Shells like meteors flew around in the sky with a sharp whistling sound, densely flying around, and from time to time the battleships in the fleets on both sides burst into flames, and then thick smoke rose into the sky, and the flames were even more intense, with the screams of people, and the click of broken masts, and nervous but orderly shouts.

In the light curtain of the day, which slowly opened on the sea, there were countless broken wooden planks, iron sheets, canvases, masts, and human corpses, as well as struggling sailors who had fallen into the water and army soldiers on both sides, this small scale, but very tragic battle, had been fought for more than an hour, and the two sides were entangled, chasing, and dodging each other on the sea within a radius of twenty nautical miles.

Gradually, the Spaniards had the upper hand, because they had a numerical superiority after all, a fierce artillery superiority, although these artillery fires were not very advanced compared to the British artillery fire, most of them were old naval guns that fired solid shells and primary flowering shells, heavy and slow, but the victory was in numbers, the two sides fought at a distance of six hundred meters and eight hundred meters, the British were beaten in disarray, and they gathered in a hurry, and now the huge losses have not allowed them to survive the initial panic, and they are still constantly making blows, they are already a little panicked.

If you want to escape, the Spaniards blocked the route, and you must rush over to escape, at present, it seems that the closer to the Spaniards fleet, the greater their losses, the more conducive to the Spaniards' backward sail battleship combat mode, a salvo of 100 guns, the closer the more powerful, plus the Spaniards are also iron-clad, and what Spain does better than the British is that some places are all iron, thick iron, very few wooden, solid bullets, flowering bombs, as long as they don't hit the key position, even if they are smashed through, Nor is it like wood that flies like sawdust, sweeping down a large number of enemy sailors and inflicting heavy damage on the enemy.

The British are different, although they are iron sheets, iron bones, but the iron sheets are still wrapped in most of the wood, they are not immune to the Spaniards' solid shells, and they are even more unbearable to the Spaniards' round shells, and they have the advantage of speed and artillery, but they can only play a role in the combat distance of the Spaniards and the backward combat methods of the Spaniards.

Most of the more than a dozen 1,000-ton battleships of the British have sunk, and there are only less than ten warships of more than 2,000 tons, including of course two modified sail warships with steam engines of more than 1,000 tons, but the situation of these two sail warships is not optimistic, they were broken by three masts, two masts, and the sails on the mainmast also caught fire, and the deck was in a mess.

It can be said that if there is no steam engine sample that they put down temporarily, what is a steam engine sample, just look at the motorboat of later generations, get a hull, and then get a combination of the engine and the propeller with the fuel tank, when needed, dismantle this and move it to another motorboat, distribute the lower propeller, pull the starting rope, the person sits in the back, operates the tilt angle of the propeller, and then the motorized speedboat will go where.

This is the same, that is, the semi-finished products that are bought and sealed are placed in the stern of the sailboat, and then a water door above the water surface is opened in the bilge, the propeller is put down, and the steam engine is driven, and the helmsman then operates the steering rudder, which must cooperate with the valve of the steam engine, which requires certain operation skills, and the effect is not as good as the large steam engine propeller made into the sail battleship as a whole, and there are some side effects, that is, sometimes the hull does not want to drive in the direction you want to go.

Soon a Spanish three-thousand-ton battleship found these two thousand-ton British battleships as if drunk, and crashed headlong into them in the chaos, the Spanish ships had ramming angles, and they were almost larger than the British bows, which also affected the speed of their ships, resulting in the ships being top-heavy, not as graceful as the British, and it was very convenient to ride the wind and waves, and the speed was relatively fast.

This collision caused a British thousand-ton battleship to almost turn over halfway, sweeping some sailors off their shoulders and falling into the rough sea, splashing waves, and immediately without making a sound, they were swallowed up by the huge waves.

The whole ship was dazed, and the bow of the Spanish battleship with the ramming angle embedded in the middle of the British hull and half, lifting the British ship to the top of the waves, and rushing out about fifty meters away.

The height of the ship was raised, even half a body short of the Spanish 3,000-ton battleship, the Spanish soldiers shouted and flew through the cable, jumped onto the British battleship, shouted, and harvested the lives of the British who resisted in a hurry with the short fire guns and short swords in their hands, and after a fierce fight, the British were taken prisoner and taken to the Spanish ship.

The Spaniards searched the cabin and carried all the valuable things of the British onto their warships, and many valuable things, such as guns, were dismantled and transported to their own ships, and then some Spanish soldiers found coal bunkers and steam engines in the bottom silos, and after the captain came, he ordered them to be dismantled and transported to their own ships, and all the prisoners in the bunkers were strictly guarded and put in the bottom compartments of the Spanish warships.

The Spanish battleship began to retreat, and forcefully pushed the British thousand-ton battleship away from the hull with guns and sticks, the British battleship turned over on the sea, splashed huge waves, and buckled on the sea, the Spaniards opened their guns on one side at a distance of less than fifty meters, and after a row of guns, the British battleship was sunk in the sea, if it was not too badly damaged when it was hit, this ship was estimated to become the first British ship captured by the Spaniards, but unfortunately the damage was too serious, so it had to be abandoned.

As soon as the battleship left the battleship, a British battleship, and a battleship of the size of the sunken British battleship rushed over, a cannon broke the rear mast of the Spaniards, as well as the rear mast, the rear bow of the Spaniards was in a mess, more than 30 sailors were killed or wounded, and the main guns were almost broken, the Spanish ships fled in confusion, while repairing the main guns behind, half an hour later, the front and rear main guns opened fire together, and at a distance of 800 meters, hit another ship pursued by the British, directly paralyzed where.

Another thousand-ton battleship, was swept by one side of the artillery more than half of the deck, also a silent stop where, the Spaniards turned around in embarrassment, at half speed, crooked course approached the two paralyzed British battleships, the first to arrive was a two-thousand-ton British sail battleship, leaning up, the British suddenly launched a counterattack, first rushed to the deck of the Spaniards, the Spaniards were just about to jump ship to attack the soldiers were killed and wounded, the Spaniards lined up from the cabin of the army soldiers fired a volley, killed most of the British who jumped overboard, and then many sailors jumped from the top of their heads, from one side of the ship, the British warship, with cold weapons in one hand and short guns in the other, and the cruel battle was also carried out on the British ship.

The army soldiers killed the remaining British soldiers who jumped ship and raided, and the army soldiers also jumped over, blocked the exit of the cabin with a platoon of guns, and cleaned the enemy's cabin one by one, while the artillerymen returned fire on the British warships harassing around, the intensity of the battle, the degree of danger made both sides very nervous, the Spaniards were divided into two factions, one faction wanted to quickly disengage and get out of here, and the other faction could not give up the soldiers who had already boarded the British ship, nearly 80 Spanish soldiers and officers struggled on the British ship of more than 2,000 tons, the British battleship with almost three hundred sailors and army soldiers was not easy to clean.

However, the harassment of the British was finally not too intense, after all, the British had fewer ships, and the Spaniards even if there was a gap in technology and equipment, but there were many ships, and all the warships were dispatched this time, thirty-five warships.

The armed merchant ships converted from merchant ships had all been sunk or captured by the British in a single contact, and more than a dozen of them had been lost, but there were still more than twenty of them, and the British now had only eight warships left, two thousand-ton warships, and the thousand-ton warships with steam engines were sunk or paralyzed, and the rest swam over from time to time, fired a few shots, and then left the battle and went to fight with other Spanish warships.

The battle has been fought until now, the Spanish battleship is thick-skinned, the British ship is fast, and the artillery is sharp, but the two heavy guns on the Spanish battleship are not vegetarian, compared to the artillery on the British battleship, it is much more powerful, and it is far away, the British can beat a few cannons, maybe they can damage the Spanish battleship, but the Spanish battleship does not talk about the backward guns on the hull and deck, just two heavy guns in the front and rear, can make the British die with one shot, after all, the British hull is covered with iron sheets, Most of the hulls in Spain were made directly from thick iron sheets.

If it was the Spanish fleet that was attacked on the wide sea, perhaps the Spanish fleet suffered heavy losses, but now it was the Spaniards, who outnumbered the British, who attacked the British warships by a third of the number, and threw the British into close naval battles, so it was the British warships that suffered heavy losses.

Dealing with this battleship, in the face of the harassment of the British battleships that were wandering around and the battlefield was already very wide, Spain sank the British battleship in the same way, and then turned around and turned to another British thousand-ton battleship that was paralyzed, and before they could get close, the British who had lost their fighting spirit hoisted the white flag, and the Spaniards sent dozens of people to bring some prisoners over, leaving a few people to assist the sailors and soldiers in taking care of the ship and repairing it, and then the British ship, which also had a small sample of a steam engine, was driven away, under the cover of this battleship, out of the battlefield, it was also the first British battleship captured by the Spaniards.

At this time, the scarred Spanish battleship did not want to fight, and asked the flagship for instructions, and the commander of the fleet on the flagship, Montrow, allowed them to escort the wounded Spanish battleship out of here, so the battleship escorted three wounded battleships, dragged a seriously wounded battleship, and took the captured British battleship out of contact and staggered towards the Bay of Bengal.

With the departure of these warships from the battlefield, the British had basically widened the battlefield with few warships left, and they also realized their advantages and disadvantages, and continued to move around.

The remaining warships of the British were all 2,000 tons to 3,000 tons, only six warships, but most of them were new warships from the mainland, sail and steam warships, and two battleships with guns and size advantages, and the Spaniards had fifteen warships left, three sunk, five damaged, and most of the remaining fifteen warships were also wounded, and finally one of them escaped the battle with the wounded battleship and the rescued sailors and soldiers.

The battlefield was wider, and the British began to gain the upper hand. In general, neither side was victorious, the Spaniards fought fourteen of the thirty-five ships, and the British fought six of the twenty-three ships, but the British still had the upper hand in terms of quality, and now the situation was in favor of the British, and the Spaniards did not realize this.

(End of chapter)