Somewhere in the South China Sea, October 11, 1641. Pen & Fun & Pavilion www.biquge.info This island has not been inhabited by humans for a long time because there is no fresh water. But not long ago, that changed, when the Zheng family found struvite on the island. In order to mine struvite on the island, the Zheng family built a small base on the island, including a watchtower, a wharf, some warehouses, housing, and a storage tank dedicated to storing fresh water. After the outbreak of war, most of the workers in this stronghold were transferred, leaving only a few men to guard the facilities.

Among the remaining people, Gao Laosan took the lead. Now that the workers are gone, there is nothing to do for a few people to stay on this desert island, except for chatting and farting every day, they can only go to the beach to fish. On this morning, Gao Laosan took a fishing rod as usual and went to the pier to fish on the trestle. The water here is relatively calm, and fishing is a little easier.

After taking the hook, Gao Laosan sat on the trestle and took out a cigarette, which was a new thing that Taiwan only came out of last year, and the habit of smoking was already in the Ming Dynasty, but cigarettes are a new thing, compared to pipes and the like, it is much more convenient, so it is also very popular.

The boy from the Liu family, who was accompanying him, immediately came over, waved the fire sickle and lit a little thing that ignited the fire, and handed it to Gao Laosan, who came up, lit a cigarette, took a deep breath, and then leisurely spit out a puff of smoke.

The boy of the Liu family also sat down on the side, stretched his feet into the seawater, and said to Gao Laosan: "Senior Brother Gao, do you think those Spaniards will fight us?" ”

"The Spaniards are not idle." Gao Laosan held the cigarette in his right hand and took another puff, "If they win the fight, they will naturally fight with those who are important first, and where will they have time to take care of us." If we can't win, where will they have the strength to control us? ”

The two of them were talking like this, when they suddenly saw a group of sail shadows appear on the sea in the distance.

"That's?" The two of them immediately lost their fishing rods and hurriedly ran to the watchtower. The two of them hurriedly climbed the watchtower, held up the only telescope in the entire stronghold, and looked over there.

"Xiao Liu, you look like two teams of ships are fighting!" Gao Laosan said.

"What? Third brother, show me. Xiao Liu immediately came over.

"Here you go." Gao Laosan handed him the binoculars, "It looks like the Dutch are fighting the Spaniards." ”

Xiao Liu hurriedly took the telescope and looked at it, and in the telescope, he saw two warships flying the flag of the Dutch East India Company chasing two merchant ships flying the Spanish flag. Before the outbreak of the war, the Zheng family often hired Spanish or Dutch merchant ships to transport struvite stones, so both Gao Laosan and Xiao Liu recognized the flags of these two families.

The two Spanish merchant ships, in the face of the Dutch warships, can actually do very limited, at first they tried to use the way of sailing downwind, get rid of these two Dutch warships, however, the Dutch's navigation level is not a rookie, they soon caught up, just in Gao Laosan's field of vision, the Dutch warships began to fire warning shots at the Spanish merchant ships.

"Third brother, you see, those two Spanish ships have dropped their sails. They surrendered! Xiao Liu said.

Falling sail in a naval battle is tantamount to giving up fleeing and fighting, which is equivalent to surrendering.

It didn't take long for the two Dutch warships to lay down their boats, and the boats docked with the Spanish ships, and soon after, the Spanish ships lowered the Spanish flag on the mainmast, and hoisted the flag of the Dutch East India Company, and then, the sails were raised again, and the four ships turned in a different direction, gradually moving away from their island.

"Xiao Liu, it seems that most of us have won, otherwise, the Dutch will not do anything to Spain." Gao Laosan said.

……

Just a week after the Dutch warships began intercepting Spanish ships, a Zheng family's fleet sailed into Manila Bay. The boats dropped anchor off the coast of a Chinese-controlled area, and several small boats were lowered from the boats to bring some men and supplies ashore.

These supplies are not weapons and ammunition, but some medicines. These people who came ashore were also not combatants, but engineers. Because not long ago, Spanish warships destroyed the trestle bridge of these Chinese-controlled private ports with artillery fire. Today, the restoration of these trestles is the most urgent thing.

While these ships were unloading, another group of warships quickly approached the military port of Cavite.

Cavite was the most important Spanish military port in Luzon at the time, and to its left and right, the land extended to the sea, forming a small harbor in the shape of a "C". At both ends of the opening in the "C", the Spaniards set up the casemates, which made the port very well defended. However, in later generations, the port's military status declined significantly. And it's not without reason, as the port also has a number of obvious weaknesses.

The main weakness of this port is that the bay is a little too small, and the capacity is limited, which cannot accommodate the large fleet of future generations, and the large number of supporting facilities. At this time, the port also has the weakness of being easily blocked.

When Mahan mentioned the military port in his "Treatise on Sea Power", he specifically put forward such a requirement: there are two independent exits, so that the enemy fleet must use the method of dividing forces to block a military port. The Krabi military port, which has only a narrow exit, is even more easily blocked. And the Spaniard's performance in Zhenyuan Port made this weakness of Cavite even more obvious. It is much easier to block Krabi with a shipwreck than it is to block the port of Zhenyuan.

The commander of this operation was Shi Daxuan. However, this time he was tasked with not blocking the exit from the port of Cavite, but using a fireship offensive to completely destroy the Spanish cruiser that was still urgently repairing in the port of Cavite, clearing all possible obstacles for the subsequent large-scale landing operation.

The fleet gradually approached the Krabi Battery, stopping close to the range of the Krabi Battery's cannons, and then dozens of brand-new fireships circled the back of the warship.

These fireships were specially designed for the expedition to Manila, and they were also the first special fireships in the hands of the Zheng family. In the past, Zheng Zhilong had defeated his opponents more than once by relying on fireship tactics. However, at that time, the fireships were still converted from ordinary boats or sampans. And this time, the Zheng family's fireboat was specially designed. It was a long, narrow ship made of iron and leather, with a length of forty feet, but no more than four feet wide. The aspect ratio has reached 1:10, which looks very much like the Olympic rowing of later generations. It was only in order to ensure stable navigation in certain sea conditions, two small pontoons connected with wooden sticks were added on both sides of the narrow liters, forming a rudimentary trimaran.

On the bow of this ship was mounted an iron barb, which, after ramming the enemy ship, made it possible to hang the fireship firmly on the enemy ship. Behind the iron hook was a long compartment filled with thatch soaked in whale oil, and sulfur and the like. Behind this section of the cabin is a light sboard sail that can be turned, and in order to reduce the weight and make it easy for one person to control, the canvas is even made of expensive silk. Behind the syllaber there are three seats buried deep in the hull, each flanked by two oars. If the wind is right, this kind of fireboat can run seven or eight knots in a short distance, which is much faster than the original fireboats.

Of course, these fireships are not suitable for ocean voyages, or even at slightly higher sea conditions. However, it is relatively light in weight and not large in size, so it can be loaded with more than a dozen of them in one boat with special Fu boats with lifting pulleys, and Shi Daxuan released more than ninety fireboats in one breath.

The imaginary enemy of the Spaniards' batteries in Cavite was mainly the Dutch, and both the Dutch and the Spaniards rarely used fireship tactics on a large scale in the Far East (both the Dutch and the Spaniards were understaffed, and fireship tactics were often accompanied by a large number of casualties, and this attrition was difficult for the Dutch and Spain, which were thousands of miles away, to support). ）

The Spaniards had naturally noticed the Zheng family's fleet at this time, and the Spaniards on the fort were also ready, but the swarming fireships still made them dumbfounded. There are only twelve cannons in their batteries in total, and they are all relatively old cannons, although the structure of the Zheng family's fireship is weak, basically as long as it hits one shell, it will be finished immediately, but the width of the C-shaped gap in the port of Krabi is about four kilometers, although the range of the cannons on the two sides of the battery is enough to hit targets in this range, but that is under the premise of using solid shells, and with solid shells, it is not easy to hit such a small target.

So when the Zheng family's fireships began to rush towards the port, the Spanish batteries on both sides began to fire wildly, however, the rate of fire of the artillery in this era was very catchy, and it took two or three minutes to shoot a shot. And the use of solid shells at a distance of about two kilometers to shoot at a small moving target like a fireship, if it is replaced by my Ming or my Qing gunners, the hit rate under normal conditions is only afraid that it is not even one-twentieth, so the effect of their first round of shelling is very unsatisfactory, twelve cannons fired together, but not a single shell hit.

However, the training level of the Spanish gunners is still very good, at least compared to my Ming or Manchu Qing Dynasty. By the time of the second round of shelling, they had succeeded in hitting a fireboat, and the shells easily broke the boat in two, and the Spaniards burst into cheers from the battery.