In the waters of Malacca, Fei Min, deputy commander of the Nanyang Navy, and his South China Sea sailing fleet finally arrived at the battlefield where the steam fleet and the frigate formation, which had been far away from the main team of the combined fleet.

Fei Min, who is in his 50s, is the oldest general in the three armies of the Chinese Empire. Ouyang Xiang, the commander-in-chief of the Navy, who also belongs to the Navy, is 41 years old this year, and Zhu Ying is a typical young Zhuang faction, only 34 years old. And he, Fei Min, is already a gray-haired old man. System personnel rarely discuss philosophical questions of life like normal people, such as, how I came to be, where I will go, but they are also natural people, they need to remember, they need to think. So, Fei Min was arranged to remember that he had been living in an unknown place until he was forty years old, a fisherman. There is a wife who is not beautiful but very virtuous, and has eleven children (prolific couple), and lives a happy life. Until one day, he accepted a draft and became a naval soldier. At that time, he was already forty years old, but with his experience and talent in fighting the sea for a long time, he became a rear admiral after more than ten years of struggle, and was promoted to deputy commander by the emperor. And now, it is the biggest battle of his life.

Among the soldiers in the whole battle system, there are very few people as old as Fei Min, maybe they will return to dust in a short time, so their experience and experience are very high modulated by the system, and they are really like an elder. They will deal with problems very skillfully, and they will also think about some problems that young people will not think about, and they will also indulge in memories, even if this memory seems to be non-existent in Lin Hong's view.

When it comes to philosophical issues, it is because Fei Min, the deputy commander of the ship, is somewhat distracted at this time, and as he gets older, he has even more compassion, and he seems to feel unbearable about taking hundreds of lives.

It's just that it's up to him, everyone has their own responsibilities.

"Hehe, look, Cao Fu alone almost turned these European devils upside down, let's sit here and watch the show!" Fei Min joked to Liu Qilong, chief of the general staff of the Navy beside him.

Liu Qilong had been following Fei Min for a few days, so he naturally knew what kind of temper this old man had, so he just said, "Then let's sit." ”

Fei Min laughed, and the white beard on his mouth also curled up one by one, and said, "If we sit here, I'm afraid we will have to go to a military court, so let's go!" ”

Liu Qilong also joked and said, "Whatever you want!" ”

At the same time, the Dingyuan was turned upside down. Although the ironclad ship was facing more than 20 pounds of solid shells, and its defense was sufficient, shells continued to hit the deck of the ship, injuring or directly killing some of the crew. Some chain bombs also swept the front and rear masts of the ship to the long wind, breaking the waves, and the scene was similar, Weiyuan and Laiyuan were fortunately, there was no major damage to the deck building, but the front main gun of Laiyuan didn't know which captain who was walking shit luck, and only the rear main gun could turn and fire. However, the Anglo-Dutch convoy was miserable, and the twenty or so frigates that had just pursued were now less than a dozen left, and most of them were damaged.

Finally, the cruisers, who had been busy shooting on the periphery, turned their bows and rushed towards the battlefield against the wind.

Cao Fu shouted again: "Helmsman, the right rudder is 15 degrees, and the flag is sent to tell the other three ships to get rid of the entanglement of these mad dogs." The boiler is there, give me a lot of coal! ”

His two orders were like a rain after a long drought, and everyone on the five ironclad ships was in a different state of mind. Thick black smoke came out of the huge ironclad ship, and the boilers that had not been damaged in the artillery battle were running at full capacity, giving the giant fleet the most horsepower.

"Not good! The Chinese fleet turned around! A British lookout screamed.

The reason why the ironclad ships went deep into the enemy fleet was that Cao Fu had enough confidence in his ironclad fleet, on the other hand, it also had the meaning of training, the Chinese Navy had not yet fought with a real naval power since its birth, and lacked actual combat experience, even if there was a large amount of live-fire training, it was impossible for the naval officers and men to really grow, and this battle between the ironclad ships and the Anglo-Dutch frigates was the beginning of the growth of the Imperial Navy.

When the three Yaowu-class in the vanguard approached the side of the Combined Fleet frigates with a beautiful turn and diagonal line, everyone's hearts seemed to stop, and the white-skinned or black-haired or yellow-haired European sailors saw the gun doors of the two-deck gun bays of the three graceful and slender cruisers open on the sideboards, and their hearts suddenly filled their hearts.

The loud bang broke the silence of that moment, and the roar of more than 10 70mm caliber secondary guns on the side of the three cruisers made everyone's hearts sink into the abyss of despair. The last remaining frigates, including James Hope, raised the white flag one after another and surrendered after a round of shelling by the cruiser.

"Commander! It seems that our convoy has successfully stopped the escape of the enemy fleet! The lookout shouted at Bermai from the mast.

Bourmai held up his binoculars and looked into the distance, but what he saw was not quite what he had imagined.

A line of five ironclad ships at the head and a dozen smaller ships trailed several lone frigates with white flags. And around them, scattered were all sorts of wood chips, the wreckage of ships, and sailors who called for help after falling overboard.

"What's going on? The frigates were taken so far by the enemy, and with such heavy losses?! Bomai exclaimed, and he saw the head of the Chinese fleet's battle line, five warships with dark black hulls spitting black smoke, like giant beasts, eyeing the approaching United Fleet.

Bomai put down the binoculars and said a little heavily: "It's ironclad, this is China's steam ironclad ship!" I originally thought they were just lies from the Chinese, but it turned out to be true. A thought flashed through his mind, perhaps they would be the overlords of the seas.

"Send the flag and let the ironclad ships and cruisers form their own battle lines to make a big maneuver and go around, to the flanks and the upper wind behind the enemy, the captured enemy ships have a cruiser sent by the cruiser to drive away from the battlefield and take it to the port of Malacca, and the rest will be handed over to Fei Min and them!" Cao Fu said to the first mate.

"General! Look at the main fleet of the Chinese. The second officer on the side looked at the telescope and shouted.

Bomai raised the telescope again and looked into the distance, only to see Fei Min with a 122-gun super battleship and other first-class ships and second-class ships coming from the northeast.

"General, the enemy's steam battleships are moving in the northwest direction, what should we do?" The first mate asked Bomai anxiously.

"Leave the steamships alone, and order the fleet to line up the battle line and prepare to meet the enemy." In fact, Bomai has lost confidence in this war as a soldier, and you must know that the appearance of the ironclad ship has given him a great shock. He sent more than 20 frigates of the fifth and sixth ranks, and now they are sinking and sinking, but the enemy is not damaged, so that he has lost confidence in the pursuit of victory in this asymmetrical naval battle.

As early as the beginning of this century, the steamship built by Robert Fuerte was already put into use for inland waterway shipping. The first steamship he designed, after being destroyed by a storm, built a second and made its maiden voyage on the Seine. Subsequently, the steamship was routinely operated in the United States. It's just that this kind of boat, which is more than forty meters long and can only run 4.5 knots, did not get out of the sail and did not attract the attention of the military. The real first steamship was the steam-assisted Napoleon, launched in France in 1850, and then in 1860, the British dressed the steamship in iron armor, which is also known as the famous ship Warrior by the British. During the Civil War in the sixties, the USS Monnet, a small armored battleship in the United States, first adopted a closed swing turret. The first official large-scale ironclad battles took place in the Crimean War, when the success of the use of Italian ironclads made ironclads the darlings of all ** ships in the second half of the nineteenth century.

The 3,000-ton Shanghai-class ironclad ship is 20 years ahead of the European naval military manufacturing industry in terms of technology, and in this era, it is the most powerful maritime weapon.

At about 2:10 p.m., the Nanyang Fleet of the Chinese Empire and the Anglo-Dutch Combined Fleet completed the arrangement of the battle lines one after another and approached each other, and a naval battle that would decide the fate of the two sides was about to begin.