The reason why serious imperial black tea can become a reward before the war is because the soldiers of the Expeditionary Fleet were once tortured by inappropriate black tea.

In the history of the navy, coffee was once promoted as a drink. In addition to the refreshing reasons, it was also to develop the coffee cultivation industry in Nanyang. However, this still cannot change the Chinese people's habit of drinking tea. Over time, in the navy, sailors and officers' coffee became the main ecology. Obviously, among the tea varieties, not seeking fresh black tea will become the mainstream, which is the same as the reason why Europeans love to drink black tea.

During the war in the Americas, the black tea supply from the expeditionary fleet was intermittent, and the quarantine officer had to replace it with the seized black tea. Most of these black teas were sold to the colonies by British and Dutch merchants, and even purchased black tea from East India companies of the two countries.

It was found that these two East India companies were not at all particular about the black tea business. It was a routine operation to mix sheep dung balls and granulated grass into the black tea. Although the quality was reduced, it was at least safe and at most a bit disgusting. However, a report from Nanyang showed that after purchasing black tea, the British would conduct secondary processing, and even added patina to the black tea, spraying water dissolved patina on the black tea to dry it. This metal ions were used to inhibit fungi and prevent mold from changing to cope with the transportation process and the humid climate in the UK.

Fortunately, the Expeditionary Fleet still maintained a Chinese-style military ration supply, so milk and cheese with mercury salt and butter with steak can not persecute the imperial soldiers. However, the Navy was once injured by mercury salt in the Caribbean. Dutch merchants added colorless, anticorrosive and sweet things like mercury salt to their inferior sugar when high-quality sugar was sold to the Navy.

Facing the calm gun captain, Su Jing said calmly: "Major, I can only give you twenty minutes. Whether you can sink the Britannia in one fell swoop depends on whether you can make good use of these twenty minutes."

The gunman smiled slightly and knocked on the furnace beside him. This was the furnace that melted iron. As many as 360 kilograms of pig iron had melted into iron. The high temperature still made the black tea in the small steel pot sound like a sound. He picked up a cup and handed it to Su Jing: "Don't worry, sir, although you can't guarantee that you are the first to sink a first-class battleship with an ironclad ship, you may be the first to defeat a first-class battleship with an ironclad ship.

Twenty minutes, enough! I have special foaming skills, you know."

Su Jing took the black tea, nodded slightly, and the gunner in charge of looking out shouted: "The distance is three hundred meters!"

"Please hold your teacup, and then please enjoy the percussion music "We Are Going to Death". Performer, the 950 officers and soldiers on the flagship Britannia of the British Navy Fleet." The young gunman Zhang Boqian came from a musical family, but he embarked on the road of playing music with cannon sounds. However, his musical cells were still infected by humorous bacteria, which caused the gunners to burst into laughter. Unlike Su Jing and Wei Yunfan, who advocated violent collision tactics, Zhang Boqian still tended to use cannon technique to solve everything.

As the Iron Wall approached Britannia 300 meters, fourteen forty-two-pound cannons on the lower artillery deck of Britannia began to shell out. This was the most powerful artillery in Britain and even Europe. It had a long tube with a long range, but in the turbulent sea, it was really hard to hit warships three hundred meters away. However, when the Iron Wall entered the range of 200 meters, more than fifty heavy artillery on the three-layer artillery deck were shelling one after another, with an unparalleled momentum.

Britannia is now like a monster emitting smoke and steel, venting its anger to the fullest. The momentum alone is enough to shock the night. The short and heavy artillery brought a super fast rate of fire to Britannia, especially the few 24-pound short and heavy artillery on the open deck. With the cooperation of skilled gunners, it is a faster existence than a flintlock gun. Britannia's volley became the only sound of this battlefield from the beginning. In comparison, its opponent was just moving forward dullly, which made people a little scared.

The Iron Wall did not fight back, quietly enduring the shelling from the Britannia. On the inside of the artillery deck, the sounds of the hitting were like cheerful percussion. Outside, the sound of clanging clanging clanging clanging clanging clanging clanging clanging clanging clanging clanging clanging clanging clanging clanging clanging clanging clanging clanging clanging clanging clanging clanging clanging clanging clanging clanging clanging clanging clanging clanging clanging clanging clanging clanging clanging clanging clanging clanging clanging clanging clanging clanging clanging clanging clanging clanging clanging clanging clanging clanging clanging clanging clanging clanging clanging clanging clanging clanging clanging clanging clanging clanging clanging clanging clanging clanging

Dull sounds lingering, crisp impacts came from the gun mouth, and loud cannon sounds and the British unwilling roars and abuses, intertwined into a war song that opened high and left low, especially the dull echoes, which were the death bells ringed for themselves by the British navy. The death bells were sounded by the British navy and the soul-summoning song played by the Britannian officers and soldiers themselves.

"Distance, one hundred meters!" The last notification sounded across the iron-blocked artillery deck.

Zhang Boqian put down his teacup and ordered loudly: "Brothers, when you work, give the British one step to the stomach first, then blur them out, finally, do your own thing, and leave the rest to God!"

With Zhang Boqian's order, all the soldiers on the iron wall deck were busy, and all the gun positions began to load, and one person pushed the cart to the iron furnace. There were three hollow shells on the cart, which were used to make iron watermelon shells. As the furnace was opened, hot orange iron was poured into the hollow shells and then pulled to the cannon position.

All six gun positions were loading. The 90-pound wine bottle cannons used by these main guns were as many as thirteen pounds of launching drugs under standard conditions, and in some cases, they even used twice as many launch drugs. Although this gun is only three-point three meters long, heavy launch drugs will cause huge recoil. At the beginning, in order to offset this recoil, the Navy directly canceled the two wheels behind the cannon truck and let it rub directly with the deck.

But this also means that it is difficult to adjust the firing angle of this type of artillery, especially the largest weight ever made by its Imperial First Navy. The Iron Wall bow cannon is a heavier wine bottle cannon, which uses twenty pounds of fire medicine to fire 166 pounds of solid shells. The weight of this wine bottle cannon is as high as fourteen tons, so it must use more back seat space. For this bow cannon, the Navy designed it as a retreat cannon.

The gun barrel and gun mount of the artillery are placed on a slide rail with a rear high and front low, and the center of gravity is increased when passing through the rear seat, and the recoil is offset by its own weight. The base slide rail is connected to the tracks on the artillery deck, which can adjust the left and right shooting angles. The Navy found that this type of gun mount with a retreat is very useful, so he simply used a 90-pound wine bottle cannon.

However, new problems have also emerged. The mount retracted gun mount makes the muzzle too high from the ground. At the lowest point, the muzzle has to drill out of the gun door and cannot be loaded, so it can only be loaded at the highest point. The solid shell of the ninety-pound gun is ninety pounds, and the flowering shell is 60 to 72 pounds (there are grenades and shrapnel). The solid shell is equivalent to the weight of a half-year-old child. Considering that it is a solid ball, it is difficult for two gunners to load it in place at such a height.

Therefore, a new slide rail was designed for loading. This slide rail was fixed to the top of the artillery deck, with an iron chain hanging down, and all shells had a sunken hanging ring, which took on the main force through the hook. The gunner only needed to aim at the loading.

The gunner first lifted the gun from the ammunition depot with a pulley set to fire the medicine. In addition to solid shells and shotguns, all ammunition and fire medicine with gunpowder must be placed in the gunpowder depot on the lower deck. After the cleaned gun barrel, the gunpowder is first loaded into place, and then a 90-pound solid shell is stuffed into it.

On the small cart on the side of the wine bottle cannon, each of which has four filled iron watermelon shells are placed in the grooves. This is the firing order of the wine bottle cannon. The first solid shell and then four iron watermelon shells. The reason for this arrangement is that the iron watermelon shell is similar to the burned red shells made by the army. It cannot be loaded into the barrel for pre-launch, which will cause damage to the barrel and is very unsafe. If the iron wall is maneuvered and then loaded, it is better to load a solid shell and be ready to be loaded, so that you can get one more round.

In fact, according to the shelling tactics discussed by the gun commander Zhang Boqian, Su Jing, the captain and others in advance, the Ironbi will not entangle with the Britannia, but will fire directly close to 50 meters away. Therefore, in the first round of shooting, Zhang Boqian directly ordered each gunman to load double-loading medicine and two solid bullets.

The closer they got, the more accurate the artillery on the Britannia was. The crew on this British flagship were all warriors and had seen everything, but they had never seen that the artillery could not penetrate. Not only did they, but George Ruk, had never thought of this, and all the officers could not understand it. This made the gunners on the Britannia become more hysterical and could only fire at a faster speed.

On the deck of the Iron Wall, the dull sound became increasingly dense, occasionally mixed with crisp cracking sounds, which was the most feared sound of soldiers on the Iron Craft. Although enemy artillery could not penetrate the armor, dense shelling would loosen the bolted armor. Without wrought iron armor with a surface of 100 mm thick, it would be impossible to defend against enemy shells with just over 400 mm thick teak and 20 mm thick inner layer of armor.

Su Jing saw the gunners looking at each other on the artillery deck, tore open their clothes, revealing their scars, and cursed: "What are you afraid of? I have been on cruise ships and battleships for so many years. When did the artillery shells fly in front of me? Why, the thicker the armor, the more cowardly you are?"

The gunners looked at Zhang Boqian at the first time. Everyone was used to Zhang Boqian talking back to Su Jing, but they saw a reassuring scene.

Zhang Boqian was very plain. He held his chest with his hands, stood beside the small cart filled with iron watermelon shells, leaning against the side of the ship, closing his eyes to rest. His steel tea cup was placed on the hot iron watermelon shells, and the lid was still sounding at Gada, and the enemy's shells hit the side of the ship behind him, shaking from time to time his body left the side of the ship. Zhang Boqian twisted his neck, pointed at his back with a smile, and joked: "The British man's massage skills are not good, he has a little more force."

The indifference to life and death made people feel at ease. The brave gunner even smiled. Zhang Boqian took a sip of black tea, opened the armored cannon door of a wine bottle cannon beside him, and poured the tea leaves down. He patted the armored cannon door and said, "This broken thing is useless. The shells hit it, and it collapsed everywhere." Then he patted everything around him with ninety-pound wine cannons ready, and said, "It's still this big treasure that can help you kill the enemy and save everyone's lives."

“Seventy meters…”

“Sixty meters….”

Some people kept informing the distance between the two parties, and Zhang Boqian put his teacup and said, "Let's start work."

The gunners did the last job, and they stuffed a piece of wood that looked weird into the barrel. This was a cork disc with a diameter slightly smaller than the diameter of the gun, which was ten centimeters thick. A three-centimeter-wide depression was dug on the inside, with a hole in the middle, two hardwood pieces embedded in the depression, and a wooden wedge that had changed from wide to narrow, and a narrow end was inserted into the hole.

After the wooden plug was stuffed into the barrel, the gunner used a large wooden hammer to hit the tail of the push rod. In the barrel, the wooden wedge collided with the solid shell. Under the attack, it kept drilling into the holes, and the hardwood chips on both sides were squeezed to expand to the outside, jamming the barrel tightly.

This plug was Zhang Boqian's personal invention, and the purpose was to prevent the shells from rolling out. As the plug stuck the barrel, the gunman personally directed the gunman to adjust the cannon, and the safety was opened. Because of its own gravity, the gun slowly fell along the slide rail. The gun door drilled out of the front of the barrel. The gunman of each gun turned the roulette and adjusted the conventional one-degree elevation angle to a seven-degree descent angle. This is the essence of Zhang Boqian's art and the source of his confidence in defeating the first-class battleship of Britannia within 20 minutes - close to the waterline of the enemy ship.

Prepare......Fire!

The gunner pulled the rope of the flintlock ignition device. As the flintlock was fired, more than 20 pounds of fired medicine inside were immediately ignited. The burning fired medicine burst out with destructive energy, pushing two ninety-pound shells forward. At that moment, the hardwood piece stuck with the cannon chamber was broken, and the two shells quickly came out of the borehole, drilling out a piece of smoke, wrapped in the momentum of destroying the world, and shot at the position between the bottom deck of the Britannia and the waterline.

The Britannia was over ninety centimeters thick at that position, with high-quality British oak boards stacked together layer by layer and attached to the thick ribs, which was the strongest defense ever made by the British Navy, but in front of ninety pounds of solid shells, it was no different from paper-paste.
Chapter completed!