New World 1620

Thursday, August 1621, 8, morning.

About a hundred nautical miles away from the Manhattan community, the sea to the east was calm, and a snow-white clipper warship was heading north at a cruising speed of 8 knots.

"The bow gun is ready!"

The naval gun crew at the bow raised its flag, and Lieutenant Zhang Chunrui, the gunner of the enterprise light cruiser, hurriedly turned around and reported to Lieutenant Colonel Wang Tiehammer.

"It took 13 seconds, continue!" Wang Tiehammer stared at the watch on his wrist, frowning slightly, "Without a cannon launcher, we can only make up for the hit problem from rapid fire. It is reasonable that this kind of rear-loading cannon should be able to reach 10 seconds. Reloading speed within."

"Although it has been installed in the rear, the installation of the Wisworth hexagonal rotary-bore naval gun is already very troublesome. If it is an actual combat, the speed will probably be slower."

Zhang Chunrui, who was transferred from the artillery command of the fortress to the first gunnery officer of the cruiser Enterprise, knew very well that the current training results were already very good.

"There are more than 60 people on board now, which are the seeds of our future military expansion. They don't have to be strict, and it is difficult for us to control the current warship equipment." Wang Tiehammer sighed slightly, and turned his eyes to the direction of the stern of the ship. Deputy and sailor Monty was training a group of officers and men for untiing and sailing training.

"When Lin Youde's steam engine power is stabilized, a lot of manpower will be liberated if the power can be lifted and lowered." Seeing a group of soldiers struggling to pull and climb around the mast, Wang Tiehammer can't wait to put those diesel engines in the Brooklyn industrial area immediately. Get it on board.

"8 nautical miles to the east, we found a fleet of at least five ships! The speed is 4 knots!" Suddenly, the mast lookout shouted.

A fleet of more than 5 ships? !Will Ren Changle and the others grow to such a large scale in Europe?Surprised, Wang Tiehammer quickly turned around and raised the binoculars on his chest.After a while, a sentence was highlighted: "All first-level combat preparations! Head to the northeast."

"Level [-] battle preparation!" Zhang Chunrui's whole body was shocked, and a second later, the deck bell on the ship sounded an urgent alarm.

The deck hatch was opened, and teams of soldiers in white sailor uniforms rushed to their respective combat positions. The four 4mm naval guns began to rotate, and they all turned their muzzles to the starboard side.

The breech block was opened, and an 8kg high-explosive shell was loaded into the breech, followed by a brass propellant cartridge.The breech breech was closed, and the gunner raised the signal flag indicating the readiness to fire.Although there was at least half an hour before the real contact, the soldiers who had fired countless training rounds were sweating in their palms, waiting for the instruction to fire.

The light cruiser Enterprise, which was nearly a thousand tons fully loaded, drew a small arc on the sea surface and accelerated towards the northeast.

·

The seven galleons kept a straight line, more than 500 yards apart from each other. The lead ship was not the Mayflower, and the flagship was changed to the "Shepherd", the largest tonnage ship purchased from the Netherlands.

It has been 23 days since Su Zining and his party left the Azores due to the slowest speed of the Mayflower.Counting the remaining voyage, there is still one day before arriving in Manhattan, which has been away for almost seven months. The little nurse Xia Qiuyu seldom hummed a ditty on the deck, which caused several Danish indentured sailors on one side to look at each other.

"There are still more than 100 nautical miles, and we will arrive tomorrow afternoon." Ren Changle, who had already run back and forth several times, walked to the bow with a proud expression, and showed off to Su Zining and others who were in a daze, "Isn't Yuan Xinyi sick? Are you still enjoying the scenery at the bow of the boat?"

"She kicked us all out, saying she was afraid of contagion..." Su Zining shrugged, with a helpless expression on his face, "Lao Zhao has been checked, and she only has a low fever, but she is still suspicious, always thinking that she has something from the 17th century. infectious disease."

Hearing Su Zining's explanation like this, Ren Changle could only chuckle twice.

"Maritime traffic in the age of sail is really life-consuming, and it is often measured in months, and the pace of social activities is so slow." The ship doctor Lao Zhao looked at the sea and was still feeling, "I have been traveling with the shipping company for many years, and I have not left. at such a slow speed."

"Perhaps it is precisely because of this that we pay more attention to the judgment of rhythm and advance when going back and forth at sea, so we can read the so-called sense of 'magnificence' from the slow motion of this period of history..." Su Zining aptly said In summary, Ren Changle seemed indifferent when he heard it.

"We must establish a faster-paced transatlantic information transmission method. Even if the efficiency is only twice as fast as that of our opponents, we can gain unparalleled advantages in political and military response!" Su Zining said his final plan , "I hope the community can solve these problems as soon as possible."

Suddenly, Kiri, a European sailor, screamed loudly from the mast watchtower. After a while, Captain Adelaide came over.

"Dear gentlemen, I found a strange ship in the northwest direction. The speed is very fast, at least 10 knots." Adelaide shrugged with a nervous expression, "Although we have seven ships, I suggest you go back to the cabin rest here."

Strange boat with a speed of at least 10 knots?Su Zining was taken aback, and turned his head towards a certain direction. Although he couldn't see anything in his line of sight, he still stared at it for more than ten seconds.

"Hehe, it shouldn't be a bad thing." Su Zining roughly understood the identity of the boat, so he smiled and waved his hands.

"Haha, it must be our boat! When I left, it was almost ready!" Ren Changle also reacted, rubbing his hands excitedly, and proudly said to Adelaide: "Adelaide Germany, it is our battleship!"

oh?Our battleship?Is that the big weird looking ship at the shipyard dock?Adelaide was also taken aback, and raised the binoculars again with a puzzled expression.

Half an hour later, the naked eyes of everyone at the bow could see the snow-white clipper warship with a slender and elegant line. Now it was coming in a crosswind, and its speed had dropped to less than 6 knots.

At this time, on the light cruiser Enterprise, the combat alarm had been lifted, and all the officers and soldiers left the combat posts with joyful expressions, because the lookout finally saw the ship consisting of seven sailing Galen ships in the east. The team's special flag marker.

"She's so beautiful..." Adelaide's eyes widened as if he saw a young and beautiful woman, staring intently at the approaching battleship.

The sharp triangular bow breaks through the waves, and the slender and slender hull glides on the sea like an oiled white whale.A few strange naval guns with "aprons" could be vaguely seen on the deck of the ship, and dozens of sailors in snow-white uniforms were shaking their arms.

"Haha, it's our sea warrior! What's his name? Oh, yes, Enterprise!" Adelaide took off his captain's cap, and shouted loudly to the crew surrounding him, "Come on! , children, our warships are coming to meet us!"

Except for a few old crew members who cheered, most of the indentured sailors newly recruited from Europe huddled together cautiously, staring at the white battleship on the sea surface that began to turn against the wind with expressions of surprise and fear.

"The equipment is good, so confident. There are only 4 naval guns, and they seem to be rear-mounted." Su Zining stared at the weapons and equipment of the Enterprise, with a smile on his lips, "Ren Changle, we can fight the Opium War in the future Alright, have you considered your opponent yet?"

"Ah?" Ren Changle came back to his senses, and then looked at the European trade team leader with a strange expression, "Su Zining, no wonder Yan Xiaosong said that he can only be regarded as a shit-stirring stick at best, and you are simply a narcissist pretending to be crazy."

"Hey, whatever you want to say..." Su Zining was in a good mood, as if he had forgotten his girlfriend Yuan Xinyi who was sneezing with a cold in the cabin.

·

On the evening of August 8, when the European trade fleet headed by the Shepherd slowly approached the pier, the Manhattan community suddenly became a sea of ​​joy.

The old face of the chairman of the committee, Mr. Liu, who came to greet him, was about to die of laughter. All the committee members seemed to have forgotten the internal unhappiness caused by the provisional electoral law legislation these days, and they were all in a happy mood.But this time it was the scale of seven sailing boats, which made more ordinary residents even more excited.

Amidst all the joy, Qi Jianjun, the vice chairman, just smiled faintly and said nothing.In the eyes, the young men and women standing on the deck and waving to the crowd at the pier all looked so confident and calm.

Zheng Quan was not among the welcome crowd at the pier at this time, because he took a group of officers from the Ground Guard to West Point Town on an inland river transport ship yesterday to inspect the military fortress there.As a representative of the military department, only the captain of the Enterprise, Wang Tiechui, is alone.

More than 300 European immigrants were instructed to stay on the ship, and now they are all carefully standing on the deck, looking at the beautiful "city" in front of them like a garden. The buildings, surrounded by green trees and clear water, form several scattered yet neat blocks.

"Oh, God, it smells so good here!" An immigrant couldn't help but shrugged his nose.There is no stinking feces and garbage like European port cities, no ragged groups of beggars or thieves, all you see is a spectacle of filthy wealth.

More immigrants began to whisper, the women hugged their children tightly, muttering something softly, and the men looked forward to it.

With the help of the wharf crane, boxes of packaged and bundled imported daily necessities were transported to the wharf, and then loaded into carriages by Indian hired workers, and sent to the temporary warehouse of the wharf in groups for stacking.

Yang Wenwen and Xia Qiuyu, who had been away from Manhattan for more than half a year, were the first to board the pier, hugging the little sisters who came to greet them, while Su Zining led Yuan Xinyi, who was wearing a mask, to follow.

A piece of cheerful music came from the pier radio, which not only frightened the European immigrants who were still on board, but also made the whole pier erupt.