Chapter 1201: Truly Wretched! (Seeking Subscriptions)

A huge ball of fire suddenly leaped up from the midships deck of the Wuchang Prefecture, then turned into a cloud of black smoke that shot straight into the sky!

This was the scene of a 40-pound explosive shell detonating. Besides being terrifying to look at, its killing power was equally shocking — it blasted a great hole directly in the deck of the Wuchang Prefecture, destroying both gun decks below, while all kinds of fragments, swept along by the blast wave, raked across the flat deck and mowed down the Ming officers and men in clusters, like ripe wheat.

Liu Guoxuan and Zheng Jing were lucky enough — they had both huddled inside the command platform ringed by sandbags, so they escaped that calamity. Sandbags had actually been placed on the deck of a ship of the line — it was a little unbelievable just to think about!

But wooden-sabot explosive shells and their improved type, the spike-headed wooden-sabot explosive shell, were indeed unbelievable things. In the original history they appeared very late — explosive shells had existed for a long time; by the seventeenth century the navies of the Western powers already had light gunboats that could mount large-caliber mortars. But because the two inventions of the wooden-tube fuse and the wooden sabot did not exist, explosive shells were very unsafe, and so they could not be used aboard ships of the line. If a little gunboat blew up, so be it — human life in the seventeenth century was cheap enough. But how expensive was a ship of the line? If one were blown to nothing by an explosive-shell magazine detonation, wouldn't the naval commander have to be sent before a court-martial?

So explosive shells only went aboard ships of the line in the nineteenth century, and the first to put them aboard and use them in actual combat were the reckless Russians.

And now, because of the three key inventions of the wooden-tube fuse, the wooden sabot, and the pointed shell (spike-headed shell), the explosive shell had become a weapon that completely overturned the rules of the naval game.

At the same time, armor was far too expensive, and the technical difficulty was too great. A sailing ship of the line displaced at least over a thousand tons — how could it possibly be built of steel? Steel, not pig iron — at the very least it would have to be wrought iron, right? How much was even produced? How could anyone spare several hundred or a thousand tons to build a single ship of the line? And in this age it was impossible to produce wrought-iron plates large enough! If too many small iron plates were joined together, the seams were very hard to handle, and if the joints were not made solid enough, a cannonball striking them would still smash through!

So steel armor could not be built in any foreseeable era.

Without armor, but with reliable explosive shells, the hard days of naval officers and men truly had no end in sight!

While Liu Guoxuan and Zheng Jing were clutching their heads and crouching behind sandbags to dodge death, the Dutch were having no easier a time. The Nieuw Geertruidenberg was finished — all five gun decks had been destroyed, and a great fire was raging at the stern, so that she drifted on the sea like a floating torch.

This ship had been completely abandoned, and now merely floated aimlessly with the current, awaiting her end!

Sharing the same fate as the Nieuw Geertruidenberg were five other Dutch warships and three Ming Chiliarch-station-class ships — Tromp's plan of dividing the enemy had still succeeded, but the price paid had exceeded his imagination.

While carrying out the dividing maneuver, the Staten van Zeeland was pounded at close range by concentrated fire from one Guard-station-class and one Chiliarch-station-class ship, taking fourteen hits, nine of which exploded successfully, destroying the Zeeland's stern and five gun decks, setting off at least three secondary magazine explosions, and one 15-jin shell struck the command platform, which was now full of corpses — the Zeeland's captain and first mate were both killed on the spot. Truly wretched!

In the end the great fire spread across the Staten van Zeeland and could not be extinguished at all, and the surviving crew had no choice but to abandon their ship of the line.

Two medium and light warships had actually destroyed an enormous ship of the line in a close-range gunnery duel (not without cost — the Guard-station-class ship that took part was also turned into a torch and in the end burned completely). In the past this would have been utterly unimaginable!

But now, before the terrifying explosive shell, all wooden-hulled warships were equally cannon fodder. No matter how thick the wooden hull, none could stop a spike-headed explosive shell — so the only difference was the size of the cannon fodder!

The warships still fighting on were in no good shape either — either they had holes blasted in them, or something somewhere was burning!

The worst off among them was the Gaoshan Station. This two-masted gunboat of three hundred tons burden had been caught, together with three sister ships, in a pincer by two Dutch formations. The Guard-station-class ship was already done for, burning like a torch, and the surviving sailors aboard her were now thrashing about in the sea. Only the Gaoshan Station broke out of the encirclement, but she had taken one 40-pound explosive shell, three 36-pound explosive shells, and four 30-pound explosive shells. All five gun decks had been destroyed, and half her stern had been blown away. Fortunately both masts and the foremast were intact, so she could still flee at full speed. More than half her officers and men were dead or wounded; the gun decks were full of corpses, and the flat upper deck was strewn with bodies. The captain, first mate, and second mate had all been killed, leaving only a third mate with a broken leg, who sat on the deck howling like a madman.

"Put out the fire! Throw the shells into the water! Quickly!"

The great fire was spreading everywhere across this three-hundred-ton warship, and no one knew when it would ignite the shells in the magazine!

If it truly blew up, every man aboard would have to go into the sea to feed the fish!

After the Staten van Zeeland was finished, the captain of the Dutch Staten van Holland, who commanded the dividing formation and the flanking formation (which had in fact fallen into complete chaos, with no formation left), sent three warships to pursue the Gaoshan Station, left two more ships behind to pick up survivors (both sides had to be picked up — Ming naval officers and men fished out of the water were revenue, and could be ransomed back at high price by the Zhu Emperor), and then led the remaining warships still capable of fighting to support the Staten van Zeeland formation.

The formation personally led by Rear Admiral Tromp had already been badly mauled! All eleven ships were smoking; three of them had already been abandoned, and the remaining eight had all been battered to pieces. If they could even be towed back to Holland, the shipyard engineers would be racking their brains — could these still be repaired?

The lines on both sides had fallen into disorder, and more than a dozen ships were tangled together in a melee. A melee had originally been the Dutch navy's strong suit — their seamanship was excellent, and they dared to fight boarding actions. In the Anglo-Dutch Wars they had relied on the melee to inflict heavy losses on the English navy, even forcing the latter to go innovate and invent the line-of-battle tactic.

But now they found that they had suddenly forgotten how to fight a melee!

Because when firing in line, only half of each side's guns could bear. Once the melee began, with both sides tangled together, the enemy was no longer on one side alone — enemy ships could appear on either side. And with the formations gone, ships no longer moved in any regular pattern, so every time a naval gun fired it had to be re-aimed. At such times, the 15-jin gun was far handier than the 40-pound, 36-pound, and 30-pound guns.

Moreover, because both sides' warships had lost part of their gun decks in the earlier fierce fighting, the number of guns able to fire had decreased on both sides. But the Ming navy's warships had many gun decks, while the Dutch navy's warships had few. After doing the subtraction, the amount of ammunition (not counting weight) that the Ming warships in the melee could fire exceeded the enemy's by more than ten times!

With such an inferiority in firepower, what melee could the Dutch still fight? All that was left was to take a beating. As for boarding and the like — don't even think about it. Before you could get alongside, their 15-jin explosive shells would come crashing down on you, and at close range they never missed!

Tromp and Davy Jones, the two of them, were now sitting face to face, leaning against sandbags, no longer commanding, just staring blankly at an unexploded spike-headed shell — the head of the shell even had a length of "nail" added to it. Wasn't that just too vicious?

Played this way, as long as a ship had a wooden hull, no matter how big or sturdy, it was useless! A few pounds of black powder detonating against the hull — if that couldn't blast through, then it wasn't wood!

Would going to sea in the navy from now on mean sitting in little two- or three-hundred-ton boats, carrying a few 18-pounders, and lining up to shoot it out with the enemy?

The two of them had no idea how long they had sat there dazed before Davy Jones realized that the roar of gunfire was no longer in his ears. He braced himself on the sandbags and stood up, craned his neck and looked all around, then muttered to himself: "They've gone."

Tromp still did not quite understand. "Who's gone?"

"The Chinese warships have gone. Driven off by our reinforcements! Rear Admiral, shall we pursue?"

"Pursue?" Tromp said with a bitter laugh. "Davy, have you forgotten that the Chinese also have reinforcements? Theirs will be arriving soon too, and then it will be our turn to run! Take advantage of now, while victory still belongs to us, and withdraw at once!"

"Then what about Johor? The Ming army is landing in force!"

"It doesn't matter. Don't we still have the Shun reinforcements? Let us first withdraw to Penang Island and join up with the Shun army!"

(End of Chapter)