The Southern Navy of the United States built the ironclad ship Virginia and used it to achieve good results, but it does not mean that the Southern Army can really counterattack the Northern Navy from now on. The fact that the Watcher, built in half the time of the Virginia, was built by the North's strong industrial base implies a strong message that the builders of the Monitor were confident, even though they were in danger of storming the way south.

The two heavyweights finally met at Hampton Anchorage, as the USS Virginia approached the USS Minnesota, the main battleship of the Northern Army, which had been badly damaged yesterday and the USS Virginia was trying to capture or sink it.

The Watcher uses a turret structure, and its flexible rotation mechanism allows it to fire first. It stopped in front of the USS Virginia to protect the wounded USS Minnesota. The USS Virginia wants to be able to take out the Minnesota first, so as not to fall into a situation where it is one against the other.

The Virginia is a big monster with a displacement of up to 4,000 tons, compared to the rival Watcher of only 900 tons, which is why the army commanders in the North have little confidence in it. The Virginia's large tonnage also had a distinct disadvantage - it could not get close to the shallows. When the opponent was hiding in the shallows, it could no longer use its sharp ramming angles, and could only fire a salvo at the Minnesota and the USS Watcher.

At this point, the Watcher showed its superiority as an ironclad ship, and the Virginia's heavy guns could not penetrate its armor, and its crew was confident. In the end, the Virginia had to concentrate all its efforts on attacking its destined opponent.

The two guys then engaged in a nearly four-hour grappling affair, most recently reaching 50 meters, sometimes moving away and sometimes approaching, both looking for each other's weaknesses. They each have their own strengths and weaknesses, the Watcher has excellent engines, good maneuverability, and a turret that can rotate 360 degrees, and there is no shooting death, but the gunner is not well trained, because this is a new gun type, so the speed of the fire does not keep up, and it takes 8 minutes to reload at a time, compared to the opponent with 10 guns, and the reload time is 5 minutes. If they had encountered a 10-second reload speed King or White cruiser, they would have to die, but for now, they were evenly matched.

For a time, the Virginia had the upper hand because they had blown up the opposing microphone wiring, which was the primary means of communication for Captain Worden in the watchtower to Captain Greeney, the gun chief in the turret, to fire the command. In desperation, Captain Worden had no choice but to send 2 sailors to run back and forth between them for human communication. As a result, none of the firing elements reported to Warden to Grinny could be used in a timely and accurate manner, and the accuracy of the ship's gun firing was affected. With no choice but to observe the target through the narrow muzzle of the gun, Greeney often fired in a hurry when he had a rough view of the target.

The clumsy sea monster Virginia also failed when it accidentally ran aground in the shallows. The Watcher took the opportunity to rush forward, evade the Virginia's fire, and bombard it indiscriminately. Seeing that they were about to fall into a passive situation, the crew of the Virginia's engine room immediately went out to fill the boiler with all the combustibles they could find to increase the power of the engine. After 15 minutes of hard struggle, the Virginia finally came out of the shallows breathlessly and regained its freedom of movement.

Captain Jones, the captain of the USS Virginia, hurried from the command platform to the gun deck to check the firing. He noticed that some of the gunners were sitting still, busy asking why. The gunners quickly replied: "Our shells have always been accurate, but they have not worked for half a day, and everyone is already tired, so they are resting in their shifts." In view of this, Jones decided to use his ship's tonnage advantage to sink the Watcher, despite the fact that the angle of attack of the Virginia had been broken.

After nearly an hour of tactical maneuvering, the Virginia took up a favorable position for the attack. When the Virginia rushed to the Monitor at full speed, the agile Watcher made a sudden turn, and the Virginia gently passed the Monitor. At that moment, the Monitor's gun commander seized the perfect opportunity to fire two heavy guns at the Virginia's turret at close range, resulting in a violent explosion of the Virginia's rear gun, which shook the gunners inside the turret with blood in their ears and noses.

This is a typical naval battle of equal strength, where one side often needs several hours of fierce fighting to destroy one or two capital ships of the other side. This is also why the total annihilation of the French Mediterranean Fleet with two ironclad ships has brought an unparalleled shock to the entire world military circles, and now the British East India Company Navy has been dubbed "the world's first navy" by some media.

The naval battle at Hampton Anchorage came to an end with a draw. A draw would mean that the Northern Fleet would have the upper hand, because their shipbuilding capabilities would prevail, and improved versions of the ironclad would be built one after another, while the South would simply not be able to afford another one. The Fernia was converted from a civilian ship and was awkwardly unable to operate inshore and effectively protect Richmond's strategic location. It also embarrassedly lacked seaworthiness and could not fight in the oceans, and became the chicken rib of the Southern Army.

The North could not have rejoiced, because at this time came the bad news that the most important ally, the French Mediterranean Fleet, had invaded the Suez Canal and was dumpling-packed. According to the commander of the Northern Navy, even if the East India Company merely sold captured French warships to the South, the number would be terrible enough to make the South a naval power at once.

Downing's involvement in the Civil War was subtle, and although he was now at war, he had always restrained himself from engaging the North directly, and adopted what seemed to be a defensive counterattack. The south, on the other hand, has been blockaded by the north for a long time, and inflation is very strong, and many requests to the Panamanian fleet to go north have been unsuccessful.

At this time, the East India Company had not yet reaped any benefits from its involvement, and it really did not look like the work of the big capitalists, and when the Southern Army was once again in a disadvantageous situation, the Panamanian fleet finally put forward a dagger-like demand, in the name of the financial chaos in the South, hoping that the South would adopt the central banking system developed by the Bank of Zurich, and that the Bank of Zurich would lead the establishment of the Financial Policy Committee of the Confederate States of America. That is, the CSA is the fifth country after India, Malaya, Japan, and the Qing Dynasty to have a central bank under the control of the Bank of Zurich. Italy is a constitutional monarchy, and the emperor does not even have executive power, so even if Downing is the emperor of Italy, he does not control the financial system of Italy.

This problem is much more difficult than giving slaves certain human rights, and it poses a big problem for the Southerners. The importance of the central bank can be imagined, and after the intelligence system in the north learned about it, of course, it had to hype up the wolf ambitions of the Windsor consortium. According to the New York Times, the freedom-loving American people, both South and North, will certainly not be able to accept the fate of being enslaved by careerists, and this spirit has been deeply ingrained in the hearts of the American people since the Mayflower came to North America.

Public opinion in the South argues that it is not so terrifying, just as the Central Bank of Japan has adopted the platform of the Bank of Zurich, and the decision-making power is still in the hands of the Japanese Diet, and all members of the Financial Policy Committee must be approved by the President, and the policies of the Committee can be vetoed by the Diet. Judging from the history of the operation of the Bank of Japan, the Bank of Zurich has kept its promise not to profit from its financial position, and the Japanese people have great confidence in the operation of the bank. In addition, the Bank of Zurich provides a very good system switching ability, so that when the parliament raises a no-confidence motion, it can switch its assets to any platform provided by the government in an open and transparent manner, and in the process, the government and the parliament will have representatives of the central bank to supervise the central bank at any time.

The financial difficulties that southerners are now facing have led many to lean towards the restoration of order, so the commitment of the Bank of Zurich to include a stake in the Panama Canal in its collateral assets will boost southerners' confidence in the new central bank. And now the value of Southern banknotes is depreciating.

Americans are very, very sensitive to financial policy, and the parliamentarians are arguing fiercely about the "outsourcing" of the central bank, and Windsor once again threw out an "energy policy committee proposal" in their quarrel, saying that if the Confederacy does not want the central bank to adopt the Zurich banking platform, it can use the oil and gas resources that the southern states have not yet determined whether to store zài as a guarantee, and the East India Company will open a sea lane for the south.

Now the most valuable commodity in the South is cotton, and it is strange that the Windsor consortium only wants the invisible oil instead of cotton, but as long as the oil is worth in the eyes of the Windsor consortium, it is enough, and the parliamentarians have no pressure on this plan, and they quickly agreed.

This plan enabled the US Confederation to set up a cabinet-level Department of Energy, and the future "American Oil Company" nominated the Secretary of Energy, and the President could veto the Minister of Energy, while Congress could still deny the Energy Policy issued by the Department of Energy.

In any case, when the agreement was reached, Downing sent a telegram to President Lincoln, along the lines of "Imabari has 800,000 sailors, and the general will hunt in the Gulf of Mexico." Just when everyone thought that the East India Company Navy would be heading north from Panama, the American Western Expeditionary Force, consisting of Frenchmen, suddenly appeared in the waters near Los Angeles.

You read that right, it's the French. It was not Downning's style to take prisoner so many warships and sailors of the French, and not to make good use of them, so he came up with a way to turn waste into treasure, and gave the French soldiers two choices, either to be sold south as slaves, or to join the East India Company navy, and made it clear that their warships were different from the others, and that they would be equipped with radio-controlled bombs, and that in the event of a rebellion on French battleships, the whole ship would be in a bad situation, and that their ships would not have lifeboats. There are warships nearby, and if they are sunk by the enemy, they will come to their rescue.

This fleet of French prisoners of war had a meaningful code name: the Forsaken Fleet.

This is a terrifying military innovation, which means that Downing's navy will fight more and more, and the more it fights, the stronger it will become, and the enemy will disappear and rise, which will extremely effectively make up for the dilemma of insufficient troops. It's a pity that it can only be used in the navy, otherwise it will be strange and scary.

The Forsaken fleet appeared in the waters of Los Angeles to cooperate with the Confederate Army's New Mexico Project. The Confederate Army had been planning this westward expansion plan for a long time, with the aim of starting from southern New Mexico and marching westward to the ports of California, so that the South would have a living route to the Pacific Ocean. Now with the cooperation of a strong navy, they are confidently carrying out their plans.

Los Angeles was a huge metropolitan area in later generations, and today, the whole of California has a population of only 400,000, and Los Angeles is a small port town with less than 10,000 people. Los Angeles had a population of 75,000 at the end of the Mexican-American War, and after the end of the war, because it was very close to Baja California, which was still Mexican territory, the racial vendetta between Mexicans and Americans was very high, and the number of homicides exceeded that of New York by ten times, and Los Angeles became the most violent place in the United States. (http：/／.)。

Los Angeles was chosen because it was a must-save place for the Union Army, and its harbor was very good, and once the East India Company Navy established a stronghold here, it would be quite disadvantageous to the Union forces throughout California.

The U.S. Navy thought that Los Angeles would be the target, and they thought that even if they were to attack, it would be San Francisco, the largest city in the western part of the United States, that would bear the brunt of the attack, because there was still gold at this time, and they still called it ...... San Francisco.

The U.S. Navy in Los Angeles had only a very small combat strength, and when it saw the attack of the large army, it immediately fled, and without any decent resistance, the Navy occupied Los Angeles and obtained a good port. This time, the telegram was not blocked, and the US government soon learned about it, and learned from the fleeing warships that the other side was menacing, with more than 50 warships, which seemed to be in the style of French warships. At this time, the Americans thought that they had stuffed the captured battleship into their own sailors, but they did not expect that it was still the same French sailors.

The number of 50 ships had reached the number of warships of all the United States at the beginning of the Civil War, and most of the American warships were used to blockade the eastern coastline, and the situation in San Francisco was critical at this time.