Zhang Zhu’s second group of ships is opposite to the Spanish fleet. He has sixty to seventy cantons and blessed ships, plus a large number of Cangshan ships. The front of the column has far exceeded the Spanish tail. The ship had lost its target, so it had to turn left and rolled back from the leeward. The retreat of the Spanish fleet to the south was completely blocked.
Malos, the commander of the Spanish fleet, is desperate. This is all his ships in the South Seas.
Since the 16th year of Wanli (AD 1588), Britain destroyed Spain’s invincible fleet, Spain has never recovered its vitality, the navy has declined sharply, and the whole country has also declined sharply. It has become a second-rate country in Europe, or the Netherlands, from a maritime hegemon. Nor can it be independent from Spain.
Spain is still expanding overseas, but the focus of their expansion is already on the American continent. In the South Ocean region, there is only one Southern Ryukyu Islands, and the 13 ships participating in the decisive battle today.
However, now there are only eight ships that can participate in the war.
These are the only eight ships of Malos.
If these eight ships were destroyed by the Ming army, then Spain would have no navy in the Southeast Asia.
In order to protect the Spanish navy's last fire in the South Seas, Malos chose to surrender.
After playing the white flag, the Spanish ships voluntarily stopped the shelling, and Zhang Zhu also played a semaphore, ordering the fleet to stop shelling the Spanish ships, and sent the Fu ship and the Cangshan ship to approach them, preparing to take over the Spanish ships.
The Spanish fleet surrendered to the Ming army neatly, and the Dutch fleet, which was still fighting hard, suddenly became ashamed. The Portuguese had fled the battlefield. Now if the Spanish surrender again, they will face the Ming fleet alone.
Perhaps it was the deputy commander of the fleet that sent the semaphore, but Zheng Zhilong didn’t see it anyway. The Dutch ship suddenly abandoned the South China Sea Fleet, turned its muzzle, and fired violently at the Spanish ship. A Spanish ship that had lost power was suddenly hit. Under the blow of the Dutch flower bomb, it slowly sank to the bottom of the sea, leaving only soldiers and wood chips struggling in the whirlpool on the surface.
Zheng Zhilong was furious. The Spanish fleet had already surrendered to Daming. They are the captives of the South China Sea Fleet. They should be handled by the South China Sea Fleet. It is also a matter of the South China Sea Fleet that you want to sink them.
He asked the soldiers to play the semaphore: Concentrate the artillery and hit the Dutch ships severely.
The artillery fire of the South China Sea Fleet has become more intense. In fact, the number of naval guns has not increased, but the target has decreased, and the artillery fire has become more concentrated.
Another Dutch ship was sunk, and the Dutch no longer had the intention of attacking Spanish ships. They once again used naval guns to target the South China Sea Fleet.
But there were so many Ming warships on all sides that they almost surrounded them. They didn't know which Ming ship they were going to aim at. In the end, they aimed at whomever they caught.
Zhang Zhu took the opportunity to command the Fu ship, took over the surrendered Spanish fleet, and escorted the Spanish soldiers from the ship one by one.
The Dutch found that something was wrong. Their original 22 ships, now only 14 are left, and the number of Ming warships is more than ten times theirs.
Now is a sea battle that is completely unequal.
In fact, from the beginning, it was an unequal naval battle, but the combined fleet ignored the number of Ming warships.
Now it's not too late to know.
Seeing that victory was hopeless, the Dutch began to break through. The bow of the fleet was heading west, and they chose to break through from the west.
As the Dutch fleet fired its guns at the South China Sea Fleet, it accelerated its speed, hoping to get rid of the Cantonese and Fortune Boats behind and on the right, break through the obstacles of the Cantonese and return to the Batavia base.
"Want to run? Are you at your door?" Zheng Zhilong could imagine with his toes. What was the end result of the naval battle west of the Bashi Channel? He had long been relaxed.
"Commander, the Dutch ship is about to escape. They are too close to the ship ahead and are about to enter the blind spot of the naval gun."
"The Dutch are good calculations!" Zheng Zhilong estimated that the Dutch were going to hit the enlightened ship with a ship, and then turned south and escaped one ship after another. He sneered slightly: "The fire dragon goes out to sea, let the Dutch try new things. "
The soldiers of Guangchuan in front of the Dutch ship became busy immediately. They took out thin bamboo tubes from the cabin. The front of the bamboo tube was the dragon's head and the rear was the dragon's tail. The whole object was like a straight dragon.
The dragon's body was placed on a shelf on the deck, and a long lead was drawn from the four bamboo tubes below.
"ignition."
The soldiers ignited the fuse under the dragon's body one after another.
The soldiers on the Dutch ship also saw all this, "What is the Ming army doing? Are they celebrating the victory of the naval battle now? These ancient peoples will never be understood."
The Dutch soldiers did not understand that the Ming army was not celebrating the victory, but the last wave of blows to the Dutch before the victory.
"Boom... Boom..."
The fuse burned out, and the dragon seemed to be alive. With a loud noise, the dragon body suddenly flew into the sky and flew towards the Dutch soldiers.
The height of the dragon's body slowly dropped. After sliding for one or two miles on the water, several rockets flew out of the dragon's mouth and rushed towards the Dutch ship. Then, the dragon's body fell into the sea.
After flying for a certain distance on the surface of the water, the rockets hit the Dutch ships, or the decks, or the sides of the ships, and even the bodies of Dutch soldiers.
But after the rocket encountered these obstacles, it exploded again.
The Dutch soldiers who were directly hit by the rocket suddenly turned into countless soldiers... Every piece of flesh and blood was a new life they gave birth.
Fire began on the Dutch ship.
After the rocket exploded, the huge energy and hot temperature not only destroyed the personnel and equipment on the ship, but also ignited all the wooden objects in the center, including the cabin and the ship's side.
The Dutchman on the ship was stunned for a while, even if he was not injured, it seemed that he had been tapped by the shock wave of a rocket.
"Hurry up and put out the fire!"
I don't know who it was, but when he was burned by the fire, he became sober.
The Dutch soldiers temporarily forgot the terrifying rockets, and one after another covered the burning objects with the sand prepared on the ships.
However, the fire here just went out, another place caught fire again, and the Ming army was still launching the "fire dragon out to sea".
These "fire dragons going to sea" just made up for the blind spot between the naval gun and the flintlock range.
The maximum range of the "fire dragon going to sea" is beyond the range of the naval gun, but the soldiers adjusted the angle of the launcher to lower its range.
This is the first time the "fire dragon goes to sea" fighting on the sea. The soldiers have insufficient experience and the hit rate is not high.
After the Dutch soldiers withstood the initial fear, they still controlled the ship to move forward, but they learned well this time, and they don't know what secret weapon the Ming army will use again.
The ships of the two sides were getting closer and closer, and the Ming army saw that the naval guns were no longer able to fire, so they had to turn around and turned the bow of the ship to the Dutch ship.
But the ship turned and the angle of rotation was too great, and a huge gap appeared between the pitiful ships.
The Dutch ships paid no attention to anything. They aimed at these openings and rushed over, trying to rush out through these openings. Once they rushed out of the South China Sea Fleet and took advantage of the smooth wind, they could escape the battlefield.
"Bang, bang, bang..."
The Ming army’s flintlocks began to fire. At such a close distance, even the "fire dragon going to sea" could not hit the Dutch ships. The soldiers had to use the flintlocks.
The Dutch soldiers also used their muskets.
Soldiers on both sides are like armies that meet on a narrow road, and they begin close combat on the sea.
The Ming army became more and more courageous, and the Dutch ships ran away.
Although the Ming army had a large number of ships, these ships surrounded the Dutch ships, and there were not many ships that really stood in the way.
The sailors or helmsmen on the two Dutch ships were all shot and killed by the Ming army. The ship was not controlled by the Ming army and was finally intercepted by the Ming army, while the other twelve Dutch ships broke through the South China Sea Fleet. The defense, go south.
A large number of ships of the South China Sea Fleet hurriedly followed behind.
The Dutch ship went south, and it was smooth sailing now. Except for the Cangshan ship, the Guangzhou ship and the Fu ship could not catch up, and the distance between the two sides was getting farther and farther.
The tonnage of the Cangshan ship was too small, and the number of naval guns was insufficient. If they were allowed to pursue it alone, they would have caught up and would not be able to annihilate the Dutch ships.
The sky gradually darkened, and the enemy's situation in the southern waters was unknown.
Zheng Zhilong ordered to stop chasing. He gathered the fleet and began to clean up the ships that had lost power on the sea. As for the soldiers who fell into the water, the soldiers of the Ming army had already salvaged them, but the soldiers who fell in the combined fleet do not need to be salvaged now. , They were long gone on the sea.
Zhang Zhu’s ship approached Zheng Zhilong’s flagship "Nanhai". He climbed the gangway and came to Zheng Zhilong's side. "Commander, we still have fifty lucky ships and some Cangshan ships chasing south, but they haven’t come back yet. ."
"Oh, I forgot about it." Zheng Zhilong looked far to the south, but there was already a layer of mist on the sea, and the sky was getting dark, and the visibility was less than ten miles.
Except for the splashes and waves left by the Dutch ship when it escaped, nothing can be seen on the sea.
"Commander, what should I do? Do you want to send a ship to respond?" Zhang Zhu hesitated.
"It's getting dark now. In the vast sea, how easy is it to find these ships?" Zheng Zhilong also regrets that these ships shouldn't be chased too far. If I knew this, it would be better to let these ships be on the battlefield. Waiting in the south, maybe they can intercept these Dutch ships.
"Commander, these lucky ships, once they stop chasing, they must stop near the coastline or chase along the coastline. If we look along the coastline, we will not miss it." Zhang Zhu's gaze was also aimed at the far south.
The sea gradually became quiet, and the sea breeze blowing from the sea, with a strong smell of blood, made Zheng Zhilong feel a strong anxiety, but he still shook his head: "Commander Zhang, the sky will soon be dark, and the south is strange to us. We don’t even know where ships can be moored or where there are hidden reefs in the waters of China. We can’t put the entire fleet in a dangerous situation.”
Zhang Zhu also nodded, "Commander, or else, how many Cangshan ships should we send out to look for along the coastline, and the fleet will be anchored here?"
"Well, send out eight Cangshan boats to search along the coastline. The limit is two hours. After two hours, if the lucky boat is not found, there is no need to look for it at night. It will drop anchor temporarily and look for it after dawn tomorrow," Zheng Zhilong thought. After a while, "We have fifty lucky ships, plus the Cangshan ship guarding the periphery. Even if we encounter a Dutch ship, we won’t fall into the wind. Maybe we wake up and we will be happy. Maybe."
"I hope so."
Zheng Zhilong is going to let the fleet drop anchor in the sea, moor on the spot, and let the Cangshan ship patrol the periphery to strengthen alertness.
But the Spanish fleet commander Malos, who had just been captured, offered to lead the South China Sea Fleet to moor in the Port of Passalun in order to make contributions to Zheng Zhilong.