The Rise of Ming Dynasty 1646

Chapter 387
After a while, Su Li and several Han officers entered the cabin, and bowed on one knee one after another, "Greetings, Mr. Chief Soldier!"

"Get up." Gaha waved his hand, and said, "The scouts found about fifty Fujian warships west of Zhoushan, and I invited you here to discuss how to attack and defeat the enemy."

He also asked the officer who had just reported the news to elaborate on the enemy's situation.

Su Li immediately cupped his hands and said: "My lord, Zongbing Ma is now besieging Xiaoshan and attacking fiercely, the enemy is willing to take great risks and enter Qiantang, most likely to attack the grain and grass that I transported to the south bank of Qiantang.

"If the grain transport ships are destroyed, it will definitely drag down the battle situation in Xiaoshan. The subordinates think that they only need to strictly guard the line from Hangzhou to Xiaoshan, and send the warships with them whenever there is grain and grass going south, so as not to allow the enemy to take advantage of it. Wait for Ma Zongbing to capture Xiaoshan , and then let the navy go out to find enemy ships and destroy them."

A square-faced dark man next to him immediately laughed and said, "Commander Su, is he scared? But only [-] enemy ships make my [-] warships hide and defend?"

"You..." Su Li glanced at him, restrained his anger and said, "How does Commander Niu think it's appropriate?"

At present, the Qiantang navy of the Qing army is all from the former Zhejiang navy, which was previously commanded by a Zhejiang officer Wang Wenkui.Unexpectedly, when King Lu's fleet was destroyed, the Qing court immediately handed over the navy to Gaha, which made the old Zhejiang generals extremely dissatisfied.

Although they didn't dare to contradict Gaha, they always tried to find troubles for their confidant Su Li and others.

This Niu Bin used to be Wang Wenkui's subordinate, and he was even a representative among them.Hearing Su Li's retorted question, he immediately snorted softly and asked someone to fetch a chart and pointed to the mouth of Qiantang, "The enemy ship is near here, and we are only less than three hundred miles away from it, and they are going down the current. If you move your army eastward, you will be able to intercept the Nanren boat head-on at noon tomorrow.

"Master Chief Soldier has more than two hundred warships under his command, and there are as many as twenty large ships, but he is no match for fifty ships. As long as you encounter enemy ships here, you can destroy them in at most two hours."

Su Li shook his head and said, "My navy's first responsibility is to ensure that the food and grass in Qiantang are safe, so why take risks and seek battle?"

The officer from Zhejiang shouted loudly: "If you don't fight a battle that is sure to win, you are spoiling your own prestige by spoiling others' aspirations!"

Although Su Li's influence in the Navy is not as large as that of the Zhejiang Department, he still has some people of his own.Immediately, someone retorted, "When marching and fighting, stability is the most important thing. The courage of ordinary people is not sufficient."

The other side immediately said in a sarcasm: "What's wrong with going to suppress the enemy? I think you're just scared..."

"You can nest here, but don't stop me from killing the enemy and doing meritorious deeds!"

"That's right! Going downstream, you can achieve great victory in a day, but you have to wait upstream..."

Gaha himself didn't understand water warfare, so he looked back and forth at this moment, but couldn't make up his mind for a while.

A thin, short-bearded man who was originally on another ship just came over at this time, and seeing the heated quarrel between the two sides, he hurriedly asked the officer beside him in a low voice.

When the man turned around and saw that it was him, he hurriedly bowed and said, "I have seen Commander Wu." Then he briefly talked about the discovery of the enemy ship and the dispute between Su Li and Niu Bin and others about the battle strategy.

This military commander is named Wu Yuanzhou, who was also an officer of the former Zhejiang Navy.However, he was originally under Zhang Mingzhen's command, but he was coerced into joining the Qing army.

He nodded when he heard the words, and leaned forward again, and when he saw the position of the Fujian warship in the chart, his eyes suddenly fixed.

He lowered his eyes and thought for a while, then parted from the crowd and cupped his hands to Gaha: "My lord, according to what the last general saw, this team of Fujian navy or the last batch of warships from the southerners, if we don't go and destroy them, we will wait." The situation in the southeast is stable, and it will surely surrender.

"At that time, although my lord will lead a navy commander, at most he will get a comment of 'protecting Xiaoshan's food and grass well'. I am afraid that there will be no good chance to win military exploits in the future..."

Battle exploits?These two words immediately scratched Gaha's itching spot, and without hesitation, he waved his hand and said, "You're right! If you don't fight this battle, you won't have a chance in the future. Send an order to send troops eastward immediately to wipe out the incoming enemies!"

Su Li gave Wu Yuanzhou a hard look, then he bowed his hands to Gaha helplessly and said, "This subordinate obeys the order!"

But Wu Yuanzhou waited for the generals to disperse, but immediately returned to his own cabin, hastily wrote a secret letter and handed it to his confidant, ordering him to pretend to drive a small boat to leave the team for patrol, and quickly sent the letter to the vicinity of Xiapan Mountain.

……

On the east side of the Qiantang River, dozens of warships sailed out from the Zhoushan Islands, and Yang Fan headed towards Xiaoshan.

These boats are very different from the common sea boats in Qiantang. The masts are more than twice as high as ordinary boats, and they are covered with cloth sails, covering almost the entire sky above the boats.

At the same time, the hull of the ship is slightly longer than the Junk ships of the Ming Dynasty, and the forecastle and poop at the front and rear of the ship are also extremely low. This is a feature that did not appear on European warships at this time. Began to spread.

Although there are fewer officers' rooms in the bow and stern buildings of this structure, it has many advantages such as lowering the center of gravity of the hull to increase stability, reducing the area hit by side bombs, and reducing navigational resistance.

The cabins of those officers were moved by Zhu Linmi to the lower cabins in large numbers.The reason why he was able to do this was because he optimized the hull based on the experience of later generations. The wider waterline hull and larger aspect ratio made the Galen warship of the Daming Navy better than the current Europeans. The built volume is much larger.Therefore, more cabins can be accommodated or more supplies and ammunition can be carried.

But the most novel thing about this fleet is the "windows" neatly set on both sides of the hull.However, only the members of the Daming Navy knew that hidden behind these windows were a large number of [-]-pound or even [-]-pound heavy artillery, more than three times the number of the Qiantang Qing Army Navy.

When the windows on the side of the ship are opened, it is the beginning of Jianlu's nightmare!
The fifty or so warships in the fleet lined up in a standard triangle. Although they were traveling against the current, the sailors skillfully adjusted the sidesails and triangular sails by using the crosswind, so that all the warships maintained a speed of nearly four knots and rushed towards the go west.

A knot is a unit of speed from Europe, and the speed of a knot is about 3.7 miles.In other words, this team of warships can now travel nearly two hundred miles in one day.If the wind direction is more favorable, it can even reach the level of 350 miles a day.

This is the advantage of the Galen's large soft sails in open seas.The traditional oriental Junk boats can travel more than 200 miles a day in the case of downwind.

Of course, soft sail also has its own shortcomings.For example, in the case of changing offshore wind directions, its flexibility is far inferior to that of Junk boats.However, the Qiantang River is spacious enough, which is suitable for Galen boats with better sailing in the open sea.

The leading Galen warship named "Shao Wu" weighed [-] tons and had two layers of artillery overtime and an open deck. The number of cannons carried by this ship alone was close to that of the Dragon Guards. Two artillery battalions.

At this time, in the largest cabin of the stern building of the Shaowu, Zheng Chenggong, Shi Lang, Liu Guoxuan and others were making pre-war deployments facing the chart.

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(End of this chapter)