time to discover the turn of the Second Fleet of the Tang Navy.

So, they also quickly turned and sailed northeast.

And the turn of the Ming Army's Naval Division was almost the same as Ouyang Gui expected, the Ming Army's Naval Division gave up seizing the upper hand, but went directly to intercept.

Of course, with the current distance between the Ming Army's naval division and the transport fleet, it is impossible for them to find the transport fleet eight kilometers northeast of the main fleet of the Tang Navy.

After the two sides turned again, the distance between the two sides continued to close!

However, at about 11 o'clock in the morning, the wind direction changed to due west, and after Ouyang Gui learned about it, the first thing he did was to order the main fleet to turn to the southwest, and the wind direction was due west at this time, and at this time, the Ming army naval division was about one thousand meters south of them.

The Ming army sailors on the opposite side were not to be outdone, in fact, they had to turn to grab the wind earlier.

The ships at the front of the two sides have been together for less than a thousand meters, and they are still approaching, and the big ships on both sides are still continuing to turn, but the small boats of the Ming army have already broken away from the brigade one after another, and are rapidly approaching the main fleet of the Tang Navy.

These boats are faster and more agile in steering, and even sailors on board can paddle to speed them up.

When the small boats of the Ming army moved, the small boats temporarily recruited in the Second Fleet of the Datang Navy also acted, and the goal of the small boats on both sides was quite clear, that is, to rush towards the big ships of the other party!

And unsurprisingly, the tactics used by both sides are similar: fire attack!

The fleets of these two sides are actually similar, and the capital ships are not professional gunboats, they are all traditional sea ships such as Guangzhou ships, Fu ships, and sand ships, and they are not equipped with many artillery, so it is difficult to sink enemy ships by artillery alone, and the best way is naturally to attack with fireboats, and then directly lean on them for gang jumping.

Although the two sides have not yet engaged in battle, the smell of gunpowder is already very strong with each other, and the gunners of the capital ships in the Second Fleet have already loaded their guns and are waiting for the order to open their guns.

When the fireships of the two sides were still continuing to maneuver rapidly and looking for opportunities, the main fleets of the two sides had only gathered about 500 meters at this time, and this distance was already the effective range of the nine-pound guns on the Lianzhou.

Although he knew that the hit rate would be very low, in order to boost morale and suppress the opponent from the firepower first, Ouyang Gui still ordered to start shelling!

With Ouyang Gui's order to start shelling, it was also the prelude to this sea battle in the Qiongzhou Strait!