Chapter 1116: Red-Eyed

"Yes, Admiral."

The adjutant beside Maluofu immediately relayed Maluofu's orders through the changing of flags on the warship.

Upon receiving the order, the reserve warships at the rear, towed by steamships, passed through the gaps between the forward warships and approached the Great Song Navy fleet.

When the Western Fleet launched its attack, the Ironclad Warships naturally would not just sit there and take the beating.

The Great Song's Ironclad Warships each had two rotating turrets at the front and back, while the sides still retained the side-mounted artillery design of sailing warships to ensure the warships' firepower.

And they were different from the naval cannons on sailing warships.

Everything on the Ironclad Warships was the most advanced that the Great Song currently possessed.

The naval cannons were naturally the same; after the breech-loading cannons were equipped by the Army...

The naval cannons on the Ironclad Warships also all used the breech-loading method.

Facing the artillery fire of the Coalition warships, the Ironclad Warships immediately began to counterattack, with the side artillery and the front rotating turrets firing simultaneously.

Because the Great Song Navy's naval cannons all used rifled cannons, while the Western Navy was still using smoothbore cannons.

And the quality of the naval cannons was no longer on the same level.

In successive naval battles, the Great Song Navy's naval cannons had basically been thrashing the Western Navy's naval cannons.

At this moment, at a distance of four kilometers, the shells fired by the Great Song Navy's naval cannons were undoubtedly much more powerful.

Therefore, in the first round of exchange, the Great Song fleet remained unscathed, while six warships of the Western Fleet were directly pierced by cannonballs, instantly blowing open a large hole.

"General, the Western Navy has indeed sent warships to close in."

Once the mutual shelling began, Song Xiang and Zhou Yi entered the cockpit of the Ironclad Warship.

Noticing the situation of the Western Fleet, Song Xiang said to Zhou Yi.

"Hmph, the closer they get, the better." Zhou Yi gave a cold snort.

Without a doubt, the Westerners had never seen an Ironclad Warship, and did not even have the concept of one.

They were still stuck in the era of sailing warships.

Therefore, after seeing that their shelling was useless against the Ironclad Warships, the enemy officers would inevitably become suspicious and order the warships to continue closing in to fire, to prevent the cannonballs from lacking power due to the distance being too great.

And this was exactly what Zhou Yi wanted.

The Western Navy had made it clear they wanted to swallow them up in one bite.

How could they not want the same?

"Boom, boom, boom..."

For the next half an hour, both sides went back and forth on the sea, bombarding each other.

The Ironclad Warships' breech-loading rifled cannons had a high rate of fire, and the Western Navy had warships sinking one after another.

And although the Ironclad Warships were constantly subjected to the bombardment of the enemy's cannonballs, they remained sturdy.

It was just that some masts on the decks had been blown off.

But for the Ironclad Warships, this was not critical damage.

After all, the masts were only there to save fuel during long-distance voyages, not as a power source.

Seeing their own warships constantly suffering losses while the Great Song fleet's warships were still able to return fire, cold sweat kept breaking out on Maluofu's forehead.

Even now, he still could not imagine that the enemy's warships possessed iron-cast plate armor, believing instead that the wood of the Great Song warships might be of better quality.

Therefore, he had the warships close in and close in again, to the point where the distance between the two sides' warships had shrunk to one kilometer.

Yet just at this moment, he discovered that the Great Song Navy's formation had suddenly begun to change.

The twelve warships on the outer perimeter turned their bows and charged toward them from three directions.

This was exactly Zhou Yi's order.

Seeing that the Western Navy had fallen completely into his trap, he prepared to finish them off.

From the initial one-sided shelling to the mutual bombardment, the Western Navy had lost about one hundred and fifty warships.

Added to the warships destroyed by Gong Ying, this reached half of the Coalition navy.

For the remaining half, he prepared to adopt a more rapid method of attack to end this naval battle.

Following his order, six Ironclad Warships headed toward the main force of the Western Fleet in the east.

Thirty-six steamships towing sailing warships followed behind the Ironclad Warships.

To the south and west, three Ironclad Warships each sortied, with twelve steamships and sailing warships following behind each group of Ironclad Warships.

These warships included the warships Gong Ying had just sortied with.

"Boom, boom, boom..."

While the Great Song fleet was changing formation, numerous Western sailing warships kept firing at the Great Song fleet, with flashes of fire flickering and spherical explosive shells whistling over.

In order to avoid the sailing warships and steamships behind them from being hit by cannonballs.

The Ironclad Warships adopted a protective formation as much as possible.

When sailing, the Ironclad Warship formation took on a "person" shape.

The numerous sailing warships were hiding right behind this formation.

However, because the Western Fleet was too close and had a large number of cannons, quite a few cannonballs eventually passed through the gaps and landed on the sailing warships and steamships.

But fortunately, the enemy's spherical cannonballs lacked sufficient penetration and found it difficult to pierce the decks.

Yet even so, the cannonballs landing on the sailing warships still caused no small amount of damage to them.

As they charged toward the Coalition warships, the Great Song Navy constantly had masts of sailing warships blown off, or wooden structures on the decks ignited by the explosions, and soldiers also suffered casualties.

On the flagship, Zhou Yi observed these situations.

Although he felt pained, he understood that this was war.

Turning his head back, he stared fixedly at the Western warships ahead.

On the deck, two rotating turrets kept bombarding the Western warships in front.

As the distance kept closing, the Rotating Turret hit its target with almost every shot.

Western Lands warships were being sunk one after another.

At this moment, the Western Lands navy seemed to finally realize something was wrong.

They collectively turned around, but they were not fleeing; instead, just like them, they charged straight toward them.

Zhou Yi immediately realized that the enemy must have concluded they could not win a gun battle, and were preparing for a bayonet charge.

They wanted to rely on their numerical advantage to make one last gamble and fight a boarding battle!

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