Chapter 1241 - Enemy in Liaoluo Bay
The boat belonging to Ning Liujin's relative was not large—two hundred liao at most—just one among the countless vessels making up the numbers in the Zheng fleet. The hull was old but still seaworthy. Two privately cast cannons sat on deck, short and thick, their surfaces mottled with yellow-red rust. When fired, they leapt three feet into the air; though lashed down with ropes, a careless gunner could still be crushed. At Ning Liujin's feet lay several large baskets filled with scrap iron, small stones, and broken porcelain—crude shot for the guns. Several jars of gunpowder rested at the foot of the mast, covered haphazardly with straw mats.
Besides the boat owner, the most important man aboard was the pilot, who could recite compass headings, read the needle, and back-recite the tide songs without error. He ranked as second-in-command alongside the helmsman. Below them were the common hands, men selling their lives for wages. Those who could work the cannons barely counted as third-tier, though the danger was immense. In the half-year since Ning Liujin had come aboard, the gunner's position had turned over twice. One man had died vomiting blood on the spot when a cannon jumped and struck him; another had his face seared when powder sprayed from the touchhole while lighting the fuse—still screaming and rolling on the ground, he was thrown into the sea by the owner's order. Ning Liujin had been terrified out of his wits and vowed never to become a gunner.
"Apprentices" like Ning Liujin were not considered human on this ship. No one took his status as the "owner's relative" seriously. Every sort of chore and blow was thrown his way. Not long after boarding, he had been sodomized by a crewman one night and subsequently violated multiple times—such things were commonplace in pirate gangs, and no one cared.
He swallowed his pride and endured. At least he could eat. Perhaps, if he survived a few more years, he might rise above the others—maybe even claim a second-in-command position. Warfare was common at sea these days, and owners and pilots died quickly. Some hands managed to climb into the owner's chair after a few battles, even taking over the owner's wife and children.
This time they had gathered at Kinmen supposedly to fight the "Short-haired Bandits." One night, after a few too many drinks, the owner had spat as he explained that this was the Imperial Court's decree—General Zheng was leading them to punish the bandits, and everyone would be rewarded after beating them.
Ning Liujin had no concept of what Short-haired Bandits were. He only knew they had huge, fast ships, reportedly more powerful than General Zheng himself—though of course ordinary folk did not dare say such things openly. In truth, he had no concept of Liu Xiang either, or how powerful he had been, despite having once fought against him. In his view, fighting was simply for rations; who to fight was for the bosses to decide. Ning Liujin cared only about not losing his life.
At 0500 hours on September 20th, the outline of Kinmen Island emerged faintly on the horizon. A lookout spotted the silhouettes of numerous ships three nautical miles north of the fleet. The duty officer in the fire control center immediately trained an infrared telescope on Liaoluo Bay. Along the shore, he could see many vessels anchored in three or four rows deep—all small to medium-sized craft. Further west, seven thousand-ton class three-masted gunships lay at anchor.
Lichun quickly raised signal flags and simultaneously notified all flotillas and squadrons by light signal to prepare for combat in single column.
At 0510, the order issued from Lichun: "Advance. Enemy in Liaoluo Bay."
At 0512, Lichun's 130mm main gun fired the first shot from three nautical miles away. Then Chedian, Yufeng, Chenglang, and Yangbo fired in sequence. The muzzle flashes of the 130mm cannons painted the bay crimson.
Ning Liujin was dozing fitfully when a thunderous boom rolled across the sky like distant thunder. Thinking a storm was coming, he opened his eyes in alarm. But the moon was bright and the stars were few. While he puzzled over this, a ball of fire rose from the fleet's perimeter, then quickly faded. The sleeping crew on deck all woke, suspicion and fear written across their faces.
"Quick! Load the guns! Someone's raiding the camp!" The owner's urgent voice rang out.
The crew scrambled to load powder into cannons and matchlocks. Gunpowder jars were opened and tilted directly into the bores. Ning Liujin had no firearm duties; he grabbed his steel trident and stood by the gunwale, staring out at the pitch-black sea.
From his angle he could see almost nothing. His ship was crowded among the mass of medium and small vessels in Liaoluo Bay; looking outward, he saw only hulls and masts.
But from the far horizon where clouds touched the sea, red lights flickered, followed by rolling thunder. Dull explosions came one after another. The crewmen stood wide-eyed, not knowing what they were about to face.
"Quick! Raise sails! Weigh anchor!" Owners on every ship were shouting. Whatever they faced, staying put was clearly suicide. Ning Liujin was driven to the anchor cable; the wet rope rubbed his hands raw, but everyone was engulfed in fear, heaving desperately without thought.
Suddenly a brilliant light split sky and sea—a burning segment of air, it seemed, rotating over the water. The source of the light was faintly a huge black ship, masts towering, advancing with impossible speed against the wind. Liujin thought he must be hallucinating. No ship could sail in that direction. The wind was dead against them.
The beam found a sailing ship and stopped rotating. Orange flashes appeared on that phantom-like vessel, and then the ship caught in the light became a ball of fire. Sails curled skyward like burning mats; fragments tumbled through the firelight, vanishing into the unknowable night.
The light vanished. Everyone stared dumbfounded as the burning ship broke rapidly in two and sank. The flames floating on the water dimmed and extinguished.
"Your mother! Raise the sails!" The owner was the first to snap out of it, kicking and beating the crewmen. "Sail! Sail! Full sail!" he screamed.
After the first volley on the Liaoluo Bay ship cluster, Lichun led the four gunboats in a pause to correct firing data. Their targets were the seven main gunships further away; the opening salvo had merely designated targets for the following special service boat squadrons.
The special service boats trailed behind but possessed much shorter cannon range, so they maintained fire silence as they continued into Liaoluo Bay. Shells were loaded, friction primers installed; gunners stood ready to fire at any moment.
Scattered cannon fire came from the Zheng fleet in Liaoluo Bay, but the best guns in those ships could not reach one nautical mile. For the Senate sailors, it was little more than an unimpressive fireworks display. The squadrons approached the enemy fleet in neat formation under their commanders' direction.
Lichun advanced another nautical mile. When the distance to the seven three-masted gunships closed to 2.5 nautical miles, Ming Qiu checked his watch and issued the order from the bridge: "Turn on searchlights. Full squadron volley."
Captain Li Ziping had been correcting firing data repeatedly in the fire direction center, waiting for precisely this. The moment Ming Qiu spoke, Lichun fired its first volley. The shells struck true, covering one of the three-masted gunships. Towering water columns instantly swallowed the enemy vessel.
After Lichun fired, the main and broadside guns of each ship opened up successively under searchlight guidance. Dozens of shells traced red arcs through the darkness, raising countless water columns in the anchorage.
Li Ziping observed the rising and falling geysers through binoculars. Suddenly, a ball of red flame flashed amid the spray, followed by a dull explosion.
"One hit!" the lookout shouted immediately.
"Continue firing. Maintain speed," Li Ziping ordered from the bridge.
On the main gun deck forward of the bridge, gunners were reloading—swabbing the bore, loading silk-wrapped powder bags in their distinctive chestnut color, pushing shells into the barrel, then firing.
With each shot, Lichun shuddered. Smoke and muzzle flash swept the deck. Vibration, heat, and acrid fumes transformed the foredeck into an inferno. But the gun crews roared in exhilaration, some stripping to the waist, faces and bodies blackened with smoke and grease.
"Damn. Feels just like Clouds Above the Hill." Li Ziping tasted the acrid smoke on the sea breeze, choking him breathless. The deck vibrated beneath his feet—the hiss of boilers, the roar of steam engines, the bellow of cannons—all blending into a powerful war symphony of the steam-and-cannon age.
As the distance closed and the sky grew brighter, searchlights became unnecessary. Gunners constantly corrected their aim based on splash points; accuracy improved with each salvo. Amid rising columns of spray, balls of red-yellow flame burst again and again. Though a few of the seven gunships had managed to weigh anchor, they had virtually no ability to fight back against the First Squadron's dense and accurate fire. Wooden hulls struck by shells suffered catastrophic structural damage; shrapnel mingled with flying splinters turned decks into slaughterhouses of rent flesh and shattered bone. Flammables on deck, left unattended, ignited into massive infernos upon impact. One gunship took a direct hit to the stern magazine and exploded in two.
From start to finish, though a handful of gunships managed to return fire, their guns were too few and their range too short to threaten the First Squadron. Only when the squadron closed to about one nautical mile did a few enemy shells fall within the column—and none found their mark. By then, most of the gunships had been hit, either sinking or reduced to burning hulks. The last two three-masted gunships lost all capacity to resist after another volley and sank one by one under subsequent fire.
(End of Chapter)