It should be said that these artillerymen did not know Fang Xiaoyue, but the crossing officers who led the team naturally knew him.
Based on the direction of the light beam, after mentally calculating the shooting points, he raised the muzzle by 3 degrees, and then Fang Xiaoyue decisively pulled the fire tube.
There was a loud bang, flames erupted from the muzzle, and the gun body suddenly retreated, and then slowly returned to its original position under the action of the artillery muzzle brake.
The rest of the artillerymen came forward with tools such as gun brushes, ejectors, barrel clearing hooks, iron buckets filled with clean water, etc., and surrounded the artillery for a while to wash and clean it.
The other officers standing on the fort were holding telescopes and looking towards the sea.
"I hit it! I hit it!"
At this time, I saw a pirate ship rushing in front. Its mast suddenly broke, and its wide hard sails immediately fell down.
Since this was just a small ship with a single mast and two sails, as the hard sails fell down one after another, the accelerating pirate ship slowed down and slowly stopped on the sea.
The officers who crossed over to report the good news couldn't help but look at Fang Xiaoyue with a bit of surprise.
Isn’t this artillery skill too awesome?
Not only did the first hit hit, it also directly broke the mast of the pirate ship!
"All artillery pieces obey my command! Cannon No. 1, raise the angle by 5 degrees and turn left by 3 degrees. Cannon No. 2, adjust the angle downward..."
Since the smoothbore muzzle-loading cannon is not quickly cleaned and reloaded after firing, the most skilled artillery can only achieve one round per minute.
Therefore, Fang Xiaoyue simply brought all three artillery pieces in the fort under his command.
Anyway, even if the other two artillery were to be operated by the artillerymen, the hit rate would be extremely low. It would be better to let them be commanded by themselves, and the efficiency would be increased by more than ten times.
As the three artillery pieces came under Fang Xiaoyue's command, the hit rate of the No. 3 fort suddenly changed.
In just three minutes, the two pirate ships at the forefront were hit by several shells below the waterline and sank quickly.
After seeing this scene, Sun Xuebin, who was supervising the operations at Fort No. 1, immediately dialed the connection number between the forts.
When he learned that Fang Xiaoyue was commanding the No. 3 turret, he couldn't help but have an idea: "Old Ma! Why don't you give your command to all the turrets? Well, through the wired phone, you give the order and they operate it."
I have to say that Sun Xuebin's mind works really fast.
Although commanding six forts and eighteen artillery pieces through wired telephones is a big project, after all, it still takes some brains to calculate the shooting of Zhu Yuan without being present.
Fortunately, although Fang Xiaoyue's strength has not recovered, her brain is sufficient.
Furthermore, he organized the three artillery pieces of each fort into a group, with each group aiming at a target, which greatly increased the artillery's hit rate.
Those pirates thought they could successfully rush to the shore, easily defeat the thieves, and then plunder the wealth.
After all, with so many cannonballs flying over, only a few pirate ships were sunk, and they were still the smallest ones.
But what they never expected was that the situation would change in an instant.
The pirate ship at the front seemed to be targeted by death, and was frequently hit by flying cannonballs.
Generally speaking, wooden ships are very resistant to solid cannonballs.
Even if the deck and mast were hit, it would only kill a few people and have little impact.
But after Fang Xiaoyue organized and concentrated the command, the three artillery pieces stared at a target and fired hard. The effect was quite terrifying.
After only twelve rounds of shooting, more than thirty pirate ships were either sunk, or their masts were broken and turned into live targets on the sea, or they were hit by several consecutive shells. The pirates became frightened.
Not daring to move forward, he tried to turn around and escape by sailing.
However, even under Fang Xiaoyue's command, the fort dealt a heavy blow to the pirates.
But there were still many pirate ships that were lucky enough to make it to the dock.
The pirates stood on the deck with great excitement, their greedy eyes scanning the approaching dock.
Due to the sudden arrival of the pirates, in addition to some cargo ships and fishing boats docked at the dock, there were also piles of large amounts of coal and raw materials shipped back from Qiongshan County, including saltpeter, sulfur, charcoal, iron, grease, etc.
Waiting is the main thing.
Of course, the pirates didn't even know that what was piled on the dock were just some raw materials. They only saw the mountains of goods piled on the dock.
Well, in their impression, what those shipping merchants transported were either various glassware, muskets, silver, etc. from Europe, or grain, wine, silk, etc.
In short, these goods can be taken out and exchanged for money.
Besides, if you can get one of those iron ships docked at the dock, you can make a fortune just by selling the ships!
You know, in this era, iron is actually equated with wealth.
Before the Qing army left the border, they paid a lot of money to purchase iron materials from the Central Plains.
As long as any iron material is transported to the territory of the Qing army, you can immediately earn more than ten times!
"We're going to get rich!"
At this time, the pirate leaders began to encourage their men with all their strength, and vigorously promoted the benefits of capturing the dock, such as silver, gold, jewelry, women, fine wine, etc., inciting the pirates one by one as if they had been given blood.
Their tanned faces had bulging veins, and the weapons they held in their right hands were covered in a layer of sweat.
This is exciting sweat!
But just when the pirate ships were about to dock at the dock, a series of gunshots rang out.
On the top of the warehouses behind the pier, more than 800 soldiers, carrying Thunderbolt 1646 rifles, formed a battle line.
When the officers who crossed over gave orders to fire, the soldiers immediately pulled the triggers, and the black smoke unique to black gunpowder suddenly burst out and filled the air, while hundreds of lead bullets were shot from the muzzle, forming a dense stream of bullets.
Rain swept across the deck of the pirate ship.
Due to its condescending position, the deck of the pirate ship was almost unobstructed for the soldiers.
Those pirates who were still excited felt a pain in their bodies, and their whole bodies lost their strength, and their bodies immediately fell towards the deck.
"Fire!"
Many battle lines were located relatively far back, so their firing order was also placed at the back.
However, this also caused the gunshots to sound like fried soybeans, knocking down large swaths of pirates. The decks of those pirate ships could be described as being littered with corpses.
The flowing blood caused many pirates who were not shot to fall involuntarily when escaping, or even slide directly into the sea.