Chapter 261： Encounter pirates

Marin boarding the ship in person is naturally a big deal for East Friesland. For the monarch of a country, travel is also a big deal.

Fortunately, Marin in the house can safely give it to very reliable people such as Old Huffman and Schwartz, without worrying about making trouble if he is not at home.

This time, Marin's plan is to go to the Canary Islands first and wait for Columbus. After Columbus's fleet, Marin planned to let the three ships back first, leaving only one with some spices to Cadiz as evidence to lure the Spaniards into the game.

If four ships full of spices appear in the Spanish port, such a valuable thing, Marin is not sure if the Spaniards will give birth to a "black eat black" ... Therefore, he intends to let three The ship went back, leaving only one. After all, that's more than a million gold coins. Even a king of a big country like Spain is jealous when he meets. You know, before the gold and silver of the Americas were discovered, Spain's fiscal revenue was not high, and it did not reach one million gold coins a year. Therefore, in the face of so much wealth, Marin did not dare to guarantee that the Spaniards would not be jealous. Therefore, he planned to leave the spices of a small boat to take to the Spanish Kings.

In order to ensure the safety of Marin, Schwartz and others selected dozens of elite soldiers who are familiar with water to protect Marin on board. In addition, in order to train gunners, the 32 heavy guns on the two ships were also equipped with half skilled gunners. As for the other half, they are apprentice gunners and can also be considered as training newcomers.

In fact, if a naval battle occurs, at most half of the artillery on board will be put into combat, and the artillery on the other side will not have the opportunity to be put into use. Unless the ship is trapped on two sides, there will be a chance to use the artillery on both sides.

So, although each ship has 16 guns, in actual naval warfare, only 8 guns can be used. A 12-pound cannon requires about 8 to 10 people. Therefore, there are at most 80 gunners on board.

为了 In order to save manpower, half of the gunners still have many people working part-time as sailors. The two 250-ton class armed merchant ships (not to be considered warships), each ship set 10 professional sailors and 64 sailors and gunners. Therefore, the number of his crew reached 74. In order to protect Marin, Schwartz and others sent another 50 guards on board. Therefore, the entire fleet numbered as many as 200.

However, the two ships are large enough, plus the three-storey stern of the stern, which has enough space to fit in. Although the ship building is not conducive to navigation, it is very conducive to loading and loading. After all, the building is relatively large. Unlike the British galleon, the space is compressed into the hull, and it looks particularly compact.

She is very interested in this voyage. In order to practice naval warfare and train the sailors' naval warfare capabilities, Marin also specially pumped a lot of barrels of gunpowder from a small number of gunpowder depots, and extracted enough iron ball cannonballs. He also trained gun battles during the voyage, playing time .

The people of this era still have a cognition of naval warfare at the battlefield. Although artillery is also used, it has not been dominated by artillery.

Many of the designs on the ship are not reasonable. For example, Spanish and Portuguese people like to place artillery on the bow and stern of the ship. At the outbreak of naval battles, warships in Spain or Portugal were accustomed to facing the enemy with their bows facing the enemy ships. Moreover, they will seek to use the angle of the bow to collide with enemy ships.

In this tactic, the side guns are basically useless. As soon as the war began, only the bow's artillery could come in handy. Of course, this is a case of head-on confrontation. In the other case, when there is a great disparity between the enemy and me, while running away, I use the artillery on the stern of the stern to shoot the enemy ship that is being pursued.

However, neither of these methods can use a few artillery. Because the width of the bow and stern is there. Marin had previously asked Portuguese designers to place artillery on the side. In the end, although the Portuguese designer did not let Marin do so, he also left a few gun positions on the side.

When the artillery was placed, Marin simply removed the artillery directly in front of and behind the warship and placed it on the sideboard reserved by the Portuguese designer. Of course, in this way, it will affect the boarding and disembarking of the personnel in the middle side.

Because the design concept of these two ships is actually the concept of merchant shipping. One rule of merchant shipping is to facilitate unloading of cargo on both sides. Therefore, general merchant ships are high at both ends and low at the middle. When the side of a merchant ship leans on the long bridge wharf, the side deck is often not much higher than the wharf, which is suitable for taking a ladder up and down.

However, for warships, this design is dangerous. Because the side deck is too low, it is easy for the sailors of the approaching enemy ship to climb up easily and have a hand-to-hand battle with the sailors of the ship.

At this point, Marin hadn't noticed before. The Portuguese designer was originally a merchant ship designer and had never designed a battleship, so he did it.

Immediately before departure, Marin ordered the artisans to install artillery removed from both ends on the low decks in the middle of the sides. In addition, thick planks were used to raise the nails on both sides of the deck to prevent the enemy from climbing up from here. Of course, artillery placed on both sides has special windows for firing. This is similar to the design of the British lower artillery deck, but on the top of the deck.

In this way ~ www.novelhall.com ~ "Marine Volley" required by Marin, we can barely realize it. It is just that the salvo of only 8 guns is really no deterrent.

加强 In order to strengthen security, Kohler also pumped 50 flare guns and enough ammunition from the East Frisian Armory and loaded them into the ship Marin was on.

Before he left, Captain Kidd, commander of the two ships, asked Marin to personally name the two ships. But Marin was not very satisfied with the two ships, and they still had a displacement of 250 tons. So Marin simply named the two ships "2501" and "2502". And the ship that Marin took was 2501 ...

The captivating Captain Kidd was appointed as the commander of the "250 formations" ... If a Chinese person was here and heard that Kidd was the commander of 250, it was estimated that he would laugh away ...

But Kidd doesn't know the other meaning of 250. He is also proud of being the commander of these two "advanced" warships.

In this way, when everything was ready, under the command of Kidd, the two ships smoothly passed the English Channel and reached the Atlantic Ocean. Then, heading down Canary to the south ...

出来 When he came out this time, Marin brought along the sheepskin documents that Ferdinand II had given to him as "Count of the Barbarians of Spain" in return for thanking him for saving Prince John. Although the Count of the Wilderness did not have an inch of land in Spain, the Count is the Count and still has many privileges in Spanish land. Marin's two ships are staying long in the Canary Islands, waiting for Columbus's fleet. Therefore, it is still useful to come up with the name of the Spanish count.

The voyage in front was smooth, but when the ship left the Portuguese waters and arrived in the Moroccan waters, a little accident happened ...

From the direction of Morocco, there are 4 Moorish pirate ships ...