The Europeans laid a lot of interception nets and stake rafts in the waters of Greck, and the latter was largely a Chinese copy. In the past coastal defense measures, the Chinese dropped heavy objects under the wooden rafts, sharpened the wooden rafts, and suspended them under the water, which looked not dangerous at all, but they were really hit by ships, which can definitely cause a lot of trauma to the shell of the ship under the waterline.

However, the Europeans did not set up interception nets and hidden piles and wooden platoons on the water surface for six or seven miles, because they also had to communicate with the two coastal defense positions in the west by ship, and without relying on the strength of the ships, if they went by land to communicate with the two coastal defense positions, it would be a complete disaster in terms of logistics and supply.

The fourth-class sail battleship Asalto has been hovering on the west side of the defensive line, and if the Chinese warships come, the role of the Asalto and several other warships on the side is to attract the Chinese to Greck. The gap between the Europeans and the outflow of Europeans is naturally understood by their own people, but the Chinese absolutely do not know, and they will suffer a big loss.

And now the shadow of the Chinese warship is not seen. A huge explosion suddenly sounded on the left chord of the Asalto, billowing smoke and tearing a huge hole in the front of its port side, and the massive influx of sea water had made the weight of the Asal's front end completely exceed the rear end. It was now like a harpoon inserted diagonally into the water, and the rear end of the battleship was already on the verge of being warped out of the water.

At this moment, the middle of the port side of the Asalto exploded again, and a large number of sailors had jumped off the warship like dumplings, and the overall structure of the warship seemed to have been destroyed.

Cuthbert Collingwood was an old navyman, and he could see at a glance that something was wrong with the Asalto. If it had only exploded before, then the warship would have been saved, but now, it's too late.

The difference now is just how the battleship was destroyed. Is it the whole upside-down onion that plunges to the bottom of the sea? Or is it a break in two?

The Asalto is not a newly built sailing ship, the latter can also fill the watertight tank to balance the battleship, so that it can save its fate, where did the sail battleship come from?

The Asalto sank very quickly, and within ten minutes of the second explosion, the bow of the battleship was completely submerged in the sea, and the angle between the entire hull and the sea level had exceeded 30 degrees. Moreover, the 'wound' in the middle of the port side was constantly expanding, and the battleship kept making a 'click' sound, just like a bamboo chair sat on by a 500-pound fat man, and finally there was a loud 'boom', and the entire warship was broken in two. The second half of the volley slapped heavily into the sea......

More than 200 exhausted sailors floated on the surface of the sea, shouting, crying, and struggling with all their might in the icy waters. They didn't know what was going on or where the attack was coming from.

But that's how it ended.

"Is it a mine?" Cuthbert Collingwood's deputy, Rear Admiral Juan Pelos, a Spaniard, said with a frown.

……

At the end of February 1815, the largest naval battle between the East and the West was fought at the southernmost tip of the Americas.

In this battle, Chen Han dispatched a total of 22 sailing ships, 30 battleships of the third rank and above, including a number of second-class and first-class battleships, more than 50 other small and medium-sized warships, and more than 50 logistics transport ships, a total of 165 large and small ships, and nearly 40,000 sailors. There were more than 15,000 troops in the ship, including the 1st Marine Brigade of the Marine Division and the 4th Detachment of the Garrison Army in the south with 6,000 troops, plus a number of reconnaissance units.

This is an extremely powerful naval combat force, and the strength of combat ships alone is close to 30,000, which is four or five thousand more than the strength of the Invincible Armada of the Great Plate Duck in 1588, and the Invincible Armada of the Great Plate Duck is still dominated by gang fighting, and it is only said that the strength of the ships and artillery is far from the same.

In the great battle between the Franco-Spanish combined fleet and Nelson, their strength could not keep up with this number.

Even the fleet of Zheng He recorded in history could not catch up with the scale of this huge fleet.

As its enemy, the strength of the combined fleet organized by the Europeans is also extremely large, not to mention, there are four first-class sail battleships in the sequence of the South Atlantic Fleet, and there are as many as seven first-class sail battleships in the entire combined fleet.

The total number of ships in the north and south of the third-class sail battleships is 52, and with the addition of four second-class sail battleships, the combined European fleet alone has 63 main warships, and the total size of the European fleet is no less than 200 ships.

The Chinese pulled up more than 100 ships to the west, and the capital ships alone were as high as more than 50, which seemed to have taken out the strength to eat milk. The combined fleet originally organized by the Europeans was as high as more than 150 ships, but the quality was much worse, and the number of capital warships was less than half of the current size, and it was only after the Chinese intelligence reached Europe that Britain, Sweden, and Spain reorganized the second batch of 40 sail battleships and rushed to the Americas.

Now the combined fleet of the Europeans is divided into two sequences, the South Atlantic Fleet and the Caribbean Fleet. There is no North Atlantic Fleet, because the battle on the east coast of North America is to see the control of the Wind Islands in the Caribbean Sea.

Nelson, who personally sat in the South Atlantic Fleet, trusted his old comrade-in-arms Cuthbert Collingwood very much, although the Chinese fleet is huge and terrible, but the Chinese fleet has experienced bloody battles in the European world over the years?

Even the French fleet, matured by Napoleon, also had more combat experience than the Chinese.

The latter never fought a real full-scale naval battle. Looking at the leaders of the Chinese Navy, all of them are people who have had combat experience in the past years, but this also proves their lack of real war experience from another side. Although Drake's performance in the First World War Chinese was amazing, it was only a small fleet.

Nelson believed that the small fleet sent by the Chinese to the Drake Passage must be the most elite battle of the Chinese. There is no such thing as comparability and universality.

Nelson knew that China had money, and the Chinese Grand Fleet had large-scale naval exercises almost every year. However, this is like the army's exercise ground, and it is impossible to train the real elite.

Therefore, Nelson believed that Cuthbert Collingwood would be able to block the Chinese west of the first narrow waterway, and even Collingwood would see the opportunity to teach the Chinese an unforgettable lesson.

If they didn't want to keep the Chinese fleet in the Strait of Magellan as much as possible, why did they abandon the second and third narrow waterways? Is it just because the First Narrow Waterway is closer to the Falklands? That's absolutely not.

This is to allow China to penetrate deeper into the Strait of Magellan, so that when they are defeated, the twists and turns of the Strait of Magellan will be able to swallow up more Chinese ships.

But when Nelson, who was in the Falklands, received an urgent report from Greck, he realized that he really underestimated the other party. Although he had received an alert from the Drake Strait Fleet on Estados Island, which was played with by the Chinese like monkeys, the Drake Strait Fleet lost three of its fifteen large and small warships, but failed to take any of the Chinese warships, which had already made Nelson improve his understanding of the Chinese Navy, but when Collingwood's urgent letter arrived in Nelson's hands, he was still shocked.

The arrangement of the first narrow waterway, Nelson was very clear. So he didn't think that the Chinese could break through Greck at all, because it was he who personally commanded the fleet and didn't have the confidence to break through that line of defense. But now Collingwood told him that the Chinese vanguard fleet had broken out of the first narrow waterway, and Greck was surrounded by Chinese land forces and naval warships.

God, how can this be? None of the ships that were attracted by the Chinese' small fleet have yet to 'go home'. Here, the Chinese have already opened the first narrow waterway?

Of course, Collingwood was not surrounded by Greck, he was a naval admiral, when the mines that reached the time blew up the wooden rows, hidden piles, and even the interception nets into a mess, when Chinese warships appeared in the first narrow waterway, when the two coastal defense positions west of Greck were broken by the Chinese from the land, Collingwood fearlessly walked up to the warship, commanding the garrison fleet that was still not weak in his hand to firmly block the east entrance of the first narrow waterway.

The guns of today's naval warships are not quasi-smoothbore guns, and the accuracy of hexagonal guns is still very certain within 1,000 meters.

The overall shape of the first narrow channel is an axe, and its eastern end is a small semicircular depression in the northward direction, and the ships assembled by the European fleet are largely left in this depression waters, but now this depression area belongs to China.

One of the biggest drawbacks of European warships is that it is difficult to attack the enemy without or against the wind. There was no wind in the Strait of Magellan, but for Greck's European fleet, it was always in a headwind situation.

A vantage point - the eastern depression, a small bay, was important for the firepower of the Greck's European battleships, but now it belonged to China.

The Chinese fleet ships carried a large number of land forces, and they could not only surround Greck from land and sneak attack Greck's artillery position, but also land on the north shore of the narrow waterway and drag heavy hexagonal guns for a long distance of one or two miles to establish a covering position on the north bank of the waterway.

In any case, the situation of the Europeans, after the cover positions on the northern shore of the Chinese narrow waterway were established at night, slipped towards the abyss of defeat at a speed visible to the naked eye.

Greek has not yet been captured, the Chinese Marine Corps lacks heavy weapons, and although the Chinese fleet has countless cannons, it is difficult to send the cannons to the land troops outside Greck for a time. Even the closest shore defense position to Greck is four kilometers away in a straight line, and there is a large hilly ice field in between, which is extremely difficult to navigate on land.

Therefore, Greck's situation is stable for the time being, but the battle near the north shore is becoming more and more unfavorable for the European fleet.

The Europeans were inherently unprotected on the northern shore of the waterway, and the area was uneventful and undefendable. At the same time, there are many reefs and shoals around the coastline, which are not suitable for ships to moor. Therefore, after the Chen Han Marine Corps landed on the north bank, they did not encounter the slightest obstacle at all, and the biggest difficulty they faced was the difficulty of land transportation.

And it is foreseeable that in the following days, the Chinese will gather more and more artillery on the north shore.

Nelson received an urgent report informing him of this situation. The focus of the battle did not seem to be on the naval battle he had envisioned, but on land.

There are many reefs and shoals on the north shore of the first narrow channel, which are not suitable for ships to approach, and the terrain is low and flat, so there is no danger to defend. Greck, on the other hand, was a relatively good harbor, and for the first two or three hundred years, it was an important port at the eastern end of the Strait of Magellan, a small port. There was a ready-made Greck, and without much thought, Collingwood had chosen the location at Greck, rather than on the desolate North Shore.

In anyone's opinion, the North Shore has no military value at all. But the Chinese suddenly put the cannon on the sea!

Yes, there were six more monsters like floating batteries on the sea overnight. They each stretched out to sea for one or two hundred meters, and were so heavily armored that shells were useless, and two of them could be covered by reefs, which posed a great threat to European warships in the Gulf.

And the monster-like floating turrets were rapidly increasing in multiples of 'six', and when the number of them increased to eighteen on the third night, Collingwood finally lost control of the place. After dawn the next day, the European fleet was withdrawn in large numbers from the small bay at the eastern end of the First Narrow Waterway, leaving only the easternmost edge in Collingwood's hands.

At the same time, on the front of the first narrow waterway, the Chinese also began to increase their offensive, at least their pressure on Greck was increasing day by day, and Collingwood could only ask Nelson for help.

He can't save Greck now. A few more days of delay, even if a large number of warships from the Falklands arrived at Greck, it would be useless. Even Nelson suspected that when this letter for help was delivered to him, that is, now, the Chinese had already knocked down the first narrow waterway.

Nelson had a headache, and the head of the Falklands South Atlantic Fleet headquarters had a headache.

This kind of attack of the Chinese side is really hell.

What the hell is that floating turret that can be made of hard steel with a hexagonal gun? They can float on the water, the draft is very shallow, and the armor is so thick that even the hexagonal cannon can't move, when did the Chinese come up with such a strange weapon?

The generals present were the best of the European navies, and each of them had experienced the rigors of naval warfare, but at the moment their brains were all sounding red alarms, telling them that their 'memory' was running out.

These naval elites present racked their brains, and they couldn't think of such a BT floating battery, which must be very heavy. How did the Chinese successfully place it in the waters of the north shore after 'flying' it over a dry road of one or two miles in a short period of time?

They also don't know what a floating dock is......

It is not known that the north shore of the First Narrow Channel, though full of shoals and reefs, was large enough for sampans to come and go, and with the iron-timber floating docks, large quantities of material could be transported ashore at a speed far greater than there were no floating docks. Moreover, the Grand Fleet carries a lot of horses, and the carts can also be assembled quickly, as long as the parts are standardized.

With horse-drawn carriages, the transportation capacity on land has been raised by a notch again. And the parts are standardized, and the hollow boxes lined with cork and covered with iron plates can also be formed under the connection of screws, and they even have the spare strength to seal the gaps in the links with melted lead and zinc. After such hollow ironwood boxes were sent into the sea by wooden slides, ten or eight were connected together, reinforced with logs, etc., which was the foundation of a floating fort. As for the recoil of artillery, it was always solved by circular rails, and in Europe a hundred years ago, bow gun/revolving gun technology began to be widely used.

And the outside of the gun is covered with a turret-type iron-wood shell, and a floating battery is freshly baked. In order to resist the wind and waves, plus a few large iron anchors, or batteries not far apart, are locked with iron chains, even the strongest wind and waves will not wash them away. How did the wooden warships of the Europeans come to a hard time with these guys in iron suits?