Chapter 794 Yuzhou Mountain Island

Pang Tong's words made Huangfu Chaobo's eyes light up. He suddenly remembered what Mi Zhen said on the boat when she first arrived in Qingzhou. When she was a child, she had also gone to sea with the Mi family's fleet. There is a large island in the sea east of Qu County, called Yuzhou Mountain Island. It is said that the island is now occupied by a group of pirates.

When mentioning Yuzhou Mountain Island, Huangfu Chaobo suddenly thought of another name: Tianheng Island. That is the location of Lianyungang in reality.

Yuzhou was originally the name of an ancient island in my country. According to legend, Tian Heng lived here at the end of the Qin Dynasty, so it is also called Tianheng Island. It is located in the area of ​​Dongyuntai Mountain in Lianyungang City, Jiangsu Province. In ancient times, it was in the sea, "hundreds of miles around" ("Book of Southern Qi·Zhoujunzhi"). In the Qing Dynasty, due to the expansion of the coast, it began to connect with the mainland. At the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, Bing Yuan moved his family into the sea and lived in Yuzhou Mountain, which is here.

Yes, Qingdao is more than 400 miles away from Yuzhou Mountain Island, and it just happened to occupy this island, making it a transit and resting point for the navy to go south to Jiangdong.

Then, if you go south from Yuzhou Mountain, you still need to walk more than 800 miles. It seems that you need to find another island near the mouth of the Huai River.

Thinking of this, Huangfu Chaobo hurriedly asked Jiang Qin to send people to the south first to explore the situation on Yuzhou Mountain Island. If there are still pirates occupying it, this time they will just capture it and occupy the island.

As Huangfu Chaobo expected, three days later, the fleet met the scout ship sent in advance on the sea sixty miles north of Yuzhou Mountain Island. The Red Horse Ship of the Nutao Army landed at a place in the northeast corner of Yuzhou Mountain Island, and then sent several elite naval soldiers to carefully explore the entire island.

Yuzhou Mountain Island is to the east of Qu County, Xuzhou, about ten miles away from the coast. The island is an irregular long strip, about twenty miles long from northeast to southwest, and less than ten miles wide from northwest to southeast. The island is undulating, with several mountains about hundreds of feet high. The mountains are densely forested, with a terrain of high northeast and low southwest.

The scouts boarded the island from a cliff in the northeast, then passed through the mountains to the south of the island. The terrain on the west side of the southern part of the island is relatively high and lush with trees, while the east side is a large flat land with a radius of several miles.

The scouts observed on the mountain for half a day and one night, and basically understood the situation on the island.

On the plain in the southeast, there was indeed a group of pirates stationed, and it seemed that there were at least thousands of people. Their ships were parked in a small port in the southeast of the island. There were about 20 ships, and there were even several sea ships.

The reason why the scouts were sure that they were sea ships was because they had never heard of them in the army, let alone seen them. Compared with the ships of the Anton Navy, those ships were wider and had a relatively shallower draft. There were not many oars on both sides, but there were several sails on the front and back of the ship.

After listening to the scout's report, Huangfu Chaobo was basically sure that the ships discovered by the scout should be what people often call sand ships, which is one of the four famous ships in ancient China and the longest-standing sea-going ship, mainly used for offshore and inland navigation.

However, it is said that the sand ship should have first appeared in the Tang Dynasty, but I don't know why it appeared in the game of the Three Kingdoms. It's just that Huangfu Chaobo was surprised but very happy about the appearance of the sand ship.

The sand ship has a square head and a square tail, commonly known as the "square stern"; the deck is spacious, the model is small, and the freeboard is low; the beam arch is used to enable the deck to quickly clear waves; there is a "stern" for easy installation of the elevator rudder, and a "virtual stern" for easy operation of the stern sail. The ship is equipped with multiple masts and sails, with a relatively fast speed, a large rudder area and can be raised and lowered. When going out to sea, part of the rudder blades are lowered below the bottom of the ship, which can increase the effect of the rudder and reduce drift. The rudder can be raised in shallow water.

The sand ship has a unique structure, with a square head, square tip, flat bottom and shallow draft. It is wide, large, flat and shallow. It can be beached with a flat bottom, not afraid of being stranded, and has a shallow draft, so it is less affected by the tide. The sand ship has multiple masts and sails, high masts and high sails, and shallow draft, small resistance, can sail quickly on the sea, and has good seaworthiness. It has a large carrying capacity. It is generally recorded that the carrying capacity of the sand ship is 4,000 to 6,000 stones.

You should know that the maximum carrying capacity of the big boat in Huangfu Chaobo's hands is only 3,000 stones, and it has sunk in the sea several times. Another reason is that the sand ship is very suitable for ships sailing in the northern waters, because its ability to resist wind and waves is still a little lacking, and it is still somewhat unsuitable for the strong winds and waves in the southern sea, but it is exactly the ship that Huangfu Chaobo needs.

When he thought that there would be a large ship that was fully adapted to the sea and inland rivers, Huangfu Chaobo couldn't help but look forward to it. He didn't know if there were shipbuilders who knew how to build sea ships among the pirates. It would be best if he could gather a few sea shipbuilding craftsmen. If it really doesn't work, at least these sand ships must be captured.

Thinking of this, Huangfu Chaobo called Jiang Qin and asked him to be responsible for this battle.

After receiving the order, Jiang Qin left Huangfu Chaobo's warship, returned to his own warship, and began to arrange the battle. Although the An Dong Army's navy is only an inland navy, it is not afraid of this kind of offshore battle to attack the island.

Half an hour later, Jiang Qin left two tower ships to guard Huangfu Chaobo and the transport ships, and led most of the navy to rush to Yuzhou Mountain Island.

After Jiang Qin's army left, Huangfu Chaobo couldn't stay any longer. He hadn't seen a naval battle yet. It was just that the tower ship could keep up quickly, but the speed of the big boat full of war horses and cargo could not be improved.

After a little consideration, Huangfu Chaobo decided to leave three tower ships to guard the merchant ship, and he led a tower ship to follow far away to see the naval battle.

After Pang Tong and his men failed to persuade them, they had no choice but to agree. However, the personnel and materials on the ship had to be adjusted. Dian Wei arranged 400 soldiers from the Iron Wall Camp and 600 Yuanrong crossbowmen on Huangfu Chaobo's ship. The remaining 400 crossbowmen were assigned to the other three ships to guard the caravan.

Then some other unimportant materials were moved from Huangfu Chaobo's ship to other ships to increase the speed and flexibility of the ship. After giving Dian Wei and Shi A some instructions, Huangfu Chaobo was allowed to chase Jiang Qin's fleet.

However, in this process, Pang Tong had some tricks and deliberately slowed down the speed of the soldiers, but Huangfu Chaobo did not notice these small details.

After the exchange, more than an hour had passed.

When Huangfu Chaobo took Jia Jing and curiously caught up with Jiang Qin's fleet, he found that their sea battle had ended. Jiang Qin had led the soldiers to the island. Outside the port of the island, there were floating pieces of wood from the ship everywhere, and even some pirate bodies were floating in the sea with the waves.

The losses of the Nutao Camp were small, with only a few smaller boats damaged and dozens of soldiers killed or wounded.