"This is Cape Romanee, which is also the end point of the Titanini Mountains. Our transport fleet can no longer sail along the coastline, because the front is the only hidden reef area on the golden coastline of the Sunshine Sea. Therefore, our transport fleet must Back to the sea. As long as we pass this Cape Romanee, we will reach the edge of the Cristo Hills. After another three days of sailing, we will reach the port of El Niba, and it will only take two or three days to return to Tibetan Gold Bay. up.
But the problem now is that the Norton family has gathered a large fleet and set up a battle to the death with us on the sea route of Cape Romani. Obviously their purpose is to intercept our transport fleet and prevent us from transporting supplies, food, grass and reinforcements to Tibetan Gold Bay. After the fourth attack on our fleet by the Nortons, the gallant Captain Prudden ventured to follow the evacuated guns, and brought us this information.
According to his reconnaissance, the Norton family deployed sixteen huge warships on the sea route, twice the size of large ocean-going armed merchant ships, but not as big as our Sepnipe battleship. In addition, there are nearly a hundred large armed warships. There are also more than forty medium-sized armed warships cruising in the reef area near Cape Romani. As for the dozen or so artillery warships that retreated, they were cruising outside the sea route. "
Viscount Penelope pointed at the chart on the wall with a thin stick. He is the commander-in-chief of the Merchant Alliance Armada and the commander of the First Squadron. He is also a second-level swordsman. division. Sitting in the meeting room are the high-level commanders of the Armada, the captains of large armed warships, and the captains of various formations.
The atmosphere in the conference room was very depressing, and Viscount Penelope sighed secretly in his heart. How long ago did the commanders of the Armada Fleet be beaten so dejectedly by the enemy's dozen warships? Po, no more temper. Back in the day, as long as you heard the whereabouts of the enemy fleet, which one of you here would not rush to be the first to volunteer to fight, for fear that you would not have the opportunity to go to the battlefield...
But thinking about it, it’s no wonder that this is the case. After encountering four enemy attacks, the Armada Fleet lost troops, and the two squadrons and the armed fleet of the Chicod Chamber of Commerce have lost more than 200 warships, although most of them were small and fast. Hitting warships and medium-sized armed warships, but the enemy has only a dozen artillery warships, and they came to attack four times without any damage. Every time they came, they fired a cannon from the periphery, and walked away when they ran out of ammunition. The Armada Fleet has been in a state of being beaten and unable to fight back, and it can't catch up if it wants to. It can't be blamed on the high-level fleet commanders present who are all helpless and sighed.
Thinking of when the two squadrons just met, who didn't talk loudly and wantonly ridicule the misfortune of the third squadron and the incompetence of the fourth squadron? The Third Squadron was negligent, and as a result, it was attacked at night in the port of El Niba, and all the members of the fleet were turned into infantry with a single torch. Although the Fourth Squadron claimed to be victorious, the loss of 70 to 80 to 6 is really embarrassing. When did the Armada Fleet achieve such a victory? And after the victory, the remaining battleships can only hide in the Golden Bay and dare not show their heads...
Although they are all members of the Armada, there are still contradictions and competition among the four squadrons. The backstage of the first squadron is the Double-Headed Dragon Chamber of Commerce, while the second and third squadrons belong to the Chickard Chamber of Commerce. As for the fourth squadron, it is a hodgepodge, and anyone can mix sand into it.
Basically, the first three squadrons look down on the combat effectiveness of the fourth squadron, thinking that the fourth squadron is the biggest shortcoming of the Armada. But now that the Third Squadron is in bad luck, everyone can only laugh at the record of the Fourth Squadron. Since the Fourth Squadron can sink six warships of the Norton Family Fleet, then the First and Second Squadrons will be able to deal with the Norton Family Fleet with only a dozen warships
Although I have some impressions of the long-range attack power of the Norton family fleet and the excellent performance of the battleships mentioned in the battle report submitted by the Fourth Squadron, the senior commanders of the First and Second Squadrons are still somewhat dissatisfied. No matter how powerful the long-range attack is, no matter how excellent the warship performance is, after all, there are only a dozen warships, and the Norton family's fleet can be piled to death with the advantage of numbers alone...
So when everyone got together, they were not discussing how to destroy the Norton family fleet, but how to capture Hilovas Island. The senior commanders of the fleet, who are used to the warm and bright sunshine in the southern waters, are not willing to go to the windy and rough northern seas. Everyone guesses which unlucky guy will be appointed as the commander of the garrison fleet after the capture of Hilovas Island.
Until May 9th, the night before the scheduled departure of the fleet, the harbor where nearly a thousand merchant warships gathered was unexpectedly attacked by the Norton family fleet at night. Fortunately, the seaport in the territory of the Chickard Chamber of Commerce is a bit small, and more medium-sized freight ships loaded with cargo are arranged outside the seaport, so as to block the Norton family's warships that fired artillery. The small fast-impacting warship detachment responded in a timely manner, and immediately counterattacked the attackers, forcing the enemy's fleet to leave the harbor and avoiding another tragedy such as the burning of El Niba Port.
Although the night attack of the Norton family fleet was unsuccessful, the heavy losses they caused to the Armada and the transport fleet finally woke up the minds of the fleet's top commanders. For the first time, they saw the power of the long-range attack artillery mentioned in the report submitted by the Fourth Squadron. In order to clean up the mess, they had to postpone the transport fleet for seven days before setting sail, and at the same time changed the original formation and Sailing route, sailing along the coastline to avoid another attack and loss of the transport fleet.
But the next three attacks by the Norton family fleet finally made the North Sea Fleet realize the gap in the performance of warships. Regardless of the operational performance, the flexible and fast artillery fleet made the Armada Fleet almost helpless. All the traps they arranged were attacked by the enemy. While ignoring it, the opponent's fleet commander was obviously a cunning and cautious guy. He was indifferent to the transport fleet, and just stared at the armed warships defending the periphery and kept beating and bombarding them.
Originally, those small fast-ramping battleships still had some threats to the enemy. You must know that there were twenty-four oarsmen at the black iron level on those small fast-ramming battleships. An oarsman combined with a sail can increase the speed of the battleship for a short period of time, so that the battleship can speed up and hit the enemy ship.
However, the artillery warships of the Norton family have already found the weakness of the small fast ramming warships, because these small fast ramming warships are not equipped with any long-range fire attack weapons, and what they use is to let the sharp ramming angle in front of the battleship pierce the enemy's ship wall , slow down the speed of the enemy ship and wait for the support of the follow-up fleet. So the artillery warships of the Norton family allowed the small fast-impact warships of the Armada to approach within 100 meters, then lowered the muzzle of the guns, stuffed the shotgun, and there was a "boom", basically one gun and one ship...
On the night when the artillery battleship attacked the harbor at night, it still used iron projectiles to deal with those small fast-impacting warships. If it can hit three or four shots out of ten shots, it is considered a good gunner. But the second attack began to use the cannonball to deal with the nimble and fast small fast ramming warships. The same was true for the third raid, and by the fourth raid all the small fast rams of the Armada refused to fight. Because that's not called fighting, but being targeted, and there are almost no survivors in a boat with more than 30 people. There is no such way to send death.
You must know that the crew and sailors of all small fast-ramming warships can only be taken on by the bravest sailors in the fleet. Even they have no intention of fighting. It is conceivable how low the morale of the entire Armada The battleships in the outermost defensive circle are equivalent to preparing to be bombarded. What the crew are preparing for is not to fight, but to find a life-saving thing for themselves first, so that they can survive the disaster after the battleship is sunk...
Viscount Penelope waited for a long time before anyone stood up to express his opinion. Looking at the fleet officials with their heads bowed in the conference room, he couldn't help being furious. He slapped the table in front of him fiercely, roaring angrily. Get up: "They're all dead, aren't they! Are you frightened by the enemy's artillery fire? Isn't everyone usually very good, why are they all dumb now? The enemy has already set up an array in front of us and is ready to fight us to the death, and you But all of you shrink like quails! Shouldn’t you just hang the white flag and surrender to the enemy, anyway, you don’t look like the warriors of the Armada!”
Viscount Penelope's anger finally aroused the pride and shame of the fleet officials, and all the blushing fleet officials stood up to express their determination: "My lord, since the Norton family wants a decisive battle, then we will give him a decisive battle. The Armada will definitely victorious!"
"My lord, please allow me to be the vanguard battleship, I will rush to the forefront..."
"My lord, even if I die in battle, I will lead the enemy to die together..."
"My lord, please trust us, we will not shame the century-old reputation of the Armada Fleet, we can defeat the enemy, and we will certainly defeat the enemy!"
"Crack, crack, crack." A crisp applause sounded: "I believe in your courage, and I also believe that the Armada will not fail. In fact, I don't think the artillery warships of the Norton family are so terrible. They It’s not invincible either.”
The fleet commanders in the conference room all turned their heads to see who was so brash, after all, no one can come up with a way to deal with those slippery artillery warships now.
I saw a handsome young man with a calm temperament and a smile walking towards Viscount Penelope. The commanders of the fleet all knew this young man. He was the young master of the Chickard Chamber of Commerce, Thurliham, the commander of the Armed Fleet of the Chickard Chamber of Commerce.
"Master Thurliham, is there any basis for your statement?" A fleet commander asked loudly.
Master Thurliham smiled gently and nodded: "Of course, everyone will know soon. If you don't count the night attack on the port, the artillery fleet of the Norton family attacked us three times in total. The fleet lost a total of 243 warships, of which 129 were small fast collision warships, 86 medium-sized armed warships, 13 medium-sized cargo ships, and 15 large armed warships.
Here is a key point that everyone has noticed, that is, the loss of large armed warships is far less than that of small and medium-sized warships. On the one hand, the fleet arranged small and medium-sized warships to drive away the enemy and suffered heavy losses, but on the other hand, it shows that large armed warships have great advantages in resisting enemy bombardment. I found that a large armed battleship can still sail normally after being bombarded by the enemy several times, but a small and medium-sized battleship will be sunk and destroyed.
I don’t know if you have noticed that when we were attacked for the first time, we lost seven large armed warships, but two of them were burned due to fire, and only five were sunk. When we were attacked for the second time, we dispatched more large-scale armed warships, but only five were sunk. They basically suffered several rounds of concentrated fire attacks from the enemy before being sunk. In the third attack, we only sank three large armed warships.
Gentlemen, do you still remember the Flying Wing of our Chamber of Commerce Armed Fleet? During the third attack, it was a large armed warship serving as the outermost defense. It was attacked by more than ten rounds of artillery from the enemy, but it has been floating on the sea surface On the top, almost one side of the ship wall was smashed. Didn't you call it an unsinkable miracle after the war
This is actually a mystery. After the second attack, we discovered such a thing when we inspected the warships that were shelled. Because our battleship is also responsible for transporting food and grass, when repairing a hole that was bombarded, we found that an iron projectile fired by a cannon fell into a pile of flour bags after piercing through the ship's wall. Apart from cooking a circle of flour around it, the iron bullet only made a hole in the ship's wall and never played any other role.
So we did an experiment, we built a large bag of flour walls on all the inner bulkheads of the Flying Wing battleship and the ship boards of the bilge, and tried to fix it, just want to see the bags of flour Does it have a buffering effect on the iron projectiles fired by the artillery. As everyone has seen, the Flying Wing was not sunk, and we collected nearly forty iron projectiles in the cabin after the war... "
Cheers erupted in the entire conference room. If Master Seliham didn't panic, then at least everyone no longer needs to panic when facing the Norton family's artillery fleet. The artillery fleet of the Norton family must get closer if they want to sink their warships. This will give the Armada an opportunity to take advantage of it. Maybe they can use crossbows and trebuchets to fight back. Just being beaten cannot fight back. Everyone has had enough of the days when they want to catch up but can't catch up.
Seeing the lively atmosphere in the conference room, Viscount Penelope smiled in relief. He first thanked Master Seliham for a few words, and then calmed everyone down.
"I don't think the Norton family would have thought that we had found a way to deal with the artillery. Of course, this must be thanks to Master Seliham..." Viscount Penelope was the first to applaud, and the applause soon joined together.
Master Thurliham bowed to everyone, saying that he had only fulfilled his due responsibilities, and everyone deserved their love.
"Now that the Norton family is preparing for a decisive battle in front of us, what should we do?" Viscount Penelope asked loudly.
"Get rid of them! The Armada is victorious!" The momentum in the meeting room was like a rainbow.
Viscount Penelope nodded in satisfaction, and tapped the chart hanging on the bulkhead with the thin wooden stick in his hand: "They have set up a decisive battle at Cape Romanee, maybe they think The long-range attack of the artillery can intercept our transport fleet, and even think about destroying our Armada, this is actually just a dream!
Our two squadrons still have four giant ships of Sepnim, more than 100 large armed warships, more than 100 small and medium-sized warships, and more than 300 warships in total, as well as Chicod The hundred or so armed warships of the Chamber of Commerce, the battleships and troops alone surpassed the Norton family's fleet by several times. Did they think they could defeat us with just one artillery piece
We'll tell them delusions, and we'll roll over them like weeds before a wheel, and Master Seliham has given us the means to withstand the bombardment. We will use it to set up our warships, and then we will go straight ahead under the enemy's fire, rush to the middle of the enemy's fleet and lean over, waiting for our sea stormtroopers to board their warships. I believe that victory is like maturity. The fruit of , will soon fall into our hands! "
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