game traveler

Chapter 185 The Battle of Nassau

The roar of the artillery, like thunderbolts, filled the entire sea area.

The pitch-black cannonballs that came out of the chamber kept leaving big holes in the hull of the ship.

Some unlucky sailboats were directly hit on the ammunition depot.

In the next second, there was only a loud "boom", and the whole ship was instantly blown into two by the gunpowder!
Rogers and Chamberlain originally thought that with the size of the pirates' ships, launching an attack on the strong and powerful British fleet was undoubtedly hitting a stone with a pebble.

And it is.

In terms of flexibility and speed, pirate ships, all of which are brigantines, have an advantage.

However, in the case of facing the bombardment head-on, the firepower of the British fleet completely exploded the pirates.

Often a frigate is enough to suppress three or four pirate ships.

At the very beginning, the scene where the fleet sank several pirate ships made Rogers and Chamberlain on the Bristol look slightly relaxed and relaxed a lot.

However, what happened next was beyond their expectations.

Although the pirates launched a suicidal attack on the British fleet.

However, they didn't rush forward so stupidly, head-to-head with the fiercely fired battleship.

The targets they chose to attack were the frigates on the periphery of the fleet.

Often four or five pirate ships fired artillery at the British frigate from all directions at the same time.

After firing a salvo of artillery, regardless of whether the British warships were killed or not, these ships would not hesitate to fully turn their rudders, and quickly turned to flee.

Keep the distance away, and after the shells are reloaded, they will rush up again and repeat the attack strategy just now.

This tactic is exactly the same as the method used by packs of wolves to hunt large animals!
Pirate ships are like hungry wolves.

And these frigates are lions, tigers, rhinos, and brown bears.

The purpose of the pirates is not to kill with one blow, but to slowly consume the physical strength of the prey in the way that you go up and tear off a piece of meat, and I go up and bite off a piece of meat, and then wait until the prey is exhausted, then swarm up and completely kill the prey. Tear it to shreds!

Starting from the Anglo-Dutch war six or seventy years ago, single-column tactics have gradually become the main tactics of sailing fleet naval warfare.

How to command the large fleet to maneuver and fight has gradually become a problem that plagues the commander.

In order to solve this problem, the British admiral proposed two plans. The first plan focused on unifying the tactics that each warship in the fleet actively adopted when facing various situations, emphasizing the initiative of each warship.

The second option emphasizes handing over the dominance to the commander, commanding all warships under his command through various semaphores to conduct unified actions.

To put it simply, the former is to give the captains of each warship the greatest initiative, while the latter relies on the fleet commander's personal experience and command ability.

In the beginning, the second mode of command occupied an absolute dominant position, the biggest reason being historical factors.

Since the emergence of the navy, the command of naval battles has relied on signal transmission methods such as drumming, horns, and flag waving, and it has always been like this.

Therefore, in the early days of the age of great voyages, the navy's fleet command method, which used traditional signals such as flags to issue orders uniformly, was still the first choice of various countries.

However, with the development of the times, the size of the fleet, the size of the ships, and the number of people participating in the battle have expanded several times. The formation columns of a fleet even stretch for several miles, and the distance between the ships has also been extended to the kilometer level. The smoke of gunfire will affect the effect of order transmission.

Relying too much on a unified command method is likely to delay fighters, causing the fleet to be defeated in a chaotic situation without a leader.

Therefore, admirals in many countries have begun to adopt the first command method.

Fleet commanders only issue short and few orders to the fleet, and try to delegate the decision-making power on the battlefield to the captains of each warship to give full play to their initiative.

As for the British fleet heading to the Bahamas, the command method adopted is the first one.

Facing the attack of the pirates, Chamberlain gave an order to all warships to fight back.

However, he did not issue specific next steps.

The captains of the other warships didn't know whether it was enough to repel the pirate ship, or pursue it and sink the pirate ship.

Therefore, they can only make judgments based on their own experience.

Because of this, perhaps because they were impatient with the pirates' harassment, or eager to make meritorious service, the captains of several frigates looked at the pirate ships that ran away after fighting, and couldn't help commanding the crew to pursue them.

And this is in the hands of the pirates!

When these frigates were slightly separated from the fleet's column formation, there was also a lot of space in the distance from the entire fleet.

At the same time, Chamberlain and Rogers, who were on the flagship, also noticed the frigates that had left the fleet.

Chamberlain, who frowned, reacted immediately:
"What are those idiots doing?! Immediately send a semaphore to tell them to return to the column!"

"Yes, sir!"

However, it was too late.

How could the pirates, who had made a battle plan in advance, let go of this fleeting opportunity? !
As if it had been agreed long ago, several pirate fleets and more than a dozen brigs launched a siege to the few frigates that had left the queue!
The pirate ships first dropped gunpowder barrels one by one from the ship, and built a blocking line composed of gunpowder barrels on the sea.

Then, when the powder keg drifted to the vicinity of the frigate along with the waves, they focused their fire on the powder keg.

For a moment, the powder kegs concentrated by the shells exploded around the frigate!

Bang bang bang!
Splashing sawdust and fireworks quickly slapped the frigate's hull and even the lobster soldiers' bodies on the deck.

A lobster soldier in a red uniform and a three-cornered hat was slapping the raging flames on half of his body while running around, calling for help:

"Help me! Help me!!"

However, the others were too busy obeying the captain's orders to fight back against the pirate ship, and had no time to pay attention to him.

And the other crew member who turned into a fireman jumped down from the deck quickly and jumped into the sea directly accompanied by a shrill scream.

Seeing this, he just woke up like a dream, screamed strangely, stepped on the side railing of the ship, and jumped into the sea without hesitation.

Such scenes also appeared on other frigates.

Taking advantage of the little chaos caused by the explosion of the gunpowder barrel, the pirates swarmed up like a pack of wolves, and began to bite the frigates frantically!

When the nearby battleships and frigates came to support, the pirate fleet had already evacuated.

Only the black smoke was left, the messy frigate, and the sea full of sampans and people who fell into the water...

(End of this chapter)