After receiving the order, the naval gun crew, which was already in a state of preparation for war and had already planned to fire at Zhu Yuan, immediately fired a salvo.
Conducting artillery battles at sea is very different from on land.
The first is that the hit rate is extremely low.
In this era, whether it is the British or the French, they certainly have the most powerful battleships in this plane.
But even for a heavy battleship with 54 heavy guns, the hit rate is horribly low.
Shooting at a distance of three hundred meters, it can basically be said that the hit rate is zero.
Therefore, naval battles in this era were divided into two types. One was to rush to the enemy ship dozens of meters away and carry out bayonet-style bombardment, and the other was a hand-to-hand boarding battle after the warships of both sides collided and approached.
This is why those merchant ships did not obey Wang Haitao's order to lower the sails and stop the ships at all.
Because in the eyes of those merchant ship captains, as long as I run fast enough, you can't do anything to me!
But something happened that the captains never expected.
After a salvo, two of the five shells landed dozens of meters away from a merchant ship.
Of course, this is not a danger, after all, the popular muzzleloader gunboat guns of this era fire too slowly.
Every time they fire, these naval guns need to clean the barrel and refill the gunpowder and shells.
If you are a skilled artilleryman, this process will take about 15 minutes.
In other words, the upper limit of the rate of fire of naval guns in this era is four rounds per hour.
This is why those sailing warships prefer to extend the distance to tens of meters before firing.
After all, if you can't hit the enemy hard in an instant, the next time you fire will be 15 minutes later.
And if you can hit the enemy ship hard at a distance of tens of meters and then engage in a boarding battle, your chances of victory will be very high.
Although the Breaking Waves had few cannons and was small, its rate of fire far exceeded the smoothbore naval guns of this era.
This new type of naval gun built by Fang Xiaoyue himself is a rifled breech-loading gun.
The shooting accuracy of rifled guns is originally much higher than that of smoothbore guns, and the solid shells they use are also pointed and conical, which is not very different from later generations of shells.
This new naval gun has a rate of fire of up to 2 rounds per minute.
The most important thing is that the speed of the Breaker is much higher than those of merchant ships.
Those Fuchuan-type merchant ships can reach a speed of 5-6 knots when the wind direction is good. If the wind direction is average, 3-4 knots is already the limit.
The 500-ton steel fishing boat uses a 1,200-horsepower four-cylinder diesel engine. When operating at full capacity, the fishing boat can reach a speed of 20 knots!
Of course, it would be uneconomical to maintain this speed for a long time.
However, at this time, in order to close the distance as quickly as possible and improve the accuracy of the naval gun, Wang Haitao did not care so much.
One has a speed of 3-4 knots, and the other has a speed of 20 knots.
The distance between the two sides is 2900 meters. How long will it take to close the distance to 1000 meters?
Well, Wang Haitao didn't think about this problem.
However, several merchant ships rushing towards the Breaker soon knew the answer.
After a few minutes, the distance between those merchant ships and the Wavebreaker was reduced to less than 800 meters.
Wang Haitao, who had been suppressing his emotions and stopping the cannons from firing, suddenly hit the rudder hard, causing the Breaker to turn its bow in a short time, and the entire battleship moved sideways diagonally.
The five new naval guns quickly turned their muzzles and fired a salvo at the incoming merchant ship.
At a distance of less than 800 meters, the hit rate of the new naval gun has increased to a terrifying level.
Of the five cannonballs, two of them pierced directly into the bow of the leading ship. Since the wood of the merchant ship was far inferior to the wood used by the battleship, and the unique pointed cone shape of the cannonballs, these two cannonballs
It penetrated through layers of wooden boards with ease, and finally broke through the bottom of the ship and entered the sea water.
Two holes the size of sea bowls appeared in the bottom of the ship, and cold seawater continued to pour into the cabin along these two holes.
The merchant ships at this time were no better than the freighters of later generations. There were no engineers on duty below, so even if a hole was broken, no one would notice it for a while.
But after a while, the Breaker fired another salvo.
This time, our luck was a little worse. Only one of the five shells hit, and it was also fired from the bow, adding another hole to the merchant ship.
"No. 2, 3, 4, and 5 naval guns stop firing!"
Seeing that the hit rate failed to meet his expected target, Wang Haitao immediately ordered to stop shooting, turned the ship's bow again, and continued to rush forward.
However, during this process, the No. 1 naval gun located at the bow of the ship was still firing continuously.
As the distance continued to shorten, the hit rate of the No. 1 naval gun began to increase significantly.
When the distance is reduced to 400 meters, the hit rate basically reaches more than 80%.
In other words, if ten rounds are fired, at least eight shells will hit directly.
At this time, the merchant ship had been beaten to the point of seven or eight holes, and the people on the merchant ship had discovered the surging water.
But at this point, they couldn't block the hole.
There is already half a tank of sea water below, and even if one dives down, it would be difficult to find the hole.
By this time, no one wanted to stay on the ship anymore.
The sailors on the merchant ship had already taken the lead in holding the wood and jumping into the sea, while the Ming soldiers who were patrolling Biao Camp were a little dumbfounded at this time.
Although most of them are recruited locally in Guangdong, they are more or less water-based.
But there is a huge difference between playing in the water on a river or the coast and jumping into the vast ocean.
One is that you can go ashore at any time and feel safe; the other is that after jumping into the sea, you don't know when you will be able to go ashore, and there is a high possibility of being submerged by the sea water.
Under such circumstances, those Ming soldiers felt that their lives were too miserable.
To jump or not to jump, that is the question.
However, after seeing that the merchant ship could no longer move, the naval guns on the Breaking Waves immediately changed their targets.
The entire naval battle process was a constant process of firing, chasing, and firing!
Of the fifteen ships, three had their hulls broken and sank. Six had their masts broken during pursuit and had to stop. The remaining seven merchant ships were unable to escape the pursuit of the Wavebreaker and had to lower their sails.
surrender.
As for the Ming troops on board, there was nothing they could do at this time.
If they were on land, they could charge at the risk of death and die together with the enemy.
But at sea, when the enemy's warships directly crush them, even if they are highly skilled in martial arts, it will be of no avail.
After controlling the situation, Wang Haitao then used ropes to drag the merchant ships to one place, and then called more than a dozen training ships converted from pirate ships through PHS.
Some of the captured merchant ships were eventually towed back to the dock by fishing boats, while others were boarded by infantry, and after collectively disarming, they drove back to Xinghai City on their own.