Chapter 308: The Yellow River Fu (Part 7)

The 2,000-stone heavy boats, each of which had more than 300 soldiers on it, as well as a number of sailmen, oarsmen, men, and handymen, was like a floating town, and when it collapsed, it was miserable.

Dozens of people struggled desperately in the water, shouting for help.

Hundreds of people were swept up by the whirlpool of the sunken ship and carried directly to the bottom of the water.

Countless others were crushed by the broken decks, timber, and other ship's objects, and turned into piles of scraps of meat on the water.

Red plasma, spreading rapidly along the whirlpool on the surface of the river.

In the blink of an eye, half of the river was dyed red.

On the red surface of the river, there are countless fires rolling back and forth, and the flames are soaring into the air.

Under the flames, there were hundreds of mutilated corpses.

Next to the corpse, there were more struggling human heads, and despair was written on every face.

This is no longer the Yellow River, but the River Styx.

It's like the river Styx in hell coming to earth.

The water thieves around the boat who were driving the fishing boats and were originally going to lean near the Huai'an warships to perform their tactics were so frightened that they didn't dare to stop to rescue the overboard, and rowed the fishing boats to the shore without looking back.

However, the Mongol escorts on the other four ships were like crazy, brandishing steel knives and ordering the gunners to speed up their firing with the Huai'an battleship, and the sailors on board were also forced by the officers to adjust the rudder and wooden sails and continue to approach the Arab ships (Note 1)

Their ship is large, and there are many soldiers on their ship, if they can get close to the Huai'an army for broadside battles, they are still sure enough to move the situation back.

However, they underestimated the strength of their opponents.

Several captains of the Huai'an battleship were carefully selected by Zhu Qiang, the commander of the naval division, and each of them had at least eight months of actual command experience.

For a time, the artillery of the two sides came and went, smashing the water surface as lively as a boiling pot.

Regrettably, however, when the small fishing boats were forced to withdraw from the battlefield, the results on both sides became lackluster.

In the absence of sights, three hundred to four hundred paces, that is, a distance of four hundred and five to six hundred meters in another time and space, whether or not you can hit with primitive artillery depends on luck to a large extent.

In particular, after the water surface was smashed by the shells and countless waves, the ships rose and fell so badly that even aiming became a luxury, let alone letting the shells fly towards the set target.

As a result, the river rumbled and the cannon fire continued, and a total of nine ships from both sides of the river circled around in the middle of the river, beating the turbid waves and filling the mist, but there were no new casualties for a long time.

On the contrary, the gunners and sailors on both ships, after the initial tension, became more and more composure and rhythmic.

In particular, the colored gunners on the four Cao ships, the current Huai'an army is just like this, and they have slowly increased the frequency of firing, hitting the thousand-pound heavy guns on the bow faster and faster, faster and faster, and they are faintly no longer under the artillery of the Huai'an army.

"Phew." After a long time of bombardment, a projectile flying out of the six-pound rifled cannon finally made a meritorious feat and smashed on the main sail of the flagship of the Mengyuan Naval Army, smashing the wooden sail into debris.

The huge boat immediately shook, and the sail operator on board, under the urging of the escort officer, hurriedly lowered the main sail and adjusted the direction of the auxiliary sail, and was anxious.

Seeing that it was cheap, the battleships of the Huai'an Army rushed over, adjusted their guns, and bombarded the Mengyuan flagship with a broken mainsail.

The other three boats of the Mengyuan Naval Division took the initiative to slow down, blocking the flagship at the end of the line with their bodies, and at the same time desperately counterattacking the Huai'an warships.

In a hurry, the command of both sides was a little confused, and the distance between the battleships was unconsciously shortened to within two hundred paces, and the accuracy of the shells increased greatly.

Two consecutive four-pound shells fell on the Cao boat blocking the left side of the flagship of the Mengyuan Naval Division, smashing the soldiers on the deck to the point of crying wolves and flesh flying.

But the color gunners have finally opened the city.

"Smack." An iron projectile weighing more than five pounds smashed on the guardrail of the flagship of the Huai'an Army, splashing wood chips all over the sky.

The two guards behind the guardrail were unfortunately affected by the aftermath of the projectile, and before they could snort, their tendons were broken and fractured.

More than a dozen other guards around him were also affected by the flying sawdust, and their faces were covered in blood.

"Protect the Governor." Xu Hongsan no longer cared about the life and death of Zhang Yi and Feng Guoyong, shouted, and rushed to Zhu Chongjiu's side with more than a dozen cronies.

The cannonball has no eyes, but it doesn't distinguish who is the commander and who is the minion, and if it is hit, no matter how thick the plate armor is, it will have to be smashed into a ball of meatloaf.

"Protect the Governor." "Protect the Governor." On the deck, in the upper cabin, more guards rushed up, trying to build a shield wall with their flesh and blood, and firmly protect Zhu Chongjiu in an absolutely safe area.

The ship lost its balance and began to shake violently, and the sailors and helmsmen on the lower deck were caught off guard and burned out.

"Give me back to my place." Zhu Chongjiu turned his head abruptly and shouted at Xu Hongsan and the others, "You guys have a fart when you come up, you can block the shells, get out, get out of the way for me, if you don't get out, all military law will be done." ”

"Governor." Everyone was scolded and hesitated to stop.

"Fight how you want, don't always think about taking advantage of it and not suffering losses." Zhu Chongjiu pricked up his eyes again, and shouted at Chang Haoran, who rushed out of the captain's room, "You just treat Lao Tzu as if he was not on the ship, he has been training for so long, but he can't even beat a few rookies who are new to the ship, Lao Tzu really doesn't know what bullshit you are usually doing." ”

"Lord, lord" Captain Chang Haoran, who was born as a big guy in the ship's business, was scolded so red that his face was red, he stomped his feet, and turned around to get out of the cabin.

"Get out of the way for me, don't delay Lao Tzu to observe the enemy." Zhu Chongjiu shouted at the guards again, raised his binoculars, and looked at the opponent's warships and artillery again.

Xu Hongsan and the others refused to leave, and while whispering yes, they raised their shields and formed a simple circle around Zhu Chongjiu, trying their best to avoid being affected by the broken wood chips.

"Hmph." Zhu Chongjiu had no choice but to ignore them and continue to observe the enemy army with a telescope.

I have to say that the Mengyuan Imperial Court, in terms of shortening the gap between the weapons of the two sides, has made a lot of effort, and the imitation cannon, although it looks a little bulky, but the range is comparable to the Huai'an Army's four-pound smoothbore gun, purely in terms of power, and even slightly superior, after all, the thickness of the cannon wall and the length of the cannon body are far larger than the Huai'an Army's artillery, more charge and longer barrel, which can undoubtedly make the cannonball get more initial kinetic energy.

However, in terms of the stability of the trajectory, the gap between the two sides is very obvious, the naval guns of the Huai'an army, whether it is the six-pound guns mounted on the Arab ships or the four-pound guns on the three sentinel ships behind, are rifled, and the surface of the shells is also evenly coated with half a minute thick soft lead, so when each cannon is discharged, it rotates on the high ground, and the landing point of the shell is basically in a straight line with the position of the discharge, rather than the projectile flying over on the opposite side, which is more irregular than the Brownian motion.

"If I'm the captain, I'll keep a little more distance, then make a detour from the side and concentrate my fire on the enemy ship on the far left." After carefully observing for a moment, Zhu Chongjiu slowly came to a conclusion.

Just as he was hesitating whether to break his promise once, he went to the captain's room below to go to the captain's room, when the deck under his feet suddenly shook, and then, from the lower deck of the battleship, more than forty pieces of wood pulp suddenly stretched out, and together with the sails, pushed the battleship to the upper left of the river and snatched it.

"Stop the shelling, keep the distance, and go all upstream." Deputy Captain Sun De rushed to the deck, holding a tin horn and shouting at the lookouts in the bucket.

"Stop the shelling, keep the distance, and go all upstream." The lookout Wang San waved the horn flag and issued orders to the other ships with a pre-arranged signal.

The sound of war drums instantly replaced the sound of artillery and became the main theme of the entire battlefield.

The agitated drums sounded from the ships behind, a dhows and three sentinels also began to add with oars, the whole fleet was like a barracuda, flying close to the water, Meng Yuan's four big boats, obviously did not expect this situation, there was no time to turn around, after chasing the tail of the fleet and firing a few shots, they completely lost their angle and stopped in place at a loss.

"Cut northward with the stream, completely, diagonally!" Deputy Captain Sun De held an iron horn and ordered loudly.

"Cut northward with the stream, completely, diagonally!" Wang San, the lookout on the flagship, also raised the tin horn and shouted at the nearest Arabian dhow, while desperately waving the signal flag to beckon everyone to follow.

It was a little farther away, and the noise of the water and drums made it difficult for his shouts to be heard by the other boats.

The communication that is being explored in the sailor division is in full swing, and it is not possible to express such a complicated command for the time being.

But after months of running together, the captains have long formed a tacit understanding with each other, relying on the observation of the naked eye and the intuition of the brain, to direct their respective ships, closely following the flagship, and following in unison.

"Keep circling, going around behind the enemy line."

"Keep circling, going around behind the enemy line."

"Turn your head, go down the river, and get within a hundred paces."

"Turn your head, go down the river, and get within a hundred paces."

"Artillery preparation."

"Artillery preparation."

"Aim for the opposing flagship."

"Aim for the opposing flagship."

"Fire."

"Fire."

"Fire."

"Fire."

"Fire."

"Boom." "Boom." "Boom." "Boom." "Boom." Four six-pound rifled guns and six four-pound rifled guns struck at the enemy's flagships, which were struggling to turn their rudder at a distance of 800 paces, in the order of front and back.

Now, Lady Luck finally opened her eyes again.

Three shells hit the target one after another, and the Cao boat, which was the flagship of the Yuan army, smashed three huge transparent holes from the tail to the center.

The whole big ship slammed into the Yellow River, and then flipped over.

Note: The establishment of the Yuan Army's naval division was inherited from the Song Dynasty, and the officers were divided into commanders, commanders, generals, deputy generals, escort teams, support teams, leading the battle leaders, flag heads and other levels.

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