Chapter 19: The Enemy in Liaoluo Bay

Ning Liujin’s relative’s ship was small, no more than 200 liao at best. It was one of the countless mediocre merchant ships that padded out the Zheng family’s fleet. The hull was old but still relatively sturdy. It was armed with two privately cast cannons, both short and thick, covered in yellow-red rust. When fired, they would jump three feet in the air, and although they were tied down with ropes, a careless gunner could still be crushed. Next to Ning Liujin’s feet were several large baskets filled with scrap metal, small stones, and broken porcelain to be used as ammunition. A few jars of gunpowder were simply left at the base of the mast, covered with some straw mats.

Besides the ship’s owner, the most respected person on board was the boatswain. He knew the navigation routes by heart, could read a compass, and could recite the tide tables backward. He and the helmsman were the second-in-command. Below them were the crewmen who risked their lives. The cannoneers were a distant third in the hierarchy, but their job was incredibly dangerous. In the six months Ning Liujin had been on board, the gunner position had already changed hands twice. One was killed instantly, vomiting blood after a recoiling cannon slammed into him. The other was horribly burned when powder from the touch-hole flashed back in his face; he was still rolling on the deck screaming when the owner ordered him thrown overboard. Ning Liujin was scared out of his wits and secretly swore he would never become a gunner.

An “apprentice” like Ning Liujin was practically a non-person on the ship. No one paid any mind to his status as a “relative of the owner.” He was subjected to all sorts of hard labor and frequent beatings. Not long after he came aboard, he was raped by a fellow crewman while sleeping one night, and the abuse continued—such things were common among pirates, and no one gave it a second thought.

To survive, he had to swallow his anger and humiliation. He hoped that one day he would make a name for himself and rise to a position of authority on the ship. With battles happening so frequently at sea, owners and boatswains died quickly. Some crewmen, after a few fights, climbed to the position of ship’s owner, even taking the former owner’s wife and children for themselves.

This time, they had gathered at Kinmen, supposedly to fight the “Kunzei” (a derogatory term for the Australians). One night, the owner, after a few too many drinks, boasted that this was an order from the imperial court. General Zheng was leading them to conquer the Kunzei, and everyone would be rewarded after the victory.

Ning Liujin had no real concept of who the Kunzei were, only that they had large, fast ships and were said to be even more powerful than General Zheng—though most people didn’t dare say that openly. In truth, he knew just as little about Liu Xiang, a rival they had fought before. To him, fighting was just about earning his keep; who they fought was a matter for the leaders to decide. Ning Liujin’s only concern was not getting killed in battle.

At 5:00 AM on September 20th, the silhouette of Kinmen Island was faintly visible. A lookout spotted the outlines of many ships three nautical miles north of the fleet. The duty officer in the gunnery control room immediately observed Liaoluo Bay with infrared binoculars. He saw numerous ships anchored along the coast in three or four rows, all small to medium-sized vessels. Further west, seven thousand-ton, three-masted gunships were anchored.

The flagship Lichun quickly raised its signal flags and used light signals to notify the various squadrons and flotillas to form a single column for battle. At 5:10 AM, the order came from the Lichun: “Advance! The enemy is in Liaoluo Bay!”

At 5:12 AM, the Lichun’s 130mm main gun opened fire from a distance of three nautical miles. The four other ships—Chedian, Yufeng, Chenglang, and Yangbo—followed suit. The flashes from the 130mm cannons lit up the bay.

Ning Liujin was in a deep sleep when a thunderous roar echoed across the sky. He thought a thunderstorm was coming and quickly opened his eyes. But the sky was clear, with a bright moon and scattered stars. As he wondered what was happening, a ball of fire erupted on the outskirts of their fleet and then quickly faded. The crewmen sleeping on deck woke up, all of them startled and uncertain.

“Quick! Load the cannons! Someone’s raiding the camp!” the owner’s urgent voice shouted.

The crewmen scrambled to load their cannons and muskets. Gunpowder jars were opened and poured directly down the barrels. Ning Liujin wasn’t responsible for firearms. He grabbed his steel trident and stood by the ship’s rail, staring out at the dark sea.

From his position, he could see almost nothing. His ship was mixed in with the many other small and medium-sized vessels in Liaoluo Bay, and his view was blocked by a forest of ships and masts.

But against the clouds on the distant horizon, he could see flickering red lights, followed by rolling thunder. Muffled explosions sounded one after another. The crewmen on his ship stared with wide eyes, having no idea what they were about to face.

“Quick, hoist the sails, weigh anchor!” the owners on every ship were shouting. Whatever they were facing, staying put was clearly a death sentence. Ning Liujin was also pushed to help raise the anchor. The damp, rough rope burned his hands, but a palpable fear had gripped everyone, and they pulled desperately, ignoring the pain.

Suddenly, a brilliant beam of light sliced through the sky and sea, like a burning section of air rotating across the water’s surface. At the source of the light, a massive black ship was faintly visible, its masts towering, advancing with incredible speed against the wind. Liujin thought he must be seeing things, because no ship could sail from that direction—it was directly into the wind.

The beam of light settled on a single sailboat and stopped moving. A few orange flashes erupted from the phantom-like ship, and the sailboat at the end of the beam was instantly engulfed in a fireball. Its sails curled up towards the sky like mats, and debris flew from the flames into the unknowable darkness of the night.

The light then vanished as suddenly as it had appeared. Everyone stared, dumbfounded, as the burning ship quickly broke in two and sank beneath the waves. The flames on the water’s surface flickered and died.

“Damn it, hoist the sails!” the owner was the first to react, kicking several crewmen. “Hoist the sails! Full sail!” he yelled.

After the first salvo against the ships in Liaoluo Bay, the Lichun and the four other gunboats paused their firing to quickly correct their aim. Their primary targets were the seven larger capital ships further away. The initial barrage had merely been to indicate the targets for the trailing special service boat squadrons.

The special service boats followed, but their cannons had a much shorter range. They held their fire and continued to sail deeper into Liaoluo Bay. All guns were loaded with high-explosive shells, and the gunners stood ready with their lanyards, prepared to fire at any moment.

A few scattered shots were fired from the Zheng fleet in Liaoluo Bay, but even their best cannons couldn’t reach beyond one nautical mile. To the sailors on the attacking ships, it was nothing more than an unimpressive fireworks display. Under the command of their squadron leaders, the flotillas advanced in perfect formation, steadily closing in on the enemy fleet.

The Lichun sailed forward another nautical mile, closing the distance to the seven three-masted gunships to just 2.5 miles. Ming Qiu checked his watch and gave the order from the bridge: “Turn on the searchlights, full squadron barrage!” The Lichun’s captain, Li Ziping, was already in the gunnery control room, having double-checked the firing solutions, just waiting for the command. The moment Ming Qiu finished speaking, the Lichun fired its first full salvo, accurately blanketing one of the three-masted ships. A towering pillar of water instantly engulfed the enemy vessel.

Following the Lichun’s lead, the main guns and broadside cannons of the other ships opened fire one by one, guided by the searchlights. Dozens of shells, trailing red wakes, screamed towards the anchorage, raising countless waterspouts.

Li Ziping carefully observed the rising and falling waterspouts through his binoculars. Suddenly, a brilliant red flame erupted from among the columns of water, followed by a dull explosion.

“One hit!” the spotter immediately shouted.

“Continue firing, maintain speed,” Li Ziping commanded from the bridge. On the main gun deck before him, the gunners were reloading. They swabbed the cannon bores, loaded maroon silk powder cartridges, and rammed home the high-explosive shells before firing again.

With each shot, the Lichun shuddered. Gunsmoke and flames swept across the deck. The vibration, heat, and smoke had turned the foredeck into a hellscape. But the gun crews were exhilarated, shouting wildly. Some had stripped to the waist, their faces and bodies blackened by smoke and grease.

“Damn, this really feels like something out of Saka no Ue no Kumo,” Li Ziping thought, as the acrid smoke, carried by the sea breeze, stung his face, making it hard to breathe. The bridge beneath his feet vibrated with the hiss of the boilers, the roar of the steam engines, and the thunder of the cannons… all mixed into a powerful symphony of war in the age of steam and steel.

As the distance closed, the sky grew brighter, and they no longer needed the searchlights. The gunnery officers continuously corrected their aim based on the fall of the shots, and the gunners grew more and more accurate. Amidst the dense columns of water, red and yellow fireballs constantly erupted. Although a few of the seven targeted gunships had managed to weigh anchor, they were powerless against the dense and accurate fire from the First Squadron. A single high-explosive shell hitting their wooden hulls caused severe structural damage to the hull and deck. Splinters mixed with shrapnel flew everywhere, turning the decks into a bloody hell on earth. Flammable materials on deck had not been secured and quickly caught fire when hit. One gunship took a direct hit to its stern magazine, triggering a massive explosion that blew it in two.

From beginning to end, although a few of the gunships managed to fire back, their cannons were too few and their range too short to pose any real threat to the First Squadron. Only when the squadron closed to about one nautical mile did a few cannonballs land among the column, but none hit a target. By this point, nearly all the enemy gunships had been hit. Most had already sunk into Liaoluo Bay or were now just burning hulks floating on the water. The last two three-masted gunships lost their ability to fight back after the next salvo and, under the subsequent bombardment, sank one by one to the bottom of the sea.