Yang Dijiao stood on the bow of the Jinfeng, looking at the ships of the First Fleet that sailed out of the Niudao pier one after another, and felt quite emotional in his heart.

He rushed to Niudao five days ago, and only brought the Jinfeng of the Second Fleet and the two converted ships - he came in such a hurry, naturally for Yan Ruxue, and the six families really didn't worry about the Yan family's only seedling.

After learning that his aunt had arrived successfully and entered the door of the Chu family safely, he was relieved, and these three ships became the first batch of ships to be built by the six families.

And the day before yesterday, the reconnaissance team led by Yi Bao also returned, bringing with them detailed information on the pirates on the west coast of Korea and some of the North Korean sailors - this was mainly thanks to Bi Lao Bolt and them, and they caught three of them alive, one of which was also visited by the North Korean sailors.

The report that Chu Fan got was very clear: There are five pirates on the west coast of North Korea that are relatively large, that is, there are more than three ships, and the largest of them is Choi Dabeard, who has 5 ships above Haicang and more than 10 small boats; The second is the old opponent of the Fuliao army, the octopus pirate Gao Shuncheng, who has 4 medium-sized ships and 8 small boats, if you count the three big ships of his brother Liu Hong, the strength is still above Cui Dabeard!

There are not many other three pirate ships, only 5 in total, and as for the small ships, the reconnaissance team did not know too well, after all, the threat of small ships is much smaller.

As for the Korean sailors, they were mainly concentrated in Jemulpo (Incheon) and Mokpo Port in Jeollanam-do, with more than 70 large and small warships, of which 6 were large turtle ships and more than 20 medium-sized ships.

As the commander of the Second Fleet, Yang Dijiao naturally attended the meeting and accepted the task of taking over the First Fleet to guard Ushido Island and the western part of Jeju Island.

At that time, when the meeting was held. Yang Dijiao thought that Chu Fan and Ge Bi were too cautious, and in the plan they formulated to suppress the bandits, they took the weakest group of pirates near Zhudong Island as the first target, and then went up the west coast to clean up Cui Dabeard and the others one by one - he had heard that the new flagship of the First Fleet, the Chaoyang, was so fast that even Galen ships like the Golden Phoenix were willing to bow down; Plus a powerful ballista. Pirates are not a big deal, so what's the point of picking the smallest? If you want to fight, you must first overturn Cui Dabeard, and if the other pirates can't do it, they will drop directly.

Now that he looked at the morning light, the dawn, the dawn, the sea fog, and the final finale, he felt that he was right—not to mention the speed, the five boats with spinnakers were much more agile in operation than the traditional hard sailboats.

And the black cowhide turrets on the five ships made Yang Dijiao's eyes shine even more.

This is the latest improvement after the battle of the Chaoyang's maiden voyage: in order to prevent the water stirred up during the artillery battle from wetting the ballistas and shells, the round platform of each ballista is covered with a cowhide tent, and only an opening is made in front of the ballista to facilitate the entry and exit of personnel and the opening of the ballista in wartime.

In order to prevent waterproofing, the cowhide tent was also thickly brushed with a layer of tung oil. And the bottom of the tent is tightly tied with iron nails, not to mention the splash of water in the sea, even if it is pouring rain, the inside of the turret can be kept dry enough.

Yang Dijiao felt that this kind of armament was really a bit overkill, and he estimated that even if he faced the North Korean naval division, the First Fleet would not only not fall behind, but also bite a piece of meat from the other party!

If all three fleets have undergone such modifications...... Yang Dijiao was a little afraid to think about it. On the surface of the East China Sea, who else dares to be wild in front of the Fuliao Army's sailors?

"Woo~~Toot~~"

The low sound of conch on the Chaoyang pulled Yang Dijiao back from his reverie. Soon he saw a small colorful flag rising from the top of the Chaoyang Tower's tall mainmast.

Semaphore!

Yang Dijiao immediately reacted, this was the flag language that Chu Fan specially explained to Ge Bi and him before the reconnaissance team came back.

In this era, ship-to-ship communication was a big problem, and messages were generally delivered through traffic boats; Even some of the larger fleets, such as Li Guozhu and Yang Tiansheng, who are among the six families, have also transmitted news through flag waving. But because there is no standard, it can only convey a very simple meaning, and even a lot of jokes have been made because of mistakes.

And Chu Fan's invention of this set of flags made Yang Dijiao once again appreciate the whimsical skills of this new uncle: he compiled the black, white, red, and blue flags into more than two hundred groups in different orders, each group corresponds to a specific word, and relatively complex orders can be expressed through combination.

Like what. The meaning of the all-black flag is "follow me"; The all-blue flag and all-red flag correspond to "the order begins to be issued" and "the order is issued, and the ships carry it out"; The meaning of the "black-white-red-blue" flag is "when the order is received, it will be executed immediately."

Of course, the more complex combination has to be interpreted by the code book, looking at the four small blue flags flying high on the Chaoyang, Yang Dijiao hurriedly asked his subordinates to bring the code book issued to him, and compared it to the order issued by the Chaoyang.

I saw that as the all-blue flag slid down, the new three groups of four flags with a total of twelve flags were slowly raised - on the main mast there was a three-meter-long iron rod dedicated to issuing the flag, each small flag was 20 centimeters wide and 1 meter long, and it was triangular, which could be clearly seen with a clairvoyant mirror even if it was several miles away.

The first of the three new flags is "black, black, black and white" - black and white is the number flag, and this group of flags represents the "four"; The second and third groups are "red, white, white, blue" and "black-red-red-blue" respectively, which mean "leader" and "departure" respectively, so that Yang Dijiao understood the meaning of this sentence "The fourth ship set off first".

But he didn't know which ship No. 4 of the First Fleet was, and when he looked around, he saw that the "black, white, red and blue" flag was slowly raised on the mainmast of the Dawn, and he immediately understood that Yi Bao's ship was No. 4.

With the flag recognized, the Dawn also raised its mainsail and wingsail again, and slowly departed towards the north.

Immediately afterwards, three new sets of flags were raised on the Chaoyang, this time meaning "each ship - one type of column - follow"; The last set of flags is all red flags.

Yang Dijiao understood the flag, but he didn't understand what this type of column was, and it wasn't until the Sea Mist, which set off at the end, that he understood that this so-called type of column meant that five ships were connected from head to tail, with a distance of about 100 meters, and advanced in a single column formation.

Yang Dijiao took a special look at the flags that represented the formation, and found that there were only three kinds of "type one column", "one type horizontal team" and "wedge-shaped team", and there were still many flags that were empty, and they seemed to be waiting to be filled, and he couldn't help but think of what Chu Fan said when he explained that day, which means that he is a rookie in naval warfare and doesn't understand formation at all, so what formations should the sailors have, and what kind of formation should be used when they need to be determined by the exploration and practice of the three fleets.

Putting down the code book, Yang Dijiao was more and more impressed by Chu Fan - he had seen and heard a lot of people in this world who didn't know how to pretend to understand and were self-righteous, and there were too few people who could honestly say that they couldn't understand like Chu Fan! (To be continued.) )