The sun was shining on the blue sea, and at noon a fleet was sailing. As can be seen from the flags flying on the ship, this is an Australian transport fleet.

The fleet consists of 11 ships, mainly loaded with blankets, leather, and some food. They left Sydney early this morning, preparing to travel north to Kolkata in the Indonesian archipelago.

Today's Australia is basically a farm economy, not a country that sits on mines, so it mainly relies on animal husbandry.

And the land of more than 8 million people, enough for less than 5 million Australian families are big farmers, and their lives should not be too nourishing.

Of course, the arrival of war showed the loyalty of Australians to Great Britain, and thousands of Australians were conscripted into the army to go to war.

Of course, the Australian Navy is also among the conscripts, but the ones that are called up are mainly more advanced, and for small warships like the Agile, which served in the nineties of the last century, they can only be kept for escort missions.

For Captain Philip of the Agile, the escort mission was too mundane, but for the sailors of the Agile who had only been in the army for a few months, it was great to be able to participate in the escort mission. It's not dangerous, it's workout, and it's not tiring, so it's the perfect task.

But soon, neither Captain Philip, who was eager for merit, nor the rookie sailor, who had only been in the army for a few months, didn't care about this.

"A pillar of smoke was found in the east, and a ship was coming."

The lookout loudly reports his new discoveries.

To the east of the Agile crew's report, the lookout of the Pierre, the forward of Spee's fleet, was also reporting his discovery.

"Reportedly, a convoy was spotted to the west, and by telescope observation, it was a convoy of transports. There should be one or two escort battleships. ”

As a reconnaissance cruiser, the Pierre's firepower is not fierce, but it is quite excellent in speed and reconnaissance, and its top speed of 29 knots is much higher than that of ordinary cruisers. In addition, the ship Shanghai has installed an optical detection instrument more than 3 meters long, which is equipped with optical instruments for warships of more than 10,000 tons, which can enable the Pierre to detect the opponent earlier, and also understand the situation earlier.

Therefore, in front of such a professional maritime reconnaissance ship, there is no way to hide the traces of ships such as the Agile.

"Send a telegram to the fleet informing us of the situation on our side."

Soon Spee, more than ten nautical miles behind him, called back, ordering him to monitor the fleet, which would soon arrive. It is clear that Pace is not going to continue to hide and wants to take down this Australian transport fleet.

The Pierre, having received the order, began to follow the fleet, which was still unknown to him, from a distance.

On the convoy's side, watching the plume of smoke slow to see the ships to the east made the crew of the Agile feel strange.

"What's wrong with this ship?"

"Is there a power failure?"

"Otherwise, we'll go over and see what happens."

Don't blame the crew of the Agile for not thinking that this might be an enemy, because it was so unexpected. Who would have thought that there would be an enemy off the east coast of Australia, let alone these crews, not even Captain Philip, who hated not being able to go to war.

"Turn, let's go over and see what happens."

Following Captain Philip's orders, the Agile turned to the flotilla that had left the escort and rushed to the east.

"There was a situation where the plume of smoke became thicker, and it was as if a fleet had converged."

Before the Agile could get closer to see clearly, the lookout hurriedly reported a new situation.

"What fleet?"

Captain Philip, who heard this, raised his binoculars and observed, and at this time, the entire crew of the Agile, including him, was not aware of the danger.

And Vice Admiral Spee, who had just arrived at this time, hurried towards this fleet with his battleship.

"It's warships, these ships are warships."

At this moment, the lookout, who finally saw the ship, shouted in alarm.

"How come you encounter a warship here, and you can't telegraph it? Could it be ......?"

At this moment, Captain Philip still felt that the situation was very strange, but soon the expertise made him think of a chilling possibility, and his whole face became not very good at this moment.

And at this time, the lookout who saw clearly the flag on the opponent's battleship also let out a trembling scream. "This is the enemy, they are German and Italian warships, they are rushing towards us!"

At this moment, the screams of the lookouts caused confusion among the people on board, they were only recruits who had only been in the army for a few months, and it was normal for them not to know what to do in the face of unexpected situations.

Fortunately, the first mate of the Agile, the boatswain and other officers have served for many years and know how to appease these newcomers.

As for Captain Philip's side, after discovering the enemy ship, he gave several orders in succession. "Immediately send a telegram to the fleet, find an enemy fleet southeast of us, suspect that the other side is the German and Italian fleet that had been hiding before, and let them disband the formation now and flee immediately. They also sent a telegram to Sydney, informing them that the 4th Convoy had been attacked by the German-Italian fleet at longitude 152.75162 north latitude -33.14726 N. At the same time the order was given to the battleship to turn, and we sailed north. ”

That's right, after the captain Philip had informed him of the situation and the disbandment of the fleet and fled for his life, he planned to turn the bow of the ship and plan to slip away.

While it was a fine tradition of the British Navy to see the enemy and attack, this did not mean that it should be allowed to act recklessly, at least for now that tradition would mean suicide. As for the Royal Australian Navy, which has only just been established, of course, it knows how to be flexible.

After all, blocking the opponent's entire fleet with hundreds of tons of agility has no reason to do so except to send it to death, and the opponent only needs a few minutes to send the agility back to the west.

It is not clear whether the telegram from Agile was received in Sydney, but the Pace fleet was definitely the first to receive it.

"Report, just discovered radio waves near us, the contents of which are unknown."

"Okay, I got it."

For this radio wave, Pace didn't have to think about it to know that the other party must have reported his location and the specific situation, and he didn't care about it.

He knew that even if Sydney received the news, it would not be much of a threat to him.

Because he has been to Sydney, he is also very familiar with Sydney's coastal defense situation, and the largest caliber of his current coastal defense facilities are two 240 mm coastal defense guns. However, these two guns were the guns of the decommissioned battleships of the last century, and they did not pose much threat to themselves. As for others, such as 152-mm 127-mm shore defense guns, that's not to mention.

Of course, if the main force of the Australian Navy is in Sydney, Vice Admiral Spec can be regarded as a self-defeating opponent, before the start of the war, the Australian Navy has a strong strength of one battle cruiser, one battleship, five cruisers and more than ten other ships.

However, now its main force has long been withdrawn, and the rest are warships such as the Agile that can only be used for second-line missions such as escort. With these warships, he could also block the attack of his Pacific Fleet, even if Nelson was resurrected.

"Order all ships to attack and sink all merchant ships."

Looking at the scattered and fleeing merchant ships, Vice Admiral Spey did not have much time to waste, he did not intend to capture these merchant ships, he planned to sink them all.

As for the result, there is no need to think about how the merchant ships that ran more than ten knots could escape the pursuit of more than twenty warships, so in the following two hours, the transport ships of the fourth transport fleet were sunk one after another.

As for the Agile, which turned and ran away when it saw that the situation was not good, it was really escaped. The reason is very simple, you can't outrun the tiger but can outrun your teammates, and when the tiger cleans up your teammates, you will run away and disappear.

Although they will have big trouble in the future, at least they have saved their lives for now.

And after settling the convoy, the Pace fleet rushed to Sydney.

(End of chapter)