The Zheng family's fleet has an average of sixty or seventy people in each sea ship that can be used as a gunner or gunner auxiliary, which also allows a not too big sea ship to deploy twenty main light guns, and the gun carriage composed of the easy-to-operate drum disc on the side of the ship is more than this, which makes the artillery actually very flexible to concentrate on either side in actual use, even if there is not enough space in the stern or even the bow of the ship, the barrel that can barely be carried by many people can also be filled inside. After loading, it fires as much as possible in a way that fires like a Furlong machine's sub-gun.

In this way, although the Zhengjia peripheral fleet outside the formation of the main ship group was only about 30 ships of about 4500 materials and about 200 tons to participate in the battle, and the main firepower was only 600 light guns of about 200 catties, but in just about three minutes after the engagement, more than 4,000 powerful shells were fired, and six or seven hundred shells were also fired into the hull of the target ship at a distance of about one mile.

If these three-pound lead bullets with a speed of sound are attacking Western capital ships of about one or two levels in this era, they may not pose much threat to the side of the ship, but for a small ship of one or two hundred tons of Oriental mode, it can easily kill and injure the personnel in the cabin with a lot of wood chips and debris, and under the fierce shelling, in a short period of time, seven South Sea pirates approached to a distance of about a mile The ship's firepower was completely suppressed, and the personnel also suffered serious damage, although only two of them sank because of the flooding. But the remaining five ships were almost incapacitated.

Such fierce and accurate artillery fire also frightened the dozens of South Sea pirate ships approaching from other directions, and they pointed to taking advantage of the advantage of the upper hand to display fireship tactics at a long distance, and strive to achieve a good result, and the main ships no longer dared to approach too closely.

It's just that those fireships don't have too strong masts, and they often get close to one or two hundred paces, and when the light guns on the ships have a great hit rate, they are sprayed out of fierce fire, and the masts lose their mobility.

At this time, a violent explosion suddenly sounded on the sea, and it was a fireboat about fifty or sixty paces away from the main force of the Zheng family's boat regiment that detonated the gunpowder it was carrying. However, although the huge explosion brought a huge shock to many sailors and officers and men on board, it did not have much actual killing effect after all.

At the same time, the main force of the ship group led by Wang Yuan also engaged in a confrontation with the approaching Nanyang pirate boats, and in the southwest direction, there were only less than one-third of the ships that could be effectively covered within 300 paces, about 12 ships, but they had to face the siege of nearly 100 enemy ships.

At this time, the quality of the ship's gunners was more fully reflected at this time. After a lot of sea training, the rifled light artillery gunners on the main ship regiment have been able to skillfully adjust the angle of the gun body and decisively deploy fire under the condition of undulating waves, and with a straighter trajectory, the probability of hitting the approaching enemy ship at a distance of about one mile is almost about 40%. In addition, the rate of fire could be maintained as much as possible while concentrating fire on one side, but more than 2,000 shells were fired in about three minutes, and at least about 7 or 800 shells were hit by enemy ships.

However, when attacking those Nanyang pirate ships that are not particularly strong, the limitations of this rifled gun are also reflected, that is, the after-effect of killing is not as good as some three-pound smoothbore cannon shells. Although many enemy ships were hit by a lot of shells, and many crew members and gunners were killed and wounded, they were still able to maintain decent combat effectiveness. Under the hit of seven or eight hundred shells, only one enemy ship sank, and the other seven ships only retreated slightly, but many more enemy ships approached a distance of about half a mile.

In the past naval battles, even the distance of about half a mile was the distance at which the backward artillery equipped by many traditional water giants in the East was difficult to effectively hit and exert its effectiveness between the waves, but when those South Sea pirates were equipped with a lot of land light artillery and even heavy arquebuses with not bad performance as weapons on ships, even above the sea began to have some threatening capabilities at this distance.

It was only at this time that the effectiveness of the ship's gunplate was also fully exerted, and in the face of the hanging steel plates with a thickness of more than two cents and a decent quality, it was almost impossible for those heavy arquebuses fired from a distance or even the light mounted guns that spread fire on the ship to pose much of a decent threat.

And at this distance, the elite archers on the ship are also in a position to deploy fire. A succession of three or two heavy arrows flew accurately into the opponent's ship under the firing of one stone, two or three strong bows. Completely different from ordinary archers, the training beyond the standard allows the ship's archers to shoot about half of their bows and arrows at sea at the maximum limit of their projectiles. In less than two minutes, more than 6,000 arrows were thrown at the approaching enemy ships, and at least 100 people were either killed or maimed.

But even so, it seems that it does not play much role in the face of large ship groups, and at sea, the same force has become fundamentally different in terms of protection and force dispersal.

When the ships of both sides approached to a distance of about 100 paces, the situation began to become completely different, the brave and accurate fire of the archers, coupled with the dense and accurate fire of rifled guns with specially made shotgun canisters, began to make it difficult for many enemy ships to exert direct firepower, and even carry out some basic operations such as releasing fireships and blasting ships. The heavy mortar cannons equipped with each piercing began to fully develop their firepower at this time, and the heavy pottery bombs of up and down 400 catties were also fired at a distance of 100 paces away, and the momentum of the continuous explosion of hundreds of kilograms of black powder finally stopped the swarming sea of ships after sinking three approaching enemy ships, so that the group of South Sea pirate ships that did not have much determination to fight to the death had to be contained at a distance of about 100 steps to half a mile.

At this time, the Spanish naval officer, who was watching the battle from a distant mast, also had some idea in his mind: "The enemy's warships do have some doorways and have a strong ability to concentrate fire, but that's all. It was a mistake for them to abandon a heavy projectile for effective and fast accurate shooting at sea. In this way, as long as our army effectively maintains the initiative, it may not be difficult to achieve victory, as long as it deploys firepower at an effective distance. ”

(End of chapter)