Zheng Zhilong stood on the fleet's flagship, the Changdeok. Pen, fun, pavilion www. biquge。 infoThis is a 14-zhang long giant fortune ship, which was built by Zheng Zhilong from the Spanish royal city of Manila secretly hired Chinese craftsmen, and then combined Western technology with fortune boat technology. The ship has a thick hull and a sturdy structure, with five decks above and below.

The ship was not only huge, but also armed to the teeth, and it was loaded with ten twelve-pounder guns, as well as eighteen eighteen-pounder cannons and eight twenty-four-pounder cannons ordered by Cheng from the Bugarao Cannon Foundry in Macau.

The shell that pierced the ironclad just now was fired from the twenty-four pounder guns on the Changdeok. In the entire Zheng family's fleet, only these eight heavy guns can threaten the ironclad ships.

Of course, only eight heavy artillery pieces could not defeat Li Zhi. Zheng Zhilong held up the clairvoyant mirror he had bought from the Dutch, and looked at the ten ironclad ships that were rampaging in the middle of the fireship, his brows furrowed.

Asia's largest pirate has been roaming the seas for more than 20 years, but this is the first time he has seen such a warship. This Li Zhi's battleship not only can advance and retreat at high speed without sails, but also wrapped in iron armor, which is extremely sharp.

Zheng Zhilong watched one fireship after another being hit or sunk by ironclad ships, and his palms were sweating.

This ironclad ship is so fierce, how many people does the Zheng family's sailors have to die to win this battle?

It wasn't until he saw the two fireships lit on the side of the Yangwei that Zheng Zhilong stretched his brows. With the blessing of the concubine, the fireboat still stuck to it in the end. If such a raging fire burns, can these ten ships not burn?

The ironclad ship is driving so fast, the iron sheet on the outside should be very light and thin, right?

Zheng Zhilong stared at the Yangwei with a clairvoyant mirror, and prayed in his heart that the fire would burn more vigorously and burn down the incredible ironclad steamer.

However, to Zheng Zhilong's great disappointment, the two fireships stuck on the ironclad ship burned for a long time, but they failed to ignite the hull of the ironclad ship.

If the ironclad was just a layer of iron on the outside, it would probably have been burned by these fireships. However, the Yangwei was covered with a thick 3.3 cm armor, how could it be so easy to burn through? The fire burned for more than ten seconds, and it didn't heat up the iron armor, let alone ignite the hull behind the iron armor.

Zheng Zhilong was very disappointed to see that the Tianjin people on the ironclad ship carried a long tree trunk and used the trunk to hit the burning fireboat on the side of the ship, and finally knocked the two burning fireships away.

Zheng Zhilong's face turned pale all of a sudden, and he couldn't help but scold: "Lin Mu is thick."

On the Yangwei, Li Zhi happily looked at the fireship that had been knocked away.

When the Zheng family's fireships were built, the presupposed enemy was a large wooden sailing ship. Probably the Zheng family never thought that their enemy was driving an ironclad ship. Therefore, the steel spikes in the bow of the fireship are designed to be very sharp and slender. This slender barbed hook stabbed deep into the wooden hull, but when it was hard iron armor, it was not very effective.

The slender steel spikes will be dulled when pierced into the iron armor, and the armor-piercing ability will be greatly reduced.

So the sailors on the Yangwei carried the processed cedar trunks and slammed them into the fireboat, and the fireboat was knocked away. The Vanway shook off the two fireships and continued to run forward at a speed of ten knots.

The two-masted sand ship in front of it, which was filled with fire, was still waiting to see if the two fires could burn the Yangwei, but suddenly found that he was already in the front of the Yangwei's collision horn. The sailors on the sand boat panicked and rowed desperately into the distance. But the helmsman of the Yangwei was not ready to let go of the sand boat, and turned the tail rudder to chase the sand boat, and finally hit the stern of the sand boat.

The ramming angle smashed the tail of the sand boat into a mess. The ramming angle was tilted down the bow of the boat, so it pressed the boat butt down into the water all at once. The heavy ironclad ship then ran over from above the sandcraft, and the sandcraft and the dozen sailors on it were completely crushed into the water by the 500-ton ironclad ship, and never floated again.

After a minute of ramming in the fireboats, the cannons on the ironclad were loaded again. The loud rumbling sound sounded again, and in the huge smoke, the fireships near the ironclad ship seemed to be named, and one after another exploded huge sparks. Some of the fireships were ignited by the flowering shells, while others were directly hit through the hull by the flowering bullets and sank into the sea little by little.

The pirates on the ship were desperate.

Where is this war, this is simply the crushing of one era against another.

Fireship tactics failed miserably.

This tactic, which once made the Dutch and the Spaniards defeat and helped Zheng Zhilong defeat Li Kuiqi, Zhong Bin and Liu Xianglao, and let Zheng Zhilong dominate the East Asian seas, was useless in front of the ironclad ships.

These ten ironclads are like ten steel beasts on the sea, and they are not afraid of flames at all.

This kind of war machine that should not be in this era is too terrifying, and continuing to fight is just sending people to death. Although the reward of eight hundred taels of silver is tempting, it is obviously more important to save a small life. After losing more than 200 fireships, Zheng Zhilong's fireship army collapsed.

The fireships no longer rushed towards the ironclads, and one by one they turned their bows and fled to the north and south. The pirates didn't think the hard sails were strong enough, and they rowed desperately one by one, hoping to escape faster.

The fireship gradually dispersed and left. On the opposite side of the ten ironclad ships, there are only more than a hundred Fu ships left.

However, Zheng Zhilong has not yet conceded defeat. No sooner had the fireships withdrawn than more than a hundred fortune ships rained shells on the ten ironclad ships again. More than 600 shells screamed towards the ironclad ship, smashing on the ironclad with a clang.

The distance between the gunboats on both sides was only three hundred meters, and the accuracy of the shells was much better, and the cannons of the Zheng family's fleet made large and small dents in the iron armor. However, except for the eight twenty-four-pounder guns, the other small cannons could not penetrate the iron armor. Only two shells entered the ironclad.

Li Zhi's artillery had just finished firing, and they were still reloading and couldn't return fire. Li Zhi waved his hand and shouted loudly: "Rush up and sink them!" ”

"Whoa!"

The sailors chanted loudly and turned the bow of the ship at the command of their commander-in-chief. The sailor operating the boiler slammed the switch next to the whistle, and the air in the boiler rushed out of the whistle, and a loud whistle came from the Yangwei.

"Woo~~"

This whistle was like the horn of an ironclad charge. When the other nine ironclad ships heard the whistle, they all turned their bows and rushed towards Zheng's Fu Ship Line.

The Zheng family's lucky boats realized that the ironclad ship was about to rush up and hit the ship, so they turned around and ran away in fright. The pirates have all seen the scene of the ironclad ship ramming the fireship just now, and no one believes that a slightly larger lucky ship can not be sunk. These lucky ships were very frustrating when they escaped, and even gave up the sport of turning the rudder and shooting back.

But Fukubune was far from being a match for steam steamers in terms of speed. The distance of three hundred meters between the two fleets, it took only three minutes for the ironclad to catch up.

The Yangwei aimed at a four-deck Fukushi and rushed over, slamming the ramming horn into the Fuku's stern.

When the wooden fortune ship was built, it was economical and practical, where could it withstand such a ferocious collision of the ironclad ship? Only a loud bang was heard, and the tall stern of the Fuchuan was cut from the middle by the Yangwei and split into two pieces.

Sea water poured into the cracked hole at the bottom of the Fukufune, and all of a sudden the Fukufune lost the strength to move forward.

The ramming horn of the Yangwei was still in the aft tower of the Fu ship, and the guns on both sides opened fire. Thirty eighteen-pound flowering bombs were like thirty meteors, shooting at the other two lucky ships that fled in panic on both sides.