Blown by the northeast trade winds, the gray sails of the "Endeavour" swelled to the full, and the bow of the flying scissors paddled briskly across the water, leaving a trail of snow-white waves. Because of www.biquge.info large aspect ratio, complex shape (which of course also means more craftsmanship and higher cost) flying scissor-shaped bow, and a slowly retracted stern, the boat can even reach speeds of about thirteen knots when there is a suitable wind. This speed is still significantly different from the speed of more than fifteen knots of later clippers (in any case, it is impossible for a battleship to make the freeboard as low as the classic clippers), but compared with ordinary warships at this time, it already has a clear speed advantage. You must know that the main battleships of this era generally have a speed of only six to seven knots, and even cruisers, which are known for their speed, generally do not exceed ten knots. And this number is also the number when the ship was first launched, with the increase of the time the ship has served at sea, the bottom of the ship will generally be full of barnacles and the like, so the originally smooth bottom of the ship will become pitted, and the resistance when sailing in the sea will naturally increase greatly, at this time, even if it is a cruiser, most of them will not be able to run at a speed of nine knots.

Compared with the "Endeavour", several of the Spaniard's warships have a heavier historical accumulation, that is, they are all old ships, and their ships are not as good as the "Endeavour". Although more skilled sailors can make up for it to a certain extent, the gap between speeds of less than thirteen and nine knots is still too great for the skill of manoeuvring to make up for it.

The Endeavour soon caught up with the two Spanish cruisers that were still accelerating. However, when trying to seize the T-head, they encountered some trouble, the commanders on the two Spanish battleships were quite experienced, although the speed was not as good as the "Endeavour", but they relied on the appropriate, very predictable turn, but again and again avoided being grabbed by the "Endeavor" to the T-head position. Almost every time, when the "Endeavour" was after all, they successfully formed a parallel voyage with the "Endeavour".

After several fruitless robberies, Old Jack had to admit that in terms of how to control the ships, the level of the Spanish Navy was indeed better than that of the Zheng family and the pirates under him back then, and it was worthy of a professionally trained regular army.

"Since you can't win with skill, let's use strength to break the game." Thinking so, Old Jack gave the order to prepare for an artillery battle.

Old Jack did not immediately approach the Spanish warship, he hoped to control the distance first, take advantage of the larger and more stable ship of the "Endeavour", and give the Spaniards enough damage in a longer-range artillery battle first. Moreover, compared with the Spaniards, the use of the inner barrel integral forging drilling, double-layer barrel, wire winding process, and the use of the latest gunpowder 18-pounder gun, in terms of range and power, compared with the Spaniards' artillery has obvious advantages. Even in terms of range alone, the 18-pounder gun on the "Endeavour" was even much larger than the 24-pounder gun (at the moment the Zheng family did not have the ability to forge the inner barrel of the 24-pounder gun.) If it weren't for the production capacity of the latest 18-pounder, Old Jack would have wanted to replace the 24-pounder gun on the lower deck with an 18-pounder gun. Anyway, in the Far East, there are no ships that 18-pounder guns cannot penetrate.

Ideally, of course, the sails of the opponent's warship would be destroyed with chain shells, but the accuracy of chain shells at long distances is a joke, so at the beginning, the "Endeavour" still used ordinary solid shells. The soldiers will wrap their hair in silk medicine bags. Shoot. The charge was stuffed into the chamber, then pressed into place with a ramrod, a cork tray was stuffed into the chamber, and an 18-pound iron ball was loaded into the barrel.

"Gun No. 1 is ready!"

"Gun No. 3 is ready!"

"Gun No. 5 is ready!"

The shouts of the gunners rang out from each gun emplacement, and at the same time, the commander of each gun raised a small red flag to signal that the gun crew was ready to shoot.

"Let's fire." Old Jack said.

Then a series of muffled thunderous cannons rang out.

"Damn, did you hit it" Gu Jiang stomped his feet in a hurry, and almost fell off the folding ladder.

"Don't worry, when the smoke clears, you can see it naturally. We were upwind, and the smoke cleared quickly. Zheng Sen said.

The smoke quickly dispersed, and Gu Jiang held the telescope and looked at it for a long time, but he didn't speak.

"Did you hit it?" Zheng Sen asked.

"I can't see clearly, it's shaking too much." Gu Jiang said.

The monocular in Zheng Sen's hand has a ten-fold magnification, which is almost the largest available magnification for a hand-held telescope, because at this magnification, the hand is a little unstable, and the image in the telescope is already shaking very much. It already takes a little iron hand to use such a telescope on a boat, and at this time, in order to ensure that he can stand firm on the ladder, Gu Jiang also needs to hold the ladder with one hand, and only hold the telescope with one hand, if he can see clearly, it will be strange.

Zheng Sen smiled, took the telescope from Gu Jiang, and looked at the Spanish warship.

"Missed the first round." Zheng Sen said.

"It's a pity! Hope ......" Before Gu Jiang's words were finished, he was interrupted by a new round of artillery fire.

"One shot from the No. 3 artillery crew! One shot from the No. 5 gun crew! Other near-misses! The lookouts on the mast shouted, their sight not obstructed by the smoke of gunpowder, and they were able to report the results of the shooting as quickly as possible.

"Good!" In the second round of shooting, there was a cannonball hit, which made Old Jack very satisfied. Although Old Jack has always felt that the level of the Zheng family's sailors is not good enough, his evaluation of these half-grown child gunners of the Zheng family has always been good. In his opinion, the gunners who had learned things like Trigonometry were not only significantly higher than those of the pirates under him, but perhaps even better than the gunners in the navies of most European countries. But even so, at such a long distance, being able to hit the target in the second round of shelling greatly exceeded Old Jack's expectations.

Although the distance was very long, the Zheng family's 18-pounder gun easily penetrated the hull of the Spaniard's cruiser (the thickness of the cruiser's hull was naturally sacrificed a lot for high speed), and made two large holes in the Spaniard's side. Shells pierced the hull, and one guy knocked down five or six Spanish gunners, and also broke a cannon. In addition, the fragments of the ship's hull that flew randomly also injured several people to varying degrees.

At such a distance, the shells fired by this huge ship with a red flag that they did not know had such accuracy and power, which greatly exceeded the expectations of the Spaniards. In the confusion, two of the Spaniards' cruisers also began to fire back. The two Spanish cruisers also had two gun decks, and the number of guns was not much less than that of the Endeavour. The Endeavour had forty-two cannons, twenty on each side and a 24-pounder gun on the bow and tail positions. The Spanish cruisers had 32 guns, two 12-pounder guns in the bow, seven 18-pounder guns on each side of the lower gun deck, and eight 12-pounder guns on each side of the upper gun deck. Together, the two ships had twenty-nine guns on the same side (one of which had been destroyed), which was even more than the twenty guns on the Endeavour side alone. But compared to the 18-pounder and 24-pounder guns on the "Endeavour", the guns on their warships were much smaller. Moreover, neither the 12-pounder nor the 18-pounder gun had a comparable accuracy and power at such a distance with the guns of the "Endeavour".

The two Spanish cruisers launched a round of artillery bombardment, only because of the distance, and although their shells were charged with a strong charge, and although they were in a downwind position, the leaning of the ships increased the elevation angle of their guns, but the shells they fired still landed at a distance of several tens of meters from the "Endeavour" - at such a distance, it was almost impossible for them to effectively fire the "Endeavour".

Shortly after the Spaniards fired their first volley, Endeavour fired another volley, and the use of silk kits allowed Endeavour to launch shelling almost twice as fast as the Spaniards. In this round of shelling, another shell hit the opponent.

The Spanish warships began to try to move closer to the Endeavour, because they realized that continuing to bombard each other at such a distance would be almost tantamount to being beaten and not retaliating. So the Spaniards wanted to close the distance to Endeavour as soon as possible in order to launch a truly effective artillery bombardment, even a broadside battle.

But the Spaniards were doomed to disappointment, because the Endeavour was much faster than both Spanish cruisers. This meant that if Endeavour did not intend to engage the Spaniards in close combat, it would have been impossible for the Spaniards to approach the Endeavour at all, and the Spaniards would not have been able to flee the battlefield if the Endeavour had not intended to end the battle. In this sense, the "large cruisers" represented by the "Endeavour" are the natural enemies of ordinary cruisers, just as the largest dolphin, the orca, is the natural enemy of various other dolphins.

As the Spaniards tried to get close to the Endeavour, the Endeavour fired four more volleys in succession, of which only two of those four salvos hit the enemy ships, and only one shell hit each time. But Old Jack knew what kind of power the shells of the 18-inch guns on the "Endeavour" had, and what kind of death could bring.

The "Endeavour" kept an eye on the Spanish cruiser in the lead, and the cruiser that was a little behind, so far unscathed, seemed to be getting closer.

"Tell the captain to let the Spaniards come up a little bit, and besides, get the 24-pounder guns in the lower deck ready to shoot at close range." Looking at the Spanish warship that was trying to get closer, Old Jack gave such an order.