Chapter 824: This Is Not Hailing Island — This Is Baekgang

The Great Tang's navy actually had quite a variety of ship types. Although it was a navy that could only drift along the coastline in near-shore waters, it still needed certain tactics and a proper mix of different vessels.

Among them were tower ships, warships several zhang tall, equipped with trebuchets, winch crossbows, striking poles, and other offensive weapons, as well as defensive works like parapets — the undisputed giants among warships.

Though they feared heavy winds and waves, their combat power was off the charts, and they were still ferocious when fighting in the Yellow Sea.

But tower ships were not the main force in naval battles. The main force was the doujian, with a displacement of roughly three hundred to seven hundred tons by later standards.

The doujian had a double-decked structure, allowing sailors to form up in stepped ranks on the vessel. Whether dealing with enemy boarding actions or using bows and crossbows to volley at the enemy, this gave them a great advantage.

Moreover, the doujian's rowers were concealed in the lower hold, rowing through oar ports, which ensured both the rowers' safety and the ship's maneuverability.

In addition, there were the mengchong ships, with fully enclosed cabins, oxhide armor stretched over the outside, also rowed through oar ports, and fitted with concealed windows for counterattacking with crossbows or long spears.

They were mainly used for raids and reconnaissance, and occasionally for carrying messages.

As for the specialized command ships at sea, those were the youting, with numerous rowing benches, extremely fast, and highly maneuverable.

Generally, about every fifty warships were assigned one youting, with a Naval Commander of the Fleet aboard, responsible for directing and commanding, observing wind direction, and assessing the enemy situation.

Finally, there was a warship called the zouge. These ships carried extra rowers to ensure extreme speed, while the naval troops aboard were a select few fierce, powerful elites.

They were used specifically for raids and shock attacks, even charging the enemy flagship to carry out decapitation strikes amid the chaos.

Kang Chengxun was not of noble lineage, but a household slave of the Wang clan. His father had grown up alongside Wang Jian, the Great King and founder of Goryeo, and the two were extremely close.

It was through this connection that Kang Chengxun came to command this navy, which was of vital importance to the Wang clan's Goryeo.

However, Goryeo's shipbuilding industry was actually quite poor. Though they were surrounded by water on three sides and had many mountains and vast forests, in reality, ever since the Sui dynasty, the Central Plains dynasties had deliberately controlled the outflow of shipwrights to the peninsula.

When the Tang dynasty abandoned the Ungjin Commandery, they directly destroyed the ports and shipyards, and took away all the shipwrights and sailors.

And although the mountainous Korean peninsula had plenty of timber, it lacked towering trees, so ships could not be built large. It also lacked good hardwood, so the hulls were not very sturdy.

As a result, Goryeo's navy had small ships of poor durability. They claimed to have several hundred warships, but each ship could carry only forty or fifty men on average — about the same scale as the Wa kingdom's navy at the Battle of Baekgang long ago.

Both sounded overwhelming in number, enough to scare people to death, but once the fighting started, they were all small fry.

Kang Chengxun stood at the prow. This was a sea-hawk-type warship, with a broad deck that could hold several hundred soldiers and a capacity of two thousand liao.

Along both sides of the hull were wooden boards to aid balance and increase buoyancy. In heavy wind and waves, the boards could be lowered into the sea to increase buoyancy, greatly improving stability.

But this type of ship was somewhat slow. Though it carried many men, it relied heavily on protection from various small boats; otherwise, it could easily be smashed and destroyed by enemy winch crossbows and trebuchets.

Moreover, Goryeo had only one or two of these large sea-hawk ships, so they could not make much difference — just as in a later republic, if it had only one Liaoning carrier, it would be hard to form a deterrent.

But at this moment, Kang Chengxun was still confident. He had heeded Wang Zhao's orders and likewise believed the northern invaders had few warships.

And even if they did, could they withstand the two hundred warships and eight thousand elite sailors under his command?

Furthermore, because Wang Zhao had assigned him the task of mainly supporting the land battle, Kang Chengxun, in order to maintain contact with the main army on land, could only sail north hugging the coastline, and was basically unable to conduct reconnaissance.

On the other side, Zhao Kuangyin and Chen Hui received Murong Xinzhang's orders and immediately loaded Zhe Deyuan's force of over ten thousand infantry and cavalry onto the ships, and the army likewise sailed south along the coastline.

Southwest of Pyongyang lay Hailing Island, the key coastal defense point of the entire peninsula.

The Wang clan's Goryeo had established the Hailing Naval Garrison here, with six hundred sailors and thirty warships stationed — considered a major coastal defense stronghold of Goryeo at the time.

Kang Chengxun led his fleet north at high speed. At this moment, a slight trade wind blew from the southeast, favoring the fleet's northward course.

Seeing Hailing Island right before him, Kang Chengxun immediately ordered signal flags raised, directing another large doujian ahead to hoist a cage and send a lookout up the mast to observe.

The lookout saw from afar the white banner with a red bird flying high over Hailing Garrison on Hailing Island, and in the distance more than ten small boats, also flying white flags, sailing toward the fleet. He immediately signaled all clear.

Kang Chengxun's caution in ordering observation was not because he had received any news; it was merely a routine safety check.

Therefore, when he saw the distant doujian raise the white flag signaling safety, he immediately ordered all ships, large and small, to lower their sails and prepare to enter Hailing Garrison's naval harbor to rest and refit.

At this time, the trade wind was beginning to gust. If the sails were not lowered somewhat, it would be very difficult to enter the naval harbor.

Large ships especially had to lower their sails in advance; otherwise, a sudden gust of wind could very well blow the ship onto the beach.

Zhao Kuangyin personally stood on the main flagship, the Danghai. Dozens of mengchong ships shuttled between the flagship and the other large ships, relaying messages back and forth.

As for Hailing Garrison, it had long since been raided by the Great Zhou fleet. To ensure absolute safety, the one who went ashore to seize Hailing Garrison was none other than Zhe Deyuan, personally leading his retainers in the attack.

"Pass on my order: first use the mengchong ships to disrupt the enemy formation, then select doujian to charge hard. The zouge elites will hide behind the doujian. When the enemy falls into chaos, close in on their large ships. Once the tower ships complete their flanking maneuver, launch the full assault. Sweep away the rebel scum — victory is decided in this one battle!"

Kang Chengxun had just ordered all ships, large and small, to lower their sails when he heard the faint sound of gongs and drums clashing in the distance.

He turned and looked around, but the land of Hailing Island blocked his view, and he discovered nothing.

Suddenly, as if a ray of sunlight had broken through dark clouds, from the direction hidden by Hailing Island, one after another great ship of at least a thousand liao appeared before Kang Chengxun from behind the distant island.

The clash of gongs and drums seemed to swell suddenly at that very moment. These strangely appearing warships used no sails, yet their speed was astonishingly fast, and they charged straight at Kang Chengxun's fleet in unison.

It was a trap — the northern invaders had a fleet, and not a small one!

Kang Chengxun was horrified. He immediately roared: "Signal! Order those mengchong ships not to approach!"

Kang Chengxun suddenly remembered now — before the northern invaders' fleet came into view, quite a few mengchong ships from "Hailing Garrison" had been approaching. There was likely treachery among them.

But it was too late. These five mengchong ships were a sharp blade thrust into the Goryeo fleet. Since they had already reached attack position, whether they approached or not was no longer up to the Goryeo men.

Inside the lead mengchong ship, Hai Dayu glanced at his brothers Hai Erxie and Hai Sanxia beside him. The three brothers let out a roar at the same time, the knotted, dark muscles of their bodies bursting with tremendous energy. They rowed the oars extending through the oar ports with both hands so furiously that the oars seemed to blur into afterimages.

The three Hai brothers were not Han Chinese, but Baishui Lang from eastern Zhejiang and the Min region — the people later known as the Danmin.

This ethnic group, formed from a mixture of Baiyue peoples and Han criminals, had not yet fully assimilated into the Han people in this era, and were exploited wherever they went.

But now they had obtained a path of advancement — not a broad one, but a real one — by contributing their strength to Emperor Zhang's conquest of Goryeo and the Wa kingdom, and even the continued eastward voyages thereafter.

Therefore, among the sailors assigned to the Henghai Garrison this time, nearly thirty percent were Baishui Lang. They dreamed of earning merit in this battle and thereby gaining the status of ordinary fishermen, so they worked with extraordinary zeal.

A resounding Danjia battle song rose from within the mengchong ship. Hai Dayu and his two brothers, along with a dozen or so Baishui Lang in the boat, rowed the mengchong at flying speed.

At the same time, warriors crouching in the enclosed second deck, armed with wooden single-shot crossbows and naval long spears, kept firing out through the crossbow ports — using crossbow bolts when the ship was fast, and long spears when it slowed.

And the prows of these mengchong ships had all been fitted with ramming beaks that were not particularly sharp, but highly destructive —

— a formidable weapon in naval combat.

In an instant, the one or two hundred Goryeo warships crowded into the bay about to enter the harbor were rammed by the mengchong ships, men thrown down and boats overturned. Many sailors, before they understood what was happening, were shot or speared to death on their ships.

These mengchong ships of several dozen tons were naturally considered small in the Zhang-Zhou navy, but among the Goryeo navy it was different, because the Goryeo warships were also mostly little things of several dozen tons.

Compared to them, the mengchong ships were not small in size, were even faster, and were enclosed hulls covered with thick oxhide armor mixed with porcelain powder.

This was entirely equivalent to a heavily armored warrior charging into a formation of unarmored militia.

The Goryeo men howled as they loosed arrows or hammered with iron maces, but it was completely useless. They tried to use swape poles and fire oil to deal with them, but the mengchong warships were too fast, easily dodging such damage.

In naval battles on the Central Plains, there were many ways to deal with mengchong warships — the main one being simply to have large ships.

Tower ships and war junks, for instance — these big vessels could look down from on high and, using prediction, smash or burn the mengchong ships, and could even fire great crossbow bolts from winch crossbows to pierce their hulls.

At the same time, these large ships had very high bulwarks, so the mengchong ships could not harm the men aboard them at all.

But the Goryeo had few large ships and no winch crossbows, and so they were utterly helpless against the mengchong ships!

They had barely made contact, and Kang Chengxun was already stunned senseless. He wanted to counter-charge, but Goryeo simply had no warship like the mengchong at all.

A navy — in later ages it would be a great money-burner, and in ancient times it was the same.

Take a mengchong ship like this, for example: the cabin was fully enclosed, and the outside was wrapped in oxhide armor. Apart from combat, it could not be used for any other purpose in ordinary times.

This was no warship! This was a gold-devouring beast that ran on water. Only a house with vast estates and great enterprise could afford to play with such a thing.

Goryeo's warships, in ordinary times, all had to serve transport and other functions as well. Many were even just fishing boats converted and hauled over to serve as war vessels — naturally they had no such money-burning, single-purpose warships.

Still, it was not that there was no way to deal with them at all. After a brief panic, Kang Chengxun ordered all the small boats to close in on the large ships, or simply to pull toward shore, using large and small ships together in formation to deal with these darting mengchong ships.

But this decision was exactly what they had been waiting for.

The moment he saw the Goryeo warships voluntarily give up their mobility to defend against the mengchong attacks, Zhao Kuangyin swept his great banner, and the sound of gongs and drums changed to a pure, soaring war-drum beat.

More than ten war junks, displacing anywhere from three hundred to seven hundred tons, all moved out. The sailors rowed with desperate effort, and the skilled helmsmen, riding the rise and fall of the waves, drove the great ships hard forward.

Though the sea surged and rolled, the soldiers in simple leather armor, drawn up in triple ranks, pressed tightly together. The hulls still swayed left and right, but they barely moved a muscle.

"Fifteen or more war junks — all thousand-liao great ships!" the adjutant beside Kang Chengxun shrieked.

By this time, the liao as a unit had already spread in use across all of East Asia, because compared to the shi, it better expressed the performance of seagoing vessels.

By the conversion of this era, one thousand liao was roughly equivalent to 330 to 350 tons. Compared to a swarm of little loaches of thirty or forty tons, a war junk of over three hundred tons was indeed enormously imposing.

And amid the adjutant's shrieks, the war junks drew ever closer. The soldiers of Great Zhou's Heng hai Garrison let out earth-shaking battle howls, while what the Goryeo men let out were wails and sobs.

Chen Hui had by now taken over command — after all, he was a famed naval general, far more professional than a halfway convert like Zhao Kuangyin.

Seeing that the enemy had lost mobility and that most of the small boats were crowded around the large ships, Chen Hui directly ordered the Hengbo, the main warship among them, a 1,700-liao war junk, to charge forward, close in on the Goryeo sea-hawk ships, and fire point-blank, while the remaining war junks attacked the rest of the large and small vessels.

Kang Chengxun could also see Chen Hui's intent, but he still had a choice to make.

In naval battles of this era, because of propulsion limitations, Chinese stiff sails also could not, like Western soft sails, set triangular sails to sail against the wind. Therefore, although Chen Hui had made his dispositions, whether the great ships could reach their intended battle positions still required a certain amount of luck.

"Commander, General An—

—is signaling with flags, telling us to withdraw south!" Before Kang Chengxun could make up his mind, General An on another war junk had already made the choice for him.

"Commander, we must go now. Ganghwa Bay cannot be lost. If all of us perish here, Gaegyeong will be in danger."

Given how the overall situation stood,

although the battle had only just reached its fiercest pitch, the adjutants beside Kang Chengxun knew that this battle was already decided.

Never mind the dozen or so war junks across from them — even those mengchong ships alone were more than they could handle.

"Commander, can you not see it yet? This fleet can never belong to the northern bandits. This is the Central Plains court attacking! We must inform the king at once and hold Gaegyeong."

The adjutant's roar was like a thunderclap, instantly making Kang Chengxun realize the gravity of the situation. He gave a start and shook the sweat from his palms.

"Right — we must inform the king. Strike all sails, furl the hawk wings, and we head south."

"A mantis trying to block a chariot!" Chen Hui snorted coldly. At the Goryeo war junk that had suddenly interposed itself, he gave a cold snort and swept his hand.

In an instant, the war drums on the Hengbo sounded, a dozen or more sailors turned the sails, and the warship slowly began to swing broadside.

The Hengbo's starboard side was fitted with four winch crossbows, and then... there were also three bronze cannons with pitch-black muzzles!

This was the rapid polarization that had appeared after Zhang Zhao invented firearms, under the advice of the Luantai of the Secretariat, the Bureau of Military Affairs, the Ministry of War, and the Ministry of Works.

Now, in Great Zhou's army, firearms were being developed in the direction of crouching-tiger cannons and nine-section cannons.

In the navy, however, they were being built toward heavy guns, seeking to replace winch crossbows and trebuchets.

General An had ordered his men forward to intercept with the resolve to die. He was in fact the true core of this Goryeo naval force.

So he had immediately thought of the consequence: if they were defeated, Ganghwa Bay could not be held. He wanted to use his own heroic deed to give Kang Chengxun a chance to escape.

Therefore, when the Hengbo began to turn its hull broadside, General An also ordered his sailors to actively bring his warship close to the Hengbo.

A winch crossbow could fire only once every several dozen breaths, and each shot was no more than a single spear-bolt. Though its killing power was great, it absolutely could not compare to the damage of ten thousand arrows loosed at once at close range.

But very quickly, he sensed something wrong, because on the enemy's starboard side, apart from the several winch crossbows, there were also several enormous, round, hollow long tubes.

"Fire!" Chen Hui bellowed. The gun captain blew his tinder to flame and, before the seawater could splash in, lit the fuse.

With a thunderous boom, orange-red flame erupted from the muzzle, and a stone ball the size of an infant's head shot forth, streaking at extreme speed across the deck of the Goryeo warship, trailing countless screams and spurting blood.

Those unlucky Goryeo archers had just massed together. Before they could even loose their arrows, the cannonball plowed a bloody furrow straight through their ranks.

Of course, compared to the dozen or so men suddenly smashed into pulp, what terrified them most was the oppressive force of this unknown weapon.

General An was also badly startled, but he immediately recovered — this must be a weapon like the winch crossbow, only with greater power.

"Spread out! Spread out! Archers, disperse and shoot!"

General An adopted the most prudent method. At such close range, dodging was certainly impossible, but they could still spread out to reduce casualties.

But this time he miscalculated again, because Chen Hui laughed three times. "Switch to hail shot! Let them taste something fierce."

"Hail" meant hailstones — this was the term Great Zhou used for canister or grape shot, taking the meaning of hailstones falling thick across the sky.

The Goryeo sailors had just scattered when the howling hail shot arrived. Among these projectiles were polished stone balls, iron balls, hard wooden spikes, and even iron caltrops boiled in golden juice.

If the Goryeo men had remained massed as before, in this age when cannon fire still lacked kinetic energy, the killing power probably would not have been too great. But now that they had spread out, they made the perfect targets.

Countless hail projectiles howled past, like an autumn gale suddenly sweeping through a courtyard full of fallen leaves. The hundred or so archers who had just been standing scattered about were now almost all lying on the deck.

Some had been struck. Even a single hail projectile at high speed meant instant shattered bones, torn sinews, and pierced bowels — a wretchedness too terrible to put into words.

Those lucky enough not to be hit were naturally frightened to the ground as well, which was why such an exaggerated scene appeared, as if this one shot had killed over a hundred men.

Never mind the Goryeo men — even the gun captain who had fired was stunned. He could not resist peering into the muzzle, half suspecting that what he had just fired was not a cannon but sorcery.

Only two rounds, six shots, and the battle had already come to this — so what was the point of forming ranks and volleying? Chen Hui swept his command flag, and the boarding fighters, long since prepared, roared as they came to stand at the gunwales.

With a great clang, the two ships slammed into each other.

Borrowing this force, the soldiers hurled out countless grappling hooks, pulling the two ships together, then amid the heaving waves laid down a plank that looked anything but safe, and without a moment's hesitation charged toward the enemy warship opposite.

On the other side, Kang Chengxun, fleeing south in panic, let out a shriek at the prow of a sea-hawk ship.

For Guo Yanzhen, Naval Commander of the Great Zhou navy and son of Guo Shicong, a founding hero of the former Wuyue, had already led two tower ships headed by the Wave-Subduing and more than forty other light craft, riding the trade wind, to cut him off.

It turned out that as soon as the great battle began, Zhao Kuangyin had ordered Guo Yanzhen to take the tower ships on a detour south, then, after finding a favorable wind position, turn north again and strike the Goryeo navy from both front and rear.

The Goryeo sea-hawk ships, though large, were still no match for the Great Zhou tower ships; the gunwales of the tower ships stood even higher than the sailors standing on the sea-hawk ships.

Moreover, the Wave-Subduing and the other tower ships came with the wind, able to adjust direction nimbly while keeping their speed assured, and they plowed into the Goryeo fleet like a wild bull.

The Goryeo men on the sea-hawk ships desperately pushed with long poles, trying to shove the Wave-Subduing farther away, but it was utterly useless.

The waves thrown up by the Wave-Subduing even swamped and sank countless small Goryeo boats following the sea-hawk ships.

The moment the two sides made contact, the tower ships' swape poles, striking from above, hammered the sea-hawk ships' hulls with lever force, and before long had smashed five or six holes into them.

Large numbers of elite archers also shot down from the high decks, and the sea-hawk ships could not withstand it at all; great numbers of sailors and marines were shot dead.

Their only possible counterattack was to hurl grappling hooks in despair, hoping to climb aboard the tower ships and fight a boarding action.

But this was pure delusion; they had usually climbed only halfway before being knocked into the sea by great clubs in despair.

At the same time, countless jars of fire oil were hurled down from the tower ships — not to burn the sea-hawk ships, but to burn the small Goryeo boats nearby.

Before the tower ships, these small boats were like infants; the moment they were struck, they burst into balls of flame.

As for the swape poles, they were even more convenient — one swing sent both men and boat straight into the water, a complete crushing.

Half a watch later, the Goryeo navy had almost entirely lost the ability to resist, and only then did the light craft behind speed forward.

Large numbers of elite Great Zhou marines burst into the large and small vessels in the sea, and the brutal search and slaughter began.

And the fate of the Goryeo navy, like the sea-hawk ships battered full of holes, was left with only one choice — to rot.

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