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"Tom Tom"

"Tom Tom"

"Tom Tom"

Like the rhythmic beat of drums, a burst of fire erupted from the guns on the starboard side of each Taiwan warship, and the river was already covered with thick smoke, and both sides only felt that the river water was blown up by the shells on the side of the ship and then sprinkled on their bodies, but for a time they could no longer see each other's ships clearly.

In this second round of shelling, Liu Guoxuan's ship was also hit by two shells, and one shell hit the starboard front section with a "clang", knocking down a piece of the starboard gangway, and almost knocking a soldier away together, so startled that the soldiers next to him hurriedly dodged. The scattered sawdust still scratched the two soldiers, and since the injuries were not serious, the two men simply continued to work regardless of the blood on their faces. Another projectile hit the aft deck, causing little damage to the hull, only smashing a large hole in the deck, but there were no casualties.

After these two rounds of shelling, the warships on both sides had approached less than 100 meters, and at this distance, some of the ships on both sides began to lose their breath and took the lead in firing their cannons and firing at the enemy ships on the opposite side. Looking at the number, there are still more people on the Qing army's side, but these are all bow guns, and basically none of them hit the moving warship. After the cannon sounded, a few clouds of gunpowder smoke suddenly rose on the river again, and then several rumbling cannons rang out one after another, but most of them still failed to hit the opponent's boat, and fell into the river water in the opposite fleet, stirring up a few waves.

The distance between the two fleets quickly narrowed to about thirty meters. This distance is just the length of a ship's hull. At this time, the two sides almost collided together. Even the faces of the people on the opposite boat can be seen clearly if there are pockmarks on their faces. And the closer they got, the more Wang Zhiding, the commander of the Qing army's naval division, discovered that the warships of the two sides were so similar. There is not much difference in the size of the ships on both sides, only one is mainly a sand boat and the other is mainly a fortune boat, but the Qing army has more numbers than the Zheng army.

By this time, the ships of both sides had almost all begun to fire their guns at each other's ships. For a time, a series of "tom tom" cannon sounds sounded on the river surface one after another. Like rolling thunder, it spread towards the river and the surrounding land, and clouds of gunpowder smoke enveloped the relatively narrow surface of the river. When the cannonballs of the large-caliber red-coated cannons roared out of the barrels and smashed into the enemy ships, all kinds of Fran machine guns and Huzun cannons or smaller bowl-mouth guns and other artillery also let out their roars, and for a time the river was completely lively, and these shells basically beckoned to the enemy's big ships on the opposite side. At a distance of several tens of meters, very few shells fell in the river, and more than half of the shells hit the target.

A lot of shells hit the hulls of the opposing ships. The shells of the large-caliber guns smashed into the hull with a clatter, and holes were immediately punched out of the hull. And the shells of individual small-caliber guns were less powerful. It hit the hull of the ship, but failed to penetrate the hull, but only made a hole in the thick wooden hull, and then bounced into the seawater. However, artillery such as the Tiger Zun Cannon and the Bowl Mouth Gun were all scattered bullets, causing a lot of damage to the opponent's warships. However, this small miscellaneous cannon was more or less on the Qing army's warships, but it complemented the many large-caliber cannons of the Zheng army.

In the battle on the river, there were also many shells that accurately hit the sails of the enemy ships and opened huge holes in the sails, but the losses caused by this were almost negligible, and the impact on the battle in front of them was not great. Liu Guoxuan on Zheng Jun's side is not stupid, in his opinion, it is a very narrow river, and the power of the cannon to shoot scattered bullets is stronger than that of launching solid bullets, but solid bullets cannot be missed. So all the red-coated cannons on Zheng's side were fired solid shells, and the Furlong cannons and other miscellaneous cannons fired scattered shells together, and the artillery bombardment was quite lively, but until now none of the warships have been destroyed. Because the number of artillery of the Zheng army was much larger than that of the Qing army, the huge amount of scattered bullets on their side caused huge losses to the Qing army on the opposite side. At the same time, when the two sides staggered, the bows and arrows in the hands of both sides and the firecrackers kept beckoning to the other party's boat.

One ship after another began to stagger one after another, and all the attention of the soldiers on the ships on both sides was on the enemy ships on the opposite side, ignoring the ships that had staggered and attacking, and only pricked up their ears and waited for orders. Whenever the ships began to stagger head-to-head, a loud roar from Shangguan would be heard: "Fire!" ”

With this loud roar, the artillerymen, musketeers, and archers on the ship immediately went into action. The artilleryman pestled his torch against the cannon door that had been prepared in front of him, and the gunner lit the arquebus, and the archer loosened the bowstring. I can only hear "tom tom tom!" The sound is the same as "Bang Bang! The sound of the bow and arrow was muffled. The sound of cannons and gunfire, accompanied by a series of screams, formed a unique symphony, but this symphony was only for true warriors who were in the middle of a bloody battle and had a strong mind.

The queue of the two fleets that are staggered has also changed, especially on the side of the Qing army, because many of the warships mixed in them are not equipped with cannons, so they will go to the Taiwan Navy Division warship at the fastest speed as soon as they come up, if the large ship is head-on to meet the smaller warship, it is to rush over directly, using huge kinetic energy to crash the small warship, and if it encounters a similar one, the same collision tactics are used, which is also Wang Zhiding's previous death order, if you don't do this, turn back to the military law, This is very serious.

However, in the course of the battle, many Qing warships still did not use the hull to collide, but chose to fight close to the jumping gang. However, Master Zheng Jingshui is an expert at this, and has a series of means to prevent the enemy jumping on the enemy ship, and also has the means to deal with the approaching enemy ship. The Mawei Navy's warships now had fierce fire tanks specially designed for this one, spraying fire oil to burn enemy ships, and Zheng Jun's ships were equipped with some similar arson weapons. But it's not a jet tank. There are several kinds of oil cans and fire bricks. They are all relatively common naval weapons in this era, but oil has not been developed in this era, and oil is a very valuable thing and very scarce, so this kind of weapons have always been rarely equipped.

The smaller Qing ships in the back fought harder, approached at a very fast speed, and used the iron wedge set on the hull to directly nail their own ships to the Taiwanese naval division warships in the process of vigorous collision, so that the two ships were tightly attached to each other, even if the Taiwanese soldiers burned them with fire oil. In the end, he would also set fire to the warship he was in, and the Taiwanese soldiers had no choice but to wave their weapons and fight hand-to-hand.

There were many sand boats on the battlefield that had caught fire, and there were no people standing on the deck, and the Qing troops who could stand up had already jumped into the river with fire. The soldiers on the Taiwanese warships did not stop, and continued to throw oil canisters and fire bricks on the Qing warships facing the Qing army, increasing the fire, and trying to completely kill these sand boats. A few sand ships stopped on the river, unable to move any longer, only the raging fire burning violently. The Qing army's sand boat was not a small boat, and all the people on board added up to at least forty people.

Many warships on the Qing army's side were first bombarded by scattered bullets when they approached. Then there was a flurry of bows and arrows, and firecrackers, and by the time they were on board, some of them were already dead. After being attacked by the fire oil, all the people on the deck turned into torches, and most of them jumped into the river screaming. And some of the remnants hiding in the cabin are estimated to not last long, and the overwhelming fire slowly extends inside, and they will not be burned to death, but will be smoked to death by the smoke!

The Qing army relied on the large number of ships and the speed of the ships to start a large-scale gang jumping, and many ships rushed up to hit it first. It is important to know that after the collision of the two ships, many accidents may occur. If you don't have professional training, it's still a bit difficult to move freely. However, in such a gang-jumping battle, the most exquisite thing is the reaction speed of both sides. Whoever is the first to wake up from the impact and the first to strike will have the best chance of winning the battle.

"Doodoo"

Every time the lookout post at the top of the mast on the warship of the Taiwanese naval division spotted an enemy ship approaching, it would immediately issue a rapid alarm. Tell the people below which way there is an enemy ship approaching! Hearing the alarm, Liu Guoxuan was also nervous, and Liu Guoxuan hurriedly raised the clairvoyant mirror to look at the river around him. Soon, Liu Guoxuan spotted the enemy ship. Just missed two Qing warships with artillery, fired two rounds of artillery at each other, their own warship has also been hit by five shells, the soldiers on the warship killed 20 and seriously injured 16 people, and the Qing warship is still not afraid to shoot again, but it is afraid that the Qing soldiers will bite like ants.

Approaching at a rapid pace was a sand ship, which was even larger than the No. 2 Fu ship. If I am not mistaken, it should be a large sand ship, with a displacement of about 600 tons, which is not too much different from Liu Guoxuan's ship.

The sand boat, which was about to come up, suddenly found that a burst of intense fire shot out from the side of the ship on the right side of the Taiwan warship, and then there was a loud bang, and 15 solid bullets flew straight towards them, and because of the close proximity, 10 of them accurately hit the sand boat, and suddenly three shells of 32-pound red-coated cannons directly pierced the hull of the sand boat, and although the other shells did not penetrate the hull, they also hit the sand boat with sawdust flying sideways. There were also five Franco's machine guns that fired scattered bullets, and there were almost five or six hundred scattered bullets in a canopy, which were overwhelmingly sprinkled on the sand boat, and suddenly ten Qing soldiers were unlucky, and fell on the deck and wailed after being hit by scattered bullets, but three of them were more fortunate than suffering from this severe pain, and they were hit on the head and burped directly.

A burst of artillery fired, and rockets also flew out of this Taiwan warship, crossed an arc in the air, and plunged into the sand boat close to the right, and a dazzling flash of light immediately rose from the sand boat, followed by a large puff of gunsmoke, and then a ball of flames rose from the ship, and the deck at the front of the sand ship was almost instantly shrouded in a sea of fire, igniting a raging fire. And the sand boat of the Qing army was not idle, and when it came to such a close distance, it took a little effort for its own ship to be wedged directly on this Taiwanese warship, even if it caught fire on its side, it was not afraid of it, and it was a big deal to drag this Taiwanese warship similar to a Western warship to die together.

Liu Guoxuan's side continued to use means to strike at the sand boat, and the sand boat was already riddled with holes before it could get up, losing nearly half of its men. But at the same time, Liu Guoxuan's good luck at the moment seemed to end here, the only bowl on the enemy ship bombarded them when it was only thirty meters close, and it seemed that it was not a big threat to them, but they didn't expect that the shell of this cannon actually hit their deck, and impartially smashed a winch on their deck on the spot, and almost knocked off their sails, which was really a quick retribution. Fortunately, a few hand-held hands were quick to see this scene, and they flew up one by one and quickly pounced, desperately pulling the sail rope, which prevented the sail from falling, so that they did not lose the sail, otherwise, their ship would immediately lose most of the power, and the result of direct guidance would be that they would become the prey of many warships of the Qing army.

But the destruction of the wheels used to raise and lower the mainsail also caused a lot of trouble for them, which required more people to raise and lower the sails and adjust the wind angle of the sails, so that their boat could not stop here, but still had to move on. But no one can take care of so much at this time, the river is flying slingshots and arrows at this time, and the conditions on the ship are limited, it is impossible to repair the wheel in a short time, so they can only temporarily wrap the sail rope under the mast instead of the wheel to pull the sail.

However, immediately afterward, seven or eight rockets suddenly flew out from the half-burned Qing army's sand boat, three of which were shot at the front sail of Liu Guoxuan's battleship at once, and immediately burned a big hole in their front sail. But even so, Liu Guoxuan's ship lost most of its power, and its speed slowed down significantly, and it could even be said that it stopped anchoring. In the end, the sand boat still failed to directly approach Liu Guoxuan's ship, so it stopped on the river and burned violently, and the Qing soldiers who could move on it had already jumped into the water to escape.

Although this sand ship did not cause much damage to the target, it exchanged the anchor of the ship and the death of seven or eight people with its own sand ship and the death of more than 40 people, which was worth it, because when the Taiwan warship was at a standstill, two Qing warships on the other side of the front also pounced, and one of them was still the regular main warship of the Qing army. (To be continued......)