Dominate the Country

The Europeans deployed a lot of interception nets and hidden stake rafts in the Greque waters, and the latter's tactics were largely copied from China. In the past, the Chinese used heavy objects to drop under the rafts, sharpen them, and suspend them under the water. They looked harmless, but if they were hit by a ship, they would definitely cause considerable damage to the hull below the waterline.

However, the Europeans did not deploy interception nets and hidden stake rafts on the entire six or seven li of water, because they also had to communicate with the two coastal defense positions in the west by boat. Without the power of ships, if they went by land to communicate with the two coastal defense positions, it would be a complete disaster in terms of logistics supply.

The fourth-class sailing warship Asalto has been hovering on the west side of the defense line. If the Chinese warships came, the role of Asalto and several other warships next to it was to attract the Chinese to Greque. The gaps in the outflow of Europeans were naturally known to their own people, but the Chinese absolutely did not know. They were calculating without intention, which would make them suffer a great loss.

Now there is no trace of the Chinese warship. A huge explosion suddenly sounded on the left side of the Asalto, and billowing smoke rose. The huge explosion tore a huge hole in the front of its port side. The influx of a large amount of seawater has completely made the weight of the front end of the Asalto exceed the rear end. It is now like a harpoon inserted into the water at an angle, and the rear end of the warship is about to rise out of the water.

At this moment, the middle of the port side of the Asalto exploded again, and a large number of sailors jumped off the warship like dumplings. The overall structure of the warship seemed to be destroyed. After the explosion, it made a clattering sound, as if it could not bear the gravity. The sinking of the entire warship was inevitable.

Cuthbert Collingwood was an old navy, and he saw at a glance that the Asalto was not good. If it was just the previous explosion, the warship might still be saved, but now it is too late.

The difference now is how this warship was sunk. Did it plunge into the seabed upside down? Or was it broken into two pieces, front and back?

The Asalto was not a newly built motor sailing ship, which could fill the watertight compartment with water to balance the warship in order to save its fate. Where did the sailing warship have a watertight compartment?

The Asalto sank very quickly. Less than ten minutes after the second explosion stopped, the bow of the warship had completely submerged in the sea water, and the angle between the entire hull and the sea level had exceeded 30 degrees. Moreover, the "wound" in the middle of the port side was constantly expanding, and the warship kept making "crackling" sounds, like a bamboo chair sat on by a 500-jin fat man, and finally there was a loud "boom", and the whole warship broke into two pieces. The back half slammed heavily onto the sea surface...

More than 200 exhausted sailors floated on the sea, shouting, crying, and struggling with all their strength in the cold sea water. They had no idea what had happened, nor did they know where the attack came from.

But the ending was already like this.

"Is it a mine?" said Cuthbert Collingwood's deputy, Spanish Rear Admiral Juan Pelos, frowning.

...

At the end of February 1815, the largest naval battle between the East and the West broke out at the southernmost tip of America.

In this battle, Chen Han dispatched a total of 22 motor sailing ships, 30 battleships of level 3 or above, including many level 2 and level 1 battleships, more than 50 other small and medium-sized warships, and more than 50 logistics transport ships, a total of 165 large and small ships, and nearly 40,000 sailors. There were more than 15,000 land forces on board, including 6,000 troops from the 1st Marine Brigade of the Navy and the 4th Detachment of the Garrison Army, plus several reconnaissance troops.

This is an extremely powerful naval force, with nearly 30,000 soldiers in combat ships alone, which is 4,000 to 5,000 more than the Invincible Fleet of the Great Duck in 1588. The Invincible Fleet of the Great Duck was mainly engaged in boarding battles, and the difference in the number of soldiers in ship artillery operation was far.

In the battle between the Franco-Spanish joint fleet and Nelson, their forces could not catch up with this number.

Even the Zheng He fleet recorded in history could not catch up with the scale of this huge fleet.

As its enemy, the combined fleet organized by the Europeans is also extremely powerful. Apart from other things, there are four first-class sailing battleships in the sequence of the South Atlantic Fleet, and there are as many as seven first-class sailing battleships in the entire combined fleet.

The total number of third-class sailing battleships in the north and south fleets is 52, plus four second-class sailing battleships. The European joint fleet has 63 main battleships alone, plus fourth-class sailing battleships and cruisers, etc., the total size of the European fleet is no less than 200 ships.

The Chinese pulled together more than 100 ships to the west, with more than 50 battleships alone. This was a very hard effort. The Europeans initially organized a joint fleet of more than 150 ships, but the quality was much worse. The number of battleships was less than half of the current size. It was only after the Chinese intelligence reached Europe that Britain, Sweden, and Spain reorganized the second batch of 40 sailing battleships and rushed to America in an emergency.

Now the European joint fleet is divided into two sequences, the South Atlantic Fleet and the Caribbean Fleet. There is no North Atlantic Fleet, because the battle on the east coast of North America depends on the control of the Windward Islands in the Caribbean Sea.

Nelson, who was in charge of the South Atlantic Fleet, had great trust in his old comrade Cuthbert Collingwood. Although the Chinese fleet was huge and terrifying, had the Chinese fleet experienced bloody battles in the European world over the years?

Even the French fleet, which was forced to mature by Napoleon, had more combat experience than the Chinese.

The latter had never fought a real full-scale naval battle. Look at the leaders of the Chinese Navy. All of them had combat experience in the past, but this also proved their lack of real war experience from another aspect. Although the performance of the Chinese in the Battle of Drake was amazing, it was just a small fleet.

Nelson believed that the small fleet sent by the Chinese to the Drake Passage must be the most elite battle of the Chinese. There is no comparability and universality here.

Nelson knew that China was rich, and the Chinese fleet had large-scale maritime exercises almost every year. But this is like the training ground of the army. You can't train the real elite.

Therefore, Nelson believed that Cuthbert Collingwood would be able to block the Chinese west of the first narrow channel, and Collingwood would even seize the opportunity to teach the Chinese an unforgettable lesson.

If they did not want to keep the Chinese fleet in the Strait of Magellan as much as possible, why would they give up the second and third narrow channels? Is it just because the first narrow channel is closer to the Falkland Islands? That is definitely not the case.

This is to allow China to enter the Strait of Magellan more deeply, so that when they are defeated, the tortuous Strait of Magellan can swallow up more Chinese ships.

But when Nelson, who was in the Falkland Islands, received an urgent report from Greck, he realized that he really underestimated the other party. Although he had received an alarm from the Drake Passage Fleet on Estados Island before, the latter was actually played around by the Chinese like a monkey. The Drake Passage Fleet lost three of its fifteen large and small warships, but failed to capture any Chinese warships. This has improved Nelson's understanding of the Chinese navy, but when Collingwood's urgent letter was delivered to Nelson, he was still stunned.

Nelson was very clear about the layout of the First Narrow Channel. So he didn't think the Chinese could break through Greck, because even if he commanded the fleet himself, he had no confidence in breaking through that line of defense. But now Collingwood told him that the Chinese vanguard fleet had already rushed out of the First Narrow Channel, and Greck was surrounded by the Chinese land forces and naval warships.

God, how could this happen? The fleet that was attracted by the Chinese fleet before has not "returned home". Here, the Chinese have already opened up the First Narrow Channel?

Of course, Collingwood was not surrounded in Greck. He was a naval general. When the mines that arrived at the time blew up the rafts, hidden piles, and even the interception nets into a mess, when Chinese warships appeared in the First Narrow Channel, and when the two coastal defense positions west of Greck were attacked and broken by the Chinese from land, Collingwood fearlessly boarded the warship and commanded the garrison fleet, which was still strong, to firmly block the eastern entrance of the First Narrow Channel.

The artillery of today's naval warships is not a smoothbore gun with average accuracy. The accuracy of the hexagonal gun is still very certain within 1,000 meters. Even if the Chinese fleet breaks through the wooden piles and interception nets, it is outnumbered when it comes out of the narrow waterway, and it is destined to suffer a great loss.

The overall shape of the first narrow waterway is an axe. Its eastern end is located in a small semicircular depression to the north. The ships assembled by the European fleet are largely left in this depressed waters, but now this depressed area belongs to China.

European warships are all sailing warships. The biggest defect of sailing warships is that it is difficult to attack the enemy in the absence of wind or headwind. There is no windless situation in the Strait of Magellan, but for Greck's European fleet, it is always in a headwind state.

A favorable terrain-the depressed area at the eastern end, a small bay, is very important for Greck's European warships to exert their firepower, but now it belongs to China.

The Chinese fleet carried a large number of land forces on board. They could either surround Greck from land and attack Greck's artillery positions, or land on the north bank of the narrow waterway, dragging heavy hexagonal cannons for a hard journey of 10 to 20 miles to establish a cover position on the north bank of the waterway.

Anyway, after the cover position on the north bank of the narrow waterway was established at night, the situation of the Europeans was slipping towards the abyss of failure at a visible speed.

Greck had not been captured yet. The Chinese Marines lacked heavy weapons, and although the Chinese fleet had countless cannons, it was difficult to deliver the cannons to the land forces outside Greck at once. Even the shore defense position closest to Greck was four kilometers away from Greck in a straight line, and there were large hills and ice fields in the middle, which made it extremely difficult to pass on land.

So the situation in Greck was temporarily stable, but the battle near the north bank was becoming increasingly unfavorable to the European fleet.

The Europeans had no defenses on the north bank of the waterway. The area was flat and undefended. There were also many reefs and shoals around the coastline, which were not suitable for ships to anchor. So after Chen Han's land forces landed on the north bank, they encountered no obstacles at all. The biggest difficulty they faced was the difficulty of land transportation.

And it is foreseeable that the Chinese will gather more and more cannons on the north bank in the following days.

Nelson received an urgent report to inform him of this situation. The focus of this battle does not seem to be the naval battle he expected, but the battle on land.

The north bank of the First Narrow Channel has many reefs and shoals, which are not suitable for ships to approach, and the terrain is low and there is no defense. But Greck is a relatively good harbor. In the past two or three hundred years, it was an important port at the eastern end of the Strait of Magellan, a small-scale port. The ready-made Greck is there, and Collingwood did not think too much about it and decided to set the location in Greck instead of the desolate north bank.

In the eyes of anyone, the north bank has no military value at all. But the Chinese suddenly put the cannons on the sea!

Yes, there were six floating turret-like monsters on the sea overnight. They each extended one or two hundred meters to the sea surface, with thick armor, and the shells were useless. Two of them could also use the cover of reefs, which posed a great threat to the European warships in the bay area.

And this monster-like floating turret increased rapidly in multiples of "six". When the number of such turrets increased to eighteen on the third night, Collingwood finally lost control of the area. After dawn the next day, the European fleet evacuated in large numbers from the small bay at the eastern end of the First Narrow Channel, leaving only the easternmost edge area in Collingwood's hands.

At the same time, on the front of the First Narrow Channel, the Chinese also began to increase their offensive. At least their pressure on Greck was increasing day by day, and Collingwood could only ask Nelson for help.

He could no longer save Greck's situation. If it was delayed for a few more days, even if a large number of warships from the Falkland Islands rushed to Greck, it would be useless. Nelson even suspected that when this letter for help was delivered to him, that is, now, the Chinese had already taken down the First Narrow Channel.

Nelson had a headache, and the heads of the South Atlantic Fleet Headquarters in the Falkland Islands had a headache.

This Chinese attack method is really weird.

What kind of floating turrets can fight against hexagonal guns? They can float on the water, have a shallow draft, and have thick armor that can't even hit hexagonal guns. When did the Chinese come up with such a weird weapon?

The generals present were the essence of the European navy. Each of them had experienced the harsh test of naval battles, but at this moment their brains were all sending out red alarms, telling them that their "memory" was not enough.

No matter how hard these naval elites present racked their brains, they couldn't think of such a bt floating turret, which must be very heavy. How did the Chinese "fly" it across a dry road of 10 to 20 miles in a short time and successfully place it in the waters of the north coast?

They also don't know what a floating dock is...

They don't know that although the north bank of the first narrow channel is full of shoals and reefs, it is large enough for sampans to travel. With a floating dock made of iron and wood, a large amount of materials can be transported ashore at a speed far exceeding that without a floating dock. Moreover, the large fleet carries a lot of horses, and large carriages can be assembled quickly as long as the parts are standardized.

With carriages, the transportation capacity on land has been raised to a higher level again. And the parts are still standardized. Hollow boxes lined with cork and covered with iron plates can be formed under the connection of screws. They even have the spare energy to seal the gaps in the connection with melted lead and zinc. After the hollow iron and wood boxes are sent into the sea by wooden slides, ten or eight are connected together and reinforced with logs, which is the foundation of a floating artillery platform. As for the recoil of the artillery, it is all solved by circular tracks. In Europe a hundred years ago, bow gun/rotating gun technology began to be popularized.

The outer side of the guns was covered with a turret-style iron and wooden shell, and a floating artillery platform was created. In order to resist the wind and waves, a few large iron anchors were added, or the artillery platforms were locked with iron chains at close intervals, so that even the strongest winds and waves would not wash them away. How could the European wooden warships fight head-on with these guys wearing a layer of iron armor?