Admiral Sidney of the Allied Forces did not or did not expect that the enemy's small ships could effectively organize and communicate at night, as if the difficulties brought by night did not exist. I didn't expect the speed of these small ships to be so fast, and in just two hours or so, it was estimated that there were as few as 20,000 or 30,000 or as many as 350,000 troops to complete the landing. If the main forces of the navy cannot take this opportunity to inflict heavy losses on the landing enemy on the shore, then not only will the future prospects of many people be slim, but even many relatives in their hometowns will encounter a huge threat.

Therefore, the main forces of the coalition navy, led by Sidney, did not intend to wait until after dawn to act, but had long been prepared for a night battle with the enemy. The ship is not only equipped with a lot of cannons, but also equipped with a lot of mortars and even grenades to threaten targets approaching at close range.

Of course, the main targets of the coalition fleet were the strong eastern enemies who seemed to have just completed the landing, and the final outbreak of the decisive battle at sea seemed to be that the clippers of those attackers were largely more proactive.

After just a short rest, after unloading a lot of supplies, although many of the crew were a little tired at this time, they still showed a more obvious speed advantage than they seemed to have on the previous voyage. The only problem was that it was difficult to detect enemy targets at night, and the battlefield was too extensive, so the initial engagement was rather scattered. In many places, paddle steamers, which often took the initiative to attack, fell into the fierce siege of enemy ships with absolute superiority in strength and tonnage, and had to break through.

However, in more cases, it is always possible to form a combat situation of more than five or six 10,000-pound boats against one of the enemy's main sea vessels. If the naval battle is conducted during the day, such a gap is too great, and the difference in tonnage is at least ten times higher, and the firepower and strength are also at a disadvantage. However, with the advantage of initiative and speed, the situation of the engagement was much better than previously expected.

When encountering an enemy ship at close range, the gunboats in the regiment that have already been loaded with firepower often first launch a fierce fire at close range with chain shells to minimize the speed of the enemy ship, which is already very difficult to operate at night, and then move as far away from the enemy ship as possible and prepare for the second round of cannon fire. Because the distance of the cannon is often about sixty or seventy paces, about a hundred meters, so although the effective fire with the bow heavy gun in a small boat is often too affected by the waves, it can also have more than half the hit rate. It was only after most of the Allied fleet's sailing ships had received a noticeable impact on their sailing that the siege was finally launched.

At the beginning, the attacking boats still underestimated the firepower of the enemy's sailing ships to resist at close range, and the explosion of fierce flowering howitzer shells and even the fierce fire of heavy shotguns, although many small boats approaching close range, although the shells protected by iron sheets could barely cope with the threat of the enemy's sea power, but many of the paddle wheels were damaged under the enemy's fierce fire and bullet rain, so that some of the attacking ships fell into passivity.

Soon Zhou Dayong made up his mind, and began to give the order to launch a blasting attack when he saw that the initiative in the naval battle was completely in his hands. Suddenly, flames erupted on the surface of the sea, and the huge black powder rocket power pusher blast ship approached the opponent at an unexpected speed like a suicide attack at a range of about ten feet. Subsequently, in the violent explosion of thousands of pounds of black powder, many of the capital ships of the coalition forces also sank into the water very quickly under this ferocious attack.

Correspondingly, the effective propulsion range of about 10 zhang seems to be too close, and many officers and men who jumped into the water after igniting the fuse of the propulsion rocket were either stunned by the violent explosion, or were swept into the sea along with the whirlpool brought by the sinking enemy ship after being stunned. However, despite the cost of hundreds of casualties and hundreds of small boats, the demolition attack was still much better than previously anticipated.

And the actual combat situation of the night naval battle also seems to confirm some of the previous speculations: in this era, firepower has not yet largely overwhelmed the protection of ships. It is very difficult to sink an enemy ship in an artillery battle with the guns of a small ship, even when the maneuverability of the enemy ship is clearly limited to passivity. Although the blasting attack inevitably cost many brave officers and soldiers, it eventually achieved a huge victory at sea with acceptable casualties.

When the light of dawn had already appeared on the way home, the fleet of small boats that had pursued the remnants of the fleeing enemy ships did not dare to continue the battle on the night sea, and approached the shore as fast as possible to the shore where the fireworks were signaled from time to time, and finally completed the crossing before the dawn of the day.

Although it is difficult to assess the results of the naval battle near Dover because many ships were sunk, it was undoubtedly a clear victory in the naval battle that only with a total of more than 2,000 casualties and losses of about 40 or 50 capital ships and even more than 40 cruisers were sunk in the night battle. Many officers and men could even be sure that, in such a situation, even if the sky was completely bright, the enemy's main forces at sea would not necessarily have the courage and determination to engage the convoy in the daytime.

What made Xiao Xuan also have some admiration was that after suffering such a heavy loss, the remnants of about 100 ships of the coalition naval forces still did not seem to have lost hope, and they were ready to find the field during the day while carrying out a supporting artillery bombardment in Dover.

After all, Xiao Xuan did not plan to risk a confrontation with the main force of the coalition navy, which still had a considerable size during the day, but only at dusk did he order the entire ship group to set sail again to reinforce the other side of the strait as quickly as possible.

At this time, the fierce fighting between the more than 35,000 officers and soldiers who landed and the main force of the coalition forces gathered in the area of Dover also entered a white-hot level. At daybreak, at least 3,000 naval guns of the coalition naval fleet once again launched a fierce artillery bombardment, but this time it was not all live ammunition used to attack the fortifications, but many heavy shotguns weighing about half a pound, which inflicted considerable damage on the landing force that was not yet fully fortified in a very short time. After noon, the main force of the coalition land force, which had been prepared for a long time, gradually gathered about 70,000 troops, and cooperated with the main force of the coalition fleet on the sea to launch a flanking attack on the landing force.

(End of chapter)