In response to the request for help from Hong Kong Island, the Singapore side replied that the reinforcement fleet had not yet been assembled, and the reinforcements of the two divisions drawn from India and Burma had not yet arrived in Singapore, so they could not be reinforced for the time being.

The arrival of reinforcements in Hong Kong would not be until April 15 at the earliest.

And this time is naturally satisfactory to the British troops on Hong Kong Island, not to mention April 12th, even this late March they can not hold on, they strongly demand immediate reinforcements from Singapore, not 12,000 reinforcements, even if only one or two thousand reinforcements are good.

This also makes it very difficult for the East India Fleet to do it, they themselves hope to reinforce as soon as possible, but now they have insufficient warships in their hands, and the army has not yet arrived, how can this be reinforced!

"If we wait any longer, Hong Kong Island will be completely lost, and at that time, I'm afraid the country will have a big opinion on us!" Major General Liszt put down the telegram sent from Hong Kong and said with a worried face.

Colonel John next to him said: "But our fleet has not yet arrived, and the army is still gathering, so how can we reinforce it?" ”

Liszt pondered, and said after a long time: "Judging from the speed of the Hector, they should be able to reach Singapore the day after tomorrow, so that we have three main warships in our hands that the Chinese absolutely cannot compete, and then some wooden armor warships will be enough to clean up the Chinese!" ”

Rear Admiral Liszt was the commander of the East India Fleet who had just arrived this year, and compared with the huge British Continental or Mediterranean Fleet, the number of warships in his hands was not very large!

The British naval strategy has always been focused on the Channel Fleet and the Mediterranean Fleet, and the other sub-fleets are all behind. Unless the situation is tense, capital ships would not normally be sent to the Indian Ocean or Asia.

In 1864. The British once dispatched two 10,000-ton ironclad ships to the Indian Ocean because of the vigorous development of ironclad ships in the Chinese Empire. However, one of the two giant ships was quickly redeployed back to the mainland, because at that time, Britain and the Empire signed an agreement of understanding on Burma, which basically settled the Burma problem, and the conflict between Britain and the Empire was not big in a short time.

Coupled with the fact that at this time the French were building a navy on a large scale in an attempt to challenge the British supremacy in the English Channel, Napoleon III proposed a draft shipbuilding plan to build twenty battleships, eleven of which were large ironclads. The move was a huge stimulus to the UK.

In view of the pressure of naval expansion brought by the French to the British in recent years, after the situation in Burma calmed down, the British re-transferred two 10,000-ton ships back to the Straits Fleet.

Of course, it is impossible for the East India Fleet to be without the main ironclad ships, so the Resistance of the Mediterranean Fleet was transferred to the East Indies and became the new flagship of the East India Fleet.

At the beginning of this year, there was tension in Hawaii. The British, fearing a maritime conflict in Asia, once again sent warships to reinforce the East India Fleet, including a new ironclad ship, the Hector.

The Hector is a successor to the Resistance. The latter had a displacement of more than 600 tons more than the former, the Resistance had only more than 6,100 tons, and the Hector had more than 6,700 tons.

Wait for the Hector to arrive. Rear Admiral Liszt was able to have two main ironclads and a converted half-hung ironclad ship. Owned three capital ships.

Of course, this is not to say that the East India Fleet was the only one with these ships. Even the Imperial Chinese Navy, which claims to be fully ironcladized, still has many wooden warships, not to mention the British Royal Navy, which has a large business and a large inventory of old warships, and the number of their various wooden warships exceeds the total number of warships of other countries' navies, even in the East India Fleet, there are more than a dozen wooden warships of various grades.

And this kind of wooden battleship is not to say the same as the small-tonnage gunboats in the previous Chinese fleet, but real ocean-going warships, ranging from fifth-class to third-class battleships, as well as a number of fast cruisers.

If some of them are no longer in the era of ironclads, then these wooden warships alone are enough to fight against any fleet of other countries today.

However, the strategic value of the wooden battleships in these years has declined rapidly, starting from around 1860, in just five or six years, these wooden battleships have been picked off by ironclad ships and lost their status as capital ships.

From the perspective of the American Civil War and the Hawaiian Naval Battle, the wooden sail warships in these years have completely lost their strategic value and can no longer play the role of the core of naval warfare.

In the American Civil War, the Southern Federation also had a wooden battleship with sails of several thousand tons, but this wooden battleship in the war, not to mention its heavy use, can not be compared with the USS Washington ocean-going ironclad ordered from China, even the American Northern Navy's own 1,000-ton offshore ironclad can bully it casually.

There is no tonnage and barely passable firepower, but it can only be bullied by ironclad ships that are several laps smaller.

It can be seen that in just five or six years, wooden battleships, especially those with large tonnage wooden sail battleships, have basically lost their strategic value.

This is also why the navies of all countries in the world, whether it is Britain or France, or the emerging Chinese Empire, the United States and other navies, are all engaged in ironclad ships.

On the evening of the next day, the Hector arrived in the port of Singapore, and after a short rest, on the third day, March 28, Rear Admiral Lister officially led the fleet out of Singapore and into the depths of the ocean.

Rear Admiral Liszt led the fleet out of the port, and the news was delivered to Lin Dabiao's desk at noon that day!

Lin Dabiao then urgently convened a tactical meeting, and this time accurate information came from Singapore, the British reinforcement fleet had more than fifteen warships, and several transport ships. Coal carriers and other auxiliary vessels.

Led by them are two large ironclad ships of more than 6,000 tons, although the people in Singapore have not accurately observed the large ship type and ship name. However, according to the information obtained from other public sources, the Imperial Navy has already determined that one of the ships is the flagship of the East India Fleet, the Resistance. As for the other one, it's none other than the Resistance's sisters or the Hector, why?

Because the British have a lot of money, they prefer large ironclad ships of more than 9,000 tons, or even 10,000 tons, compared to large ironclad ships of no less than six or seven thousand tons. So far, the British have served as many as six ironclad ships of more than 9,000 tons, but there are only three ironclad ships of 6,000 tons.

The British only had three 6,000-ton ironclads in active service, so they couldn't guess which two were the East India Fleet!

In addition to these two main ironclads. The intelligence officer also reported that there was another ironclad ship of about 3,000 tons in the East India Fleet, and at least four ironclad gunboats of less than 1,000 tons.

This was followed by about ten wooden warships of varying tonnage, the largest of which was more than 2,000 tons, and the small ones were seven or eight hundred tons!

On the whole, the total number of fleets attacked by the British was far less than the total number of British and French fleets in 1858.

You must know that the total number of British and French fleets at that time exceeded more than 200, and there were dozens of warships.

However, the reason why the British and French fleets were so large at that time was because they also carried 20,000 or 30,000 land forces, and now, the British navy is lightly armed. And not many army soldiers were carried.

It can be seen that this time the British came purely to destroy the sea power of the Chinese navy, and in addition to providing small-scale supplies and reinforcements to Hong Kong Island to help the British defense on Hong Kong Island.

However, the British fleet was less numerous. It doesn't mean that their strength is weak, not to mention anything else, just those two ironclad ships of more than 6,000 tons. It was like two mountains pressing on the hearts of the generals of the Imperial Navy.

In the event of a war, will these small-tonnage ironclads be able to compete with the enemy's large-tonnage ironclads?

And the number of its own warships is so small. Will you be able to cope with it then? The more than a dozen wooden battleships of the British were not pulled out to watch the show, but were used to fight. Although the role may be smaller at that time, it can't stand the large number of people.

Although many people have concerns about this war, the war has come, and there is no possibility for them to back down.

At dawn the next day, the First and Second Fleets of the Combined Fleet of the Imperial Navy lifted anchor from the Changzhou Military Port in Guangzhou, and then sailed down the river from Guangzhou towards the mouth of the Pearl River.

In the afternoon, they and the Third Squadron converged in the waters off Hong Kong and conducted the last large-scale joint exercise of the whole fleet.

The captains and other senior officers of the ships boarded the flagship Yandi and participated in a tactical meeting held by the Joint Fleet Staff Group, at which Lin Tongshu, a young individual, acted as the actual commander of the fleet and arranged detailed combat missions for the three detachments.

Of course, these orders could not have been given directly by him, he did not have the right to do so, and the orders of this scale were given by Vice Admiral Shen Tongdeng, the commander of the First Fleet and also the commander of the Combined Fleet of the Provisional Imperial Navy.

Shen Tongdeng, strictly speaking, he went to the UK to study earlier than Lin Tongshu, but he did not directly enter the British naval academy to study, but directly boarded the British warship as an observer military attache to study.

However, he was promoted very quickly, as a staunch ironclad faction in the navy, he has held many important positions, and once served as the Imperial Naval Attaché, what is the Imperial Naval Attaché? In fact, it was the emperor's personal naval adviser, and when the emperor had something to do with naval affairs, this former naval attaché was responsible for answering all kinds of questions to the emperor.

In 1865, Song Qinan stepped down as commander of the First Fleet and was transferred to the head of the Naval Operations Department, and he Shen Tongdeng succeeded Song Qinan as commander of the First Fleet and was successfully promoted to vice admiral.

Such a Shen Tongdeng is among the active senior generals in the navy, and he is the top five senior generals.

But even so, he can only act as a puppet in this upcoming naval battle, although the orders are all issued by him, but in fact these orders are made by those young staff officers in the staff group of the Combined Fleet, and they have nothing to do with him, the commander of the fleet.

In this imminent naval battle, the actual commander of the Combined Fleet of the Imperial Royal Navy is only a lieutenant colonel who is only twenty-six years old! (To be continued.) )