"Boom ......"

A huge fireworks bloom on the deck of a Portuguese ship. In the roaring explosion, the bodies of many people were lifted by the powerful shock wave, and the powder keg on their deck was detonated.

Several people from the command platform threw themselves and crashed into the bulkhead. The helmsman in the podium was the first to recover from the explosion, and the pain in his forehead was the first thing he saw was a podium that had been destroyed by a storm.

Scraps of wood, charts, notepads and other papers, as well as people in the command stand, were swept into the corners like garbage.

But luckily, no one died, everyone was humming, but apparently all were alive. The captain's arm was swept by a piece of broken wood in the explosion just now, but it was obviously not very deep into the flesh, and there was not much blood flowing. He wasn't injured in the upper half of his body, but he was scratched by something on his thigh, and the blood stained his pants black and red. It's quite unusual!

The upper half of the body that was completely exposed only hit on the forehead, but there was no blood, and the lower body hidden by the wall of the ship shed a lot of blood.

The helmsman hurriedly supported the captain, who did not know where the strength came from, but stood up, and staggered to the window with the help of the helmsman, and the thick black smoke appeared in front of their eyes.

The bow of a merchant ship was hit, and the bow of the triangle was like a bite. Thick black smoke rose, and there was a faint flame in it.

The ship's sailors were already pumping seawater with water pumps to fight the fire.

Busyness and black smoke became the theme of the foredeck at this moment. also made the captain really understand the fact that he really had no possibility of escaping.

"Your Excellency, the Chinese sent a message asking us to drop our sails and surrender, as long as we no longer resist, they guarantee the safety of our personnel."

A white sailor with no trace of blood on his face ran over and said.

A look of pain flashed across the captain's face, who had already witnessed the terrible situation in the bow, what could he do in this situation, where would he be the fish and the flesh for the sake of the sword? No other way.

And Guan Tianpei on the Egret looked at the turret on the bow at this time, and his heart was full of satisfaction.

After seeing the tragedy of the bow of the Portuguese merchant ship, Guan Tianpei was only glad that the front and rear main guns on the Egret were turret structures. With this turret, he no longer had to worry about the bow and stern being blown up by a powder keg that had been detonated.

Although the turret structure is ugly, the overall layout of the warship also looks stiff, and the battleship weighs dozens of metric tons, affecting the speed, coal storage and other performance, but now this result is enough to prove the wisdom of this choice.

When night fell, there was no trace of Portuguese merchant ships on the sea, not even a small dinghy, except for large swaths of floating chores and debris.

However, Guan Tianpei was not a bloodthirsty maniac who killed people without blinking, and the Portuguese merchant ship, full of one or two hundred sailors, was thrown on the deck of the Egret and the Swift instead of sinking to the bottom of the sea.

The two ships left the entrance to the Strait of Magellan and headed north. Then in the dark, somewhere near the coastline, stopped. One or two hundred captives were untied, and after a while, they were thrown into the sea.

The place was only three or four miles from the coastline, and it was not a problem for sailors to climb to the shore.

In fact, this is not the first group of Europeans to be 'sent' ashore by the advance fleet, the previous ambush in the Le Maire Strait, and the six or seven hundred European sailors who were finally collected on the sea, were sent to Estados Island by Cai in this way. It is also not known if they have now been discovered by the Europeans.

The Egret and Swift then disappeared from the shoreline, and Greck's Europeans may have been alerted, because the ship that should have arrived did not arrive, but the Europeans, no matter how big their brains, would not immediately think of an enemy attack. Seriously, Guan Tianpei's courage is not small, because after sending people ashore, Guan Tianpei commanded the two sailing ships to change their course and turned around and ran directly towards Greck.

The eastern mouth of the Strait of Magellan is a very large bay, and before entering the first narrow channel, the sea area is very wide, and it is almost a circle. Greck is located on the east side of the first narrow waterway, which is about 65 kilometers, or 35 nautical miles. According to the speed of the sailboat can still maintain about nine knots when the current is against the current, then the voyage from the entrance to Greck is only 4 hours.

Guan Tianpei looked at the watch on his wrist, it was not yet two o'clock in the morning, and the time they arrived was more than five o'clock in the morning, even if Greck docked more European warships, it was impossible for them to be all in combat readiness at this time, and they could completely sneak attack.

When Guan Tianpei proposed this plan, his deputy Zhang Baoren was stupid. In Zhang Bao's memory, Guan Tianpei is a very calm person, but now this plan is full of gambling. If the entrance to the rear was blocked by European warships, they would have been shut down and beaten.

It can be said that Guan Tianpei's gamble this time is that when the Egret and the Swift escape, they will not encounter European warships in the entrance waters, which is not very likely, because the Strait of Magellan is the focus of the Europeans' garrison and has close ties with the Falklands. The transport ships between the two, or at least the transport ships, come and go almost every day.

Although this place was within the borders of what would become Argentina, transporting material from Buenos Aires to Greco was not as convenient as the Falklands, which was too far away to find a stopover.

As for the vast southern territory of Argentina, there are almost no cities in sight, regardless of how many people there are in the Patagonian Plateau in later generations, and now at this time, the Patagonian Plateau, which occupies the entire southern region of Argentina, is almost no man's land. Even in Argentina in the 21st century, this place is very sparsely populated.

At the end of the 16th century, the Spaniards wanted to colonize the coastal areas of Patagonia in order to rid the English pirates, but plans to establish a colony in the Bay of San Matthias failed. In 1778 the British also attempted to colonize the bay, and the Spanish responded by establishing two first cities in Patagonia: San Jose and Viedma. In 1780~1807, the Spaniards established a colony in Puerto de Seado, but after 3 years, there were no European colonies in this area.

Therefore, this plateau, which occupies almost a quarter of the area of Argentina, is not in a position to provide any help for the war effort.

In this way, Buenos Aires became the main supply port of the South Atlantic Fleet, and the Falklands became the main base of the South Atlantic Fleet, and the islands of Greco and Estados, which were the two forks that extended from the Falklands.

Guan Tianpei: This is completely gambling.

But the army implements the first-in-command responsibility system, and the military commander decides everything, Guan Tianpei is determined to gamble like this, and Zhang Bao and the others can only follow Guan Tianpei into the market.

However, just as Guan Tianpei was leading two sailing boats to plunge headlong towards Greck, at the western end of the first narrow waterway 10 kilometers away from Greck, several dinghys had gently approached the beach on the shore in the dark night, under the cover of the sound of the waves.

A contingent of thirty elite marines and top scouts of the reconnaissance unit quietly went ashore.

On a hill a few miles away, a stream of bright light gathered by flames was constantly scanning the surroundings. This is the searchlight of the Europeans, after Chen Han's searchlight 'technology' was exposed, the Europeans also thought of their ancestor - Archimedes' 'dead light', and then they used the searchlight technology 'with peace of mind'.

Not only on some military fortresses, but also on lighthouses everywhere, 'dead light' is frequent, as it is now.

Ye Tingyang didn't know if the Europeans had increased their vigilance now, but what he had to do now was to snuff out the Europeans' observation point in the west of the First Narrow Waterway, and then let the two regiments of land combat forces be put into the land. Ye Tingyang is also willing to let the attention of the Europeans turn to him, so that the Marine Corps has a better chance of success.

The night is a good cover for military operations, and even if there are lights shining on it, it will at most make the task force more cautious.

In this era, searchlights are all crippled, and they can't go far at all, let alone a mile away, or even a 200-meter place is already a mess. Therefore, as long as the advance team was careful, they reached the bottom of the mountain at the observation point, and the people above did not notice it at all.

It's just that for the advance team, what they really need to care about is not these European soldiers at the observation point, the Europeans don't plan to do defensive resistance here, this is just a simple observation point, the only role is to warn in advance, ventilate the message, just like the beacon tower in the past.

With the ability of the advance team, it is easy to erase this outpost, and make it impossible for the Europeans in it to send a signal at all. But the difficulty is that they can't be sure if there are still European outposts around.

Although the first narrow waterway is only 11 or 2 kilometers long, it is not possible for a single signal flare to transmit signals under the current technological conditions. There must be a relay point, and this relay point is the center of gravity that the advance team needs to observe. For the latter is dark, and the former is light.

The observation point on the surface is not terrible, but the dark whistle hidden in the dark is even more harmful.

But the two regiments of marines still landed on Tierra del Fuego in the morning light of the next day, because of the sound of artillery before dawn, Guan Tianpei fired cannonballs at Greck very fiercely, although this time was very short, but the sudden explosion in the east created a good opportunity for the advance team. Nearly twenty European soldiers in the entire observation post were all knocked to the ground without saying a word.

Then Ye Tingyang didn't care about letting the Grand Fleet directly reach the coast at the western end of the first narrow channel, and then more than 5,000 marines were sent to Tierra del Fuego.

When Ye Tingyang heard the sound of cannons sounding on the east side of the narrow waterway, everyone was a little dazed. It is certain that Cai Lian must have successfully passed through the Drake Passage, but now he actually attacked Greck with a fleet, which is really surprising.

You must know that the original definition of the Cai Lian fleet was only to mobilize the European fleet as much as possible and attract their targets as much as possible. And what could stun the Europeans more than the shelling of Greck? To shell the Falklands?

But who knew that this was Guan Tianpei's feeling that the previous split plum blossom plan was not effective, they lost a sailing ship, which greatly reduced the results of the ambush in the Le Maire Strait, the weight of a sailing ship is not lighter than a third-class sail battleship, after the two are exchanged, the effect of the ambush war is only a fourth-class sail battleship and a cruiser.

Guan Tianpei was very dissatisfied, he wanted a bigger news, and on the basis of a certain probability, he dared to gamble.

Also in the morning sun, several steam boats of three or four hundred tons also entered the narrow channel, they got as close as possible to the Greck, and then dropped the trigger or open flame drifting mines, which would flow straight down the sea to the exit of the narrow channel. Even if the Europeans laid obstacles at the exit, triggered mines could not be destroyed, but what about open flames?

Ten kilometers may not be enough, and depending on the speed of the sea, the mines will not be able to reach Greck for too long.

……

Ye Tingyang is a resolute person, and after making up his mind, he will unswervingly implement it. After more than 5,000 Marines had been brought ashore, and after several hours of busy work in the minelayers, five sailing ships of one or two thousand tons appeared on the course of the first narrow waterway.

Clouds of smoke rose one after another, and a loud explosion that cracked the eardrums formed a line. The five sailing ships kept firing at the safe area on both sides of the strait, and the explosion roared like a series of thunderbolts falling from the sky, making people feel that the sound was always ringing in their ears, and it never stopped.

The muffled sound of the explosion was completely different from what outsiders from the battery heard. The major commander of a certain bunker had fought for so many years, and he had never seen such heavy artillery fire as now.

However, this is just a joke.

As far as the commander of the major was concerned, there was no pattern at all in the landing point of the shells, and they were all over the place, one from the east to the west, and one from the west, and they were very blind. Apparently he was not discovered by the Chinese.

Although this kind of blind bombardment, which has no pattern to speak of, can cause certain losses to the port area, the wharf, and the urban area, it does not pose the slightest substantial threat to his concealed artillery fortress.

It's just that such 'indiscriminate bombardment' has cost him a seasoned artilleryman, and the thought of it makes the major commander extremely depressed.

The latter was struck by a bouncing stone on the observation post of the fort, and the entire observation post was smashed down, and all the people inside were killed.

It's just that before they can open fire, the distance from which the Chinese warships enter is still a little short, and if it is a kilometer or two closer, the main battery in front of them is fired, and he swears to God that he will be 'warm' to entertain these visitors.

……

At this time, Greck's previous docked battleships had been reduced by a large number, but the rest of the battleships were fully equipped with sailors, and all the lookouts on each gun base and mast were in place. The whole of Greck has entered the stage of combat readiness.

The commander here is Cuthbert Collingwood, a British vice admiral, an energetic and sensitive commander, and an expert in gunnery with a unique insight into politics and diplomacy.

Cuthbert Collingwood was Nelson's good comrade-in-arms, and his current position was one of Nelson's best efforts.

In the Anglo-French naval battle, the British Mediterranean Fleet commanded by Nelson did not annihilate the main force of the Franco-Spanish combined fleet in one fell swoop, of course, in the decisive battle between the two sides, Britain still won a rare victory, Nelson was promoted to admiral in one fell swoop, and was promoted to earl at the same time.

But the dead Nelson became the spiritual banner of the British Navy, and the living Nelson was only a brilliant admiral.

"Boom ......"

Cuthbert Collingwood was already aware of the enemy to the west, but before he could send a cruiser to communicate with the Falklands, and if possible to recover the warship that had pursued the two Chinese warships at dawn, Collingwood's ears were suddenly covered by a loud roar.

"Oh my God......" Collingwood was really startled, because the loud noise was unprepared for him.

But when he walked to the window and looked out at the bay, he was stunned.

"God, God......"