This new type of 24-pounder cannon still belongs to the category of cannon, has a long range, and is also very powerful, if equipped with this gunboat, it can make this ship obtain relatively more perfect firepower, both long-range attack, but also close combat, greatly expanding the combat effectiveness of this ship.

After careful planning, the ship's internal gun compartment could be equipped with five 32-pounder guns on the port side, three Caron guns and two 24-pounder guns, and ten guns in the gun compartment alone.

Ten twelve-pounder cannons could be placed on the deck, two thirty-two-pounder Caron guns could be arranged on the bow and amidships, and one to three pounder light Furlong cannons mounted on the ship's side could not be counted in the number of cannons.

If you don't count the light small Franc cannon used in close combat, after the completion of the transformation, this ship can also be equipped with 20 large and small guns, and it will become the most powerful gunboat among the Seawolf sailors.

Even if this ship is used to deal with Western-style large plywood ships, as long as it does not encounter large gunboats with super firepower, and against those ordinary armed merchant ships, the firepower of this ship can fight with them in a similar way, and it may not even fall behind.

Yu Xiaotian stood in the gun compartment of this ship, very satisfied, walked back and forth in the spacious gun compartment a few laps, and then lay on the newly opened gun door at the side of the ship and looked out, it can be said that he was full of ambition, if he now has dozens of such big guys in his hands, who else is he afraid of in this Chinese sea! Even if he fought with the fleet of the Dutch East India Company in a dignified manner, he would not necessarily lose to the Dutch.

What a pity! He currently has two such large ships, and the other is the three-masted Dafu ship that captured Zhang Hu at the beginning, but the condition of the Dafu ship is far from being as good as the condition of the ship that captured Chu Cailao, and the materials are not very good.

So he is not going to carry out a deep transformation of that ship at the moment, after inspection, although the ship is a three-masted Daifuku ship, but the materials are not good, it belongs to a kind of goods, it is no problem to sail on the sea, but if you want to transform it into a gunboat, unless you replace everything inside, then I am afraid it will be much more troublesome than building a new ship.

But fortunately, after the ship was renovated, it was okay to act as a cargo ship at sea, so now the ship has been allocated to the merchant fleet for the purpose of transporting large quantities of goods.

Just when Xiaotian was busy renovating this big ship, the Feizi Clipper Detachment, which was sent to operate on the sea of Zhangquan, sent back the news that it was brought back to Nanri Island with carrier pigeons.

At the end of the previous year, when the sea wolf cracked the fine business house arranged by Chu Cai Lao on Nanri Island in the Nanri Island business inn area, Yu Xiaotian discovered that they used carrier pigeons as a way to deliver news.

So Yu Xiaotian immediately sent people to the land to buy a large number of excellent breeding pigeons, brought them back to Nanri Island for multiplication, and searched around for people who can raise and train carrier pigeons to help him establish a communication network with carrier pigeons as the transmission method.

This kind of thing can not be done in a short time, the carrier pigeons have to go through a long period of training, but also have a considerable number of carrier pigeons as a basis, in addition to the main strongholds, in addition to raising the carrier pigeons, using their own homing habits, in order to form such a carrier pigeon communication network.

After more than a year of preparation, it was not until after the end of the sixth year of the Apocalypse that such a carrier pigeon communication network was initially established.

Some expatriate ships began to carry carrier pigeons, as a fast and convenient way of communication to contact the wolf's den when they went to sea, but unfortunately this way of contact still has great limitations, because the carrier pigeons carried on the ship can only communicate in one direction, bringing the news back to the wolf's den, but they cannot receive the instructions sent to them by the wolf's den.

This time, the Feizi clipper detachment that was sent to the Zhangquan area to make trouble with Zheng Yiguan sent back the news that during their one-month trip to sea, they intercepted and killed a total of 18 ships under Zheng Yiguan's command in the Zhangquan area, and destroyed seven enemy ships on the spot, of which five were able to escape by taking advantage of the fog in the sea, and the remaining six were captured on the spot.

After capturing the enemy ship, the detachment originally planned to escort it back to Nanri Island, but when it reached the Shenhu Bay of Quanzhou, it happened to collide with a fleet of Zheng Yiguan, and the two sides started a big battle, although the detachment's ships had the advantage of speed and firepower, and their flexibility was far greater than that of Zheng Yiguan's fleet.

However, because the speed of the captured ships they escorted was slow, and they were bitten by the enemy and could not get out, so that the rear detachment had to set fire to the enemy ships that had been captured, and finally withdrew from the battlefield.

Yu Xiaotian was not dissatisfied with this situation, he did not expect this clipper detachment to snatch many goods and ships from Zheng Yiguan, as long as they could hit Zheng Yiguan, so that Zheng Yiguan could not easily obtain a large amount of property, and it was enough to greatly delay his development.

Now these clippers have temporarily gone to Meizhou Island to rest and replenish, and by the way, they will repair the damage caused by the battle to the ships, and wait for Xiaotian's next order.

The sea wolf did not actually control Meizhou Island before, because it was located at the mouth of Meizhou Bay, which was directly controlled by the government before, and Yu Xiaotian did not want to stimulate the government too much, so he never actually controlled Meizhou Island.

However, after he launched the battle between Puxi and Nanri Shuizhai last year, he occupied Meizhou Island in one fell swoop, as a bridgehead for their sea wolves to the south, which could be used to block the mouth of Meizhou Bay south of Xinghua Province when necessary, and as an advance base to the Zhangquan area, so he built a small-scale fortress at the southern end of Meizhou Island.

This time, the Zhangquan Clipper detachment took this place as a fulcrum, and after resting and replenishing, it directly returned to the Zhangquan area to continue its work.

After Yu Xiaotian thought about it for a while, he ordered these clippers to temporarily rest on Meizhou Island, and wait for his next arrangement, after more than a month of cruising at sea and continuous operations, the crew should have been quite tired, this is not just a long voyage, they have to keep searching for enemy traces on the sea, but also to engage with it, the crew has always maintained a state of tension, but also to face the invasion of wind and rain at sea, do not let them take a good rest, and then it will inevitably cause excessive fatigue and some accidents.

Originally, Yu Xiaotian planned to go to Tamsui City to see how the progress of various projects there was, but on April 18, Yu Xiaotian received a message from Keelung Fort that a Spanish fleet had landed in Taipei.

The Spaniards were apparently more efficient than the Ming government, and their war machine in Greater Luzon was set in motion in early March, when the Spanish governor in Manila, Shroud, finally made the decision to send troops to northern Taiwan.

One by one, the ships docked and began to be renovated, and batches of war and engineering materials began to be gathered and transported to the dock warehouses to be loaded onto ships.

In the bars near the docks in Manila, there were people shouting loudly, recruiting sailors and soldiers, a group of adventurers from Europe and other places, or scumbags, often gathered in the dock bars, and spent time here when they had nothing to do, but mainly waited here for the opportunity to take advantage of the opportunity.

Under normal circumstances, merchant ships sail at sea, for various reasons, the mortality rate of the crew will be quite high, the ship from Europe to Manila or from the Americas, there will be a lot of crew loss on the way, before the ship sails again, often the captain will go to the bar to recruit sailors, to supplement the shortage of personnel on board.

After the Spanish Age of Discovery, as pioneers, ships were all over the world, and they could not organize enough soldiers and sailors with their own population alone, which required the use of some people from all over Europe who were not willing to be lonely to meet their needs.

Many countries in Europe have some restless adventurers, who want to get a pot of gold from their lives, change their fate, and go to sea to wander around, looking for opportunities to make a fortune in life.

And there are some criminals and scum among them, who really can't get along in Europe, so they flee Europe and go to various parts of the world to join the adventure.

The Spanish garrison in the Philippines did not have many troops, and the shortage of soldiers was very serious, and to carry out such a task, a large number of additional manpower was needed, so their troops were not only composed of Spaniards, but also absorbed people from all over the world to join their ranks.

After a period of replenishment of personnel and on-the-spot training, Sterva organized a fleet of six galleons, two of which were Spanish warships, the largest of which was the Galen with a displacement of 500 to 600 tons, equipped with 36 guns of various kinds, and the other was a 400-ton Galen with 28 guns.

The other four belong to armed merchant ships, with a displacement of less than 400 tons, but the firepower configuration is not weak, after all, they have to travel on the sea, and they often encounter the Dutch and British privateers and warships that are now hostile to them, and will attack their ships, so these armed merchant ships are often equipped with no less than ten guns, and the firepower is also quite powerful.

(Thank you Feng Mu Chunjiang and STDX for your tips!) Thank you for your support! ）