In the spring, when the wind is uncertain, it is a good time for the fleet of human-powered propellers to move south, and if it is summer, it is obvious that the large ships in the southeast sea with regular sailing boats can use more speeds, not to mention the risk of typhoons and the like.

The Manila fleet also seems to have gotten the news in advance, and in April the fleet set sail from the harbor around Manila shortly after the main fleet led by Wang Yuan departed from the port of Quanzhou.

In fact, this is also what Xiao Xuan expects to a large extent: the worst result is to play hide and seek with the Spanish fleet in the straits of the entire Philippine Islands, so the goal of this expedition is also very simple, to directly attack the center of wealth in the Spanish Far East around Manila, if the enemy fleet does not come, it will feint, and it is only a task to win reinforcements from the enemy fleet and fight with it.

The fact that there is still a not-so-distant distance between them in terms of intelligence knowledge makes the war not a confusing game, but a head-to-head showdown. After less than half a month of sailing, the 70 warships led by Wang Yuan and more than 10,000 sailors and troops approached not too far from Manila Bay. However, contrary to what was imagined, the first to appear on the horizon were not those obviously large Western-style ships, but more seemed to be about a tonnage of tens to hundreds of tons, similar to about 200 pirate ships in the South China Sea.

At this time, even at sea, the advantage of reconnaissance hot air balloons once again showed obvious advantages, when the enemy army was still about seventy or eighty miles away, the reconnaissance hot air balloons mounted on ships outside the sky discovered the movement of the opponent's ship group, so that those opponents who were good at using the sea horizon to engage at sea did not achieve the surprise advantage as expected.

"It seems that their purpose is to let the pirates of the South Seas confront and test our strength first, and if it is as expected, it is likely that some of these ships have also arranged some unique melee kills in the same way that our troops used to do on the expedition to Tessie. Either by surrender or by surprise, hoping that our mistakes would lead to fatal consequences, when it seemed that a large fleet with twelve Spanish capital ships as the core would launch a surprise attack on our army... Although Wang Yuan is just a good talker, because of this, he is not as aggressive as many people in the Zheng family think, but is much more conservative

"If our army shows too much strength, the enemy will avoid confrontation with our army than it will be..." This is the captain of the flag ship, and one of the staff officers of the general commander, and he can't help but worry. This staff officer, who used to be an officer of the volunteer troops, knew that when the elite main forces of the volunteer units were fighting in the past, the thing he was most worried about was that when they encountered an opponent with obvious superiority in troops, the enemy troops were often easily defeated in the face of powerful firepower, so that the war could not be fought in the true sense of the word.

At this time, Wang Yuan's thinking was much clearer: no matter whether the enemy army would run away or not, the monk would not be able to run away from the temple, so he made up his mind from the beginning, and soon ordered: "Put the ship's gunplate and prepare to meet the enemy!" ”

At this time, the officers and men of the marines and gunners on the ship also began to get busy quickly, and several people cooperated with each other to push each piece of long slatted steel plates weighing at least several hundred catties one by one with a special drum to lower the side of the ship, and the entire sea ship was fully armed with suspended "large plate chain mail" in all directions.

After the fleet spread out in a triangular formation as much as possible according to the pre-drilled arrangement, the hard sails were lowered by a considerable margin, and the speed of the fleet also decreased a lot at this time. As the saying goes, there will be gains and losses, and in the end, the main fleet chose to exchange mobility for combat effectiveness in terms of protection and firepower. However, the Zheng family fleet that followed the team was completely different, choosing to engage as much as possible on the periphery, and retreating into the main formation of forty armored ships when the battle situation was unfavorable.

Seeing that the other party was at least not too troublesome in the battle on the ship and even the speed, many of the South Sea pirates, who originally felt a little frustrated, also became more courageous at this time, because this at least meant that the initiative of the battle was completely on their own side, and they could concentrate their superior forces and firepower to choose to attack the opponent's side, and even if the battle situation was unfavorable, they could retreat with ease.

In this way, when the main ship group led by Wang Yuan had no intention of avoiding the battle, the fleets of the two sides approached at a speed of about six or seven knots, but in an hour or so, about 200 small ships with a displacement of about 1,200 tons and about a dozen tons to 100 tons, flexibly used the wind direction to surround the main ship group led by Wang Yuan from all directions. However, it was clear that the ships in the southwest were stronger and denser, and they also imitated the way the Westerners fought at sea, facing the opposite side of the opposing side with the battle line, so as to maximize their firepower, and first opened fire with various firearms and guns when the distance between the two sides was about a mile or so.

These people have heard that there is a group of extremely powerful archers in the imperial court today, and in addition to firearms, bows and arrows are also common weapons in the battles between East Asian pirates in this era, and even the Zheng family on the other side of the battle to recover Taiwan is also described by some Dutch.

When the main fleet of Nanyang pirates began to carry out operations and firepower, the commander of the Zheng family fleet who followed the action felt that compared with a few years ago, these Nanyang pirates had greatly improved from firepower to fleet combat level, so they were not worried.

"The firepower and archery skills of our army are also different from what they used to be, let the fleet fight!" That's when someone suggested. The officer in charge of commanding the Zheng family's fleet was of course not too passive at this time, and immediately ordered the standard-bearer to give the order to go into battle, from the flank of the dense fleet to the southwest of the encirclement formed by those pirates, and to open fierce fire from the artillery at a distance of one mile as well.

The main artillery force equipped with the Zheng family's fleet is also about 200 catties of body tubes, with a steel shell, and when using some high-quality black powder to launch firepower, it is enough to launch about three catties of lead bullets at a speed of about 70% of the ultimate muzzle velocity of black powder, and the power is not inferior to many jack franc machines, even if it is armor-piercing power at a long distance. Moreover, because of the relatively fast muzzle velocity and the flexible gun mount that is very convenient for personnel to operate directly, the hit rate when firing at sea is much higher than that of ordinary medium and heavy guns, and there is no need to let the timing of firing accommodate the rhythm of the waves.

(End of chapter)