Late at night, the sea is foggy.

The time pointed to four o'clock in the morning, and the experience accumulated over the years in naval operations made Liu Buyun cultivate a soldier's keen sense of smell. The sudden foggy weather was like an ominous omen, and it made him uneasy. He dressed up, left the cabin, stayed on deck for a while, and came to the watchtower. Two sentinels were watching the sea with binoculars.

"Is there anything out of the ordinary?" Liu Buyun asked.

"General Qiyu, the sea fog is too big to see clearly." The sentry said.

"Keep an eye on me carefully, even a bird can't be spared!" Liu Buyun shook his head, for the enemy, this kind of weather is the most powerful for launching a surprise attack, if the battle is not timely, the battleships docked on the sea may be hit hard.

As he was about to leave the watchtower, the sentry suddenly said, "Wait, General, a fleet of ships has appeared on the sea." ”

"Is it a warship of the British?" Liu Buyun immediately became nervous, and the nerves in his whole body were tensed.

"I can't see it clearly, it seems to be a warship, but the flag is not a British flag ......"

Liu Mingchuan snatched the binoculars and looked in the direction pointed by the sentry, "It must be the British warships that are coming to sneak attack, they are flying the Spanish flag, they want to use this to confuse us, immediately raise the flag, let the ships be ready to fight!" ”

As soon as the words fell, a cannonball with a piercing sound of breaking through the sky and landed on the deck of the Yangwu of the Chinese North-South Combined Fleet.

"Sound the siren." Gao Tengyun was the first to rush out of the cabin and shouted to the soldiers on the mast. The buzzer sounded a piercing battle siren, piercing the dark night sky, and then the ships in the silence of the night also woke up and responded together. Fortunately, today's foggy weather has kept almost all the alert Chinese sailors in a state of combat readiness, and people rushed out of the cabin as fast as they heard the sirens and rushed to their respective combat positions. The deck was filled with the sound of busy footsteps. Guan Xuqing's 10 years of painstaking devotion to the Navy finally paid off at this moment.

At this time, the flagship "Dingyuan" frantically played the banner of "left full rudder". At the moment when he found the British ship, Liu Buyun's head seemed to explode suddenly. It was well aware of the consequences of a surprise attack by the enemy fleet under such circumstances, especially since the British fleet, which had completed the preparation of artillery fire, had already spread out in a T-shape and was blocking the way of the advance of the North and South Ocean Fleet. The fleet's fragile 1-shaped ships were bound to face the British fleet's powerful broadside fire.

He immediately ordered the ships to organize a counterattack on the one hand, and arrange them in a triangular formation on the other. This formation is generally a three-column formation, which belongs to the preparation formation, which can be used for mooring, and can also be used for daily navigation and counterattacks against the enemy. However, the triangular fish through the formation is different from the simple three columns, each horizontal row of three warships in this formation is a tactical detachment, detachment, the relative position between the three ships is slightly staggered, not in a straight line, the horns of the column layout method, is in strict accordance with the navy at that time in wartime "the whole ship should not be parallel (such as one word), nor should be fished through (such as one word), should be lined up (such as a checkerboard)", in order to facilitate maneuvering, to avoid collision and accidental damage to artillery fire.

However, the two sides were in the midst of fierce artillery fire, and it was difficult to complete the arrangement of the triangular fish through the formation in a short period of time, so Liu Buyun ordered the fleet to turn to the left, intending to turn the situation of the two sides into a parallel line to shoot at each other, hoping to temporarily suppress the opponent's offensive by changing the formation and using the dense artillery fire on the side side.

But the British, who had dominated the sea for many years, immediately saw through Liu Buchan's motives, and their commander Han Miyton ordered that the Chinese should not be given a little respite, and that the enemy's living forces should be annihilated in the shortest possible time. A row of shells rushed towards the Combined Fleet like hailstones, and the British fleet's uniform artillery attack showed the newly formed Chinese Combined Fleet what is the strength of the world's first navy.

"The Yokomi is on fire!"

"The main turret of the Guangjia has been blown away!"

"The Jiang'an was hit by dozens of bullets, the deck cracked, the cabin caught fire, and it looked like it was about to sink!"

“……”

Beijing City, the Palace of Nourishing the Heart.

Guan Xuqing's eyes were bloodshot, staring at the hands of the chiming bell, his heart couldn't calm down for a long time, Feng Xianghua and Lang Weili, the chief instructor of the Imperial Navy, muttered quietly to the military map.

"Urgent report ahead!"

"Read."

"The British fleet has launched a surprise attack on our warship at 3:51 a.m. today, and at present, the two ships of Henghai and Guangjia have been severely damaged, and the Jiang'an has been sunk by enemy ships."

Feng Xianghua and Lang Weili's hearts sank suddenly, the big war was most afraid of an unfavorable start, not to mention that the opponent was with the powerful Far East Fleet, and the result was unpredictable. Guan Xuqing saw their worries and said deliberately: "This is nothing, the war has just begun, and I believe that it will not be long before the tide of the war will be reversed." ”

On the sea at the head of Sihanoukville. According to Liu Buyun's order for the entire fleet to turn left, the Haitian cruiser at the head of the line must drive over first, but at this time, the Haitian had been surrounded by the artillery fire of the enemy's three warships, and if it weren't for the two gunboats desperately covering, it might have followed in the footsteps of the Jiang'an.

"My lord, you can't turn left anymore, there are three enemy ships in front of you."

"The direction is southeast, rush over at full speed, Lao Tzu does not believe that the British ship is solid." Wu Shizhong, the pipe band of the Haitian, said calmly.

The Haitian formed an angle of about 60 degrees with the enemy ship, because the angle was too large, it was difficult for the 7 main guns to exert their power, and only 5 of the 14 secondary guns on the side could participate in the counterattack, so Wu Shizhong ordered the left turn rudder in order to let the main guns play a role and break through the enemy's defense line.

The Haitian, formerly known as the "Duwell", was a heavyweight cruiser captured from the French fleet in the Sino-French War, and was later specially sent to the Volzon shipyard in Germany for reconstruction, reinforcing the hull armor, so that its displacement jumped to 5698 tons. The hull reached a length of 99.6 meters, and it was very difficult to turn around, but fortunately, at this time, the high-horsepower crew installed on the ship played a role, and in less than a minute, the rotation was completed, and after adjusting the direction, the slender Haitian rushed towards the enemy ship Odyssey at a speed of 15 knots!

At the same time, the 7 170-mm guns in front of the ship opened fire together, the blue and red flames were intertwined, and a long arc was drawn on the sea surface, and three shells instantly tore through the hull of the Odyssey's side side, and one shell was sent directly into the inner compartment of the Odyssey, which exploded inside the hull and immediately blew up the two power boilers on the ship. The other two enemy ships saw that the Odyssey was damaged and immediately hit the bow of the Haitian.