"Enemy ships ahead,"

"One hundred and eighty ton warship,"

"Three hundred and twenty meters away,"

"Speed four-and-a-half knots,"

"The enemy is turning, fleeing,"

"Turn up the muzzle, fast, three turns,"

"Readings?"

"Sixteen and seven degrees, and each section of the rise is raised by 0.2 degrees,"

"Direction,"

"North-southwest brightness, fine-tuning, decreasing by 0.01 degree per section."

"The ammunition is loaded,"

"Reset,"

"Check the reading,","Still within range,Readings unchanged,"

"Check Direction,","Direction Adjustment,Southwest Piece North,Third Degree,"

"Visual estimates,","Estimate the advance of shells at three meters, which can be six meters,"

"Enemy distance," "Enemy distance narrowed to three hundred and eight meters,"

"Enemy speed,","Enemy speed increases, five knots handicap, feel,"

"Ready to fire,","Two cannon salvo,"

"Fire,"

"Boom," "Boom,"

Zhang Qiang sat three meters behind the bow deck gun, fortunately the crew had erected the baffle, otherwise, his freshly washed face would have been blackened by the smoke of the two pretend turntables in the bow and the twelve-pounder twin guns of the pitching device.

This is because he is standing here, and he usually does not pretend to have a baffle in front of him, and in this way, the baffle cannot stop the choking smell of gunsmoke from making his throat uncomfortable.

I coughed several times in a row, waved my palms and fanned them for a long time before the air was fresher.

A salvo, using a flowering bomb, a solid shell, the flowering bomb exploded in the bow of the enemy's ship, and the explosion was turning to flee The front deck of the enemy was in a mess, and the latter solid bullet was different from the flowering bomb after all, in terms of weight, so it was a few meters behind, smashed on the deck near the middle mast near the stern, cut off a few cables that tied the sails, and then smashed on the deck, after piercing the deck, it hit the cabin below, and the huge kinetic energy smashed through several decks in a row, smashing several skeletons, Finally stopped on a bag of grain placed in ballast on the side of the cabin.

The enormous kinetic and thermal energy generated by the gunpowder fire, combined with the heat generated by the friction of flying in the air, caused the grain to begin to burn in less than two minutes, and the smoke drifted out through several holes pierced by the shells.

From a distance, it looked like it had been hit hard, but in fact, the effect of the first two cannons was just a kind of harassment to the enemy.

Twelve-pound shells look heavy, but in the face of a 18-ton warship more than ten meters long and three or four meters wide, it is still an itch in the boots, unless it can hit the steering wheel, the waterline, or concentrate the powder keg and the main mast, otherwise it is only a few holes.

Fortunately, it can smash a few more holes in the hull, so that the structure can not support the thrust of the mast by the wind, so that the mast collapses, and the hull falls apart.

However, the ship was controlled by people, and a large number of deaths of personnel finally affected the handling performance, so the ship in front of it swayed until the mast was blown off, and the sails were not operated, and they fell, affecting the balance of the whole ship, and the speed became uncontrollable, and finally, in a salvo, it was hit near the waterline of the side spin, and then the ship capsized and the people fell overboard.

The Huaxia warship, which was already close to 200 meters, bypassed 210 meters next to it, and used flank artillery salvos to attack other ships, and the bow and stern guns rotated, especially the stern guns, 18-pounder twin guns, fired a salvo together, and the locked cannons went along the backseat of the slipway together, and after passing the backseat of 1.2 meters, they were blocked by the weak fur and wooden slots behind them, and then the tensile rope of the gun body pulled the cannon body back to 0.8 meters after it was tightened.

The artillerymen began to clean the chamber with a cloth-like strip with an error of no more than ten seconds, then put in the powder bag, put in a silk-wrapped wooden stopper, put in the rifled shell, carefully slide in the shell, and then stuffed it tightly with a silk wrap, and the whole strip was compacted and wrapped in one time.

Well, this is a front-loading smoothbore gun with rifling, in fact, the rear-loading gun is still a little immature, so the Huaxia is still a front-loading smoothbore gun with a simple straight rifling.

In a series of auxiliary mechanisms, under the full action of the well-trained artillery of the Chinese naval division, it was able to fire three shells per minute, which should be considered an excellent result compared to the Europeans of the same period.

The most important thing about the Huaxia is to adopt the slender body of the British Galen ship, low buildings, or almost none, do not consider comfort, do not consider how much cargo to load, only consider how to improve combat performance, the whole ship has nearly 200 people, 780 tons, the girder is still made of century-old giant wood, the rest of the keel or skeleton is cast with Huaxia steel, the main part is still wood, the hull is hung with iron sheets, and the bottom of the ship is made of copper rivets.

At the same time, the structure takes into account the excellent structure of the clipper ship, with a hollow bow and a tilted bow hull, and the body size is more reasonable than that of the British Galen ship, six to one.

A mix of Eastern hard sails and Western soft sails, western crosssails and western schooners, noose pulleys lift the sails, reducing the number and danger of sailors climbing up and down to maneuver the sails.

There were still net ladders, which allowed sailors to climb up and down, raised the height of the mainmast, added lookouts, and used runner servos.

The steering gear is mechanically operated using a torsion bar cast iron, which allows the sailor to twist the rudder and change direction without having to use as much force, increasing the agility of the steering gear.

The tilting of the outer side of the hull and the streamlined hull reduce the resistance of the wind and the water, and reduce the adhesion of the waves, so many technologies make the speed of the Huaxia reach a maximum of 14 or 15 knots, and generally can reach a speed of 12 knots.

Ordinary cruising reaches a speed of eight knots, which is three or four knots higher than before.

In short, the Huaxia is generally crossing the ocean at a speed of three or four knots, and it can reach a speed of twelve knots when the maximum wind is strong.

Well, if he didn't have such high requirements for the tightness of the artillery, the breech-loading rifled guns on the road could be used, but it was not easy to use at sea, and the poor sealing could cause fires, and the lightest gunpowder gases could injure the gunners and blow up the powder kegs, which was no joke, and the rocking hull made the rear-loading guns almost synonymous with insecurity.

This is also the reason why after many experiments, Zhang Qiang had to move the rear-loading artillery off the Huaxia.

However, even these front-loading guns are much more sophisticated than the front-loading guns of the Chinese naval division battleships built seven or eight years ago that captured the Fifth Fleet on the opposite side, the firing range is twenty meters farther than the enemy, and the speed is at least one and a half rounds faster than the enemy under the control of highly qualified gunners and sailors.

At this moment, the fifteen battleships of the Huaxia, like wolves entering a flock of sheep, wounded and destroyed thirteen enemy warships, severely damaged one of the enemy's 1,000-ton captured warships of the Huaxia Naval Division, forced one to land, and forced away two enemy warships.

A piece was cut off from the flank of the enemy fleet, and then it went around a large bay, interspersed from the flank of Zheng Zhi's fleet to the side of Du Ge's fleet that was besieging Xie Lan's fleet and the three battleships that were scattered, and then the artillery on one side fired nearly 1,000 shells at the side of the Du Ge fleet battlefleet that was almost densely piled up at a distance of 320 meters, nearly 500 of which fell into the sea, and nearly 500 of which fell into both sides of the enemy's warship, forming a straddle shot, and several shells hit the enemy's hull, making the enemy's battleship busy.

(End of chapter)