Chapter 64: The Battle of Okinawa

  Yang Feng of Dagang Port soon knew that his second torpedo sales pitch had failed, but he just smiled and said that the Beiyang Fleet's current performance was already beyond his expectations. Even if this fleet were to be completely annihilated like in history, they would still have achieved a record that wouldn't make future generations wring their hands in despair for two centuries.

  However, the combined fleet was almost entirely in dry dock, which gave him a good opportunity. Although he made a fortune these days, he always felt a little unfulfilled. In order to make his mood more pleasant, he decided to take advantage of this good opportunity to launch an amphibious operation.

  Of course, the goal is not Japan's mainland. Before new recruits complete their training, they are not capable of this ability. Zhang Quan sent more than 2,000 new recruits to Yiwu soon after his arrival. This year, Chinese people were too poor, and as soon as they heard about a job that paid one hundred taels of silver per year, their lives became worthless. Moreover, this was a traditional occupation passed down from their ancestors. However, these farmers, miners, and hunters wanted to become real soldiers, at least several months of training would be needed. It's likely that Yang Feng won't have the capability to land in Japan within half a year.

  But cannot land in Japan, can only land on Ryukyu, at this time the King of Ryukyu Sho Tai has been taken to Tokyo by the Japanese and surrounded, even Ryukyu has been changed to Okinawa, of course, the Qing government still does not recognize their suzerainty over Ryukyu, taking advantage of this opportunity to occupy Ryukyu, and then making a fuss about the restoration movement with the Ryukyu royal family is also quite good, anyway, on a rainy day, hitting a child, idle is also idle.

  With this mindset, the goods recalled three landing ships that were looting outside, and then sent a telegram to the destroyers hunting on the America-Japan route, asking them to put down their work and wait for themselves at Keelung Port. Then, 2,000 soldiers were loaded onto the ship, escorted by the Plunderer, and Yang led the way personally on the Parrot Ship, setting off from Datong Harbor towards Taipei in a grand manner.

  Less than two hundred kilometers of voyage for the eighteen sections of the fleet, it's just a morning, starting in the morning and arriving at noon. First go to see Xue Fucheng, or say hello to Tang Jingsong and others, but when I arrived here, I found out that Tang Jingsong had run back home with illness as an excuse, and not only him, after being tortured by him last time, about one-third of the officials in Taiwan ran away.

  The problem is that these guys are not going through the normal procedures, they want to report their illness and get approval from Governor Xue Fu Cheng, Tang Jing Su can't refuse, besides, Old Xue also wants to get rid of this guy, but those prefects and magistrates can't approve it, so these guys are all sneaking away, in this way, there won't be any successors in the short term, he is now worried about what to do with those counties that have lost their officials.

  "That's not hard to do? You let the local gentry choose a representative with high moral character, and then match him with the original yamen, just make do with it for now. For important official business like case judgments, they can first figure out the results themselves, and then send them to the provincial governor's yamen for approval." Yang Feng said nonchalantly, without any sense of guilt or responsibility.

  "For now, it's probably best this way." Xue Fu Cheng nodded and said, because after all, this matter was caused by Yang Feng, so naturally it wouldn't be good to make it public.

  After solving this problem, Yang Feng rushed to Keelung the next day. After receiving his order, four destroyers that were hunting at sea returned one after another on that day. One of the destroyers even brought a Japanese merchant ship with it. As soon as he boarded the ship, he found that the sailors' mental state was not very stable, including the British captain who looked like a mad dog.

  They hijacked a ship from Japan to Singapore, which was carrying hundreds of Japanese girls with dreams, packed like sardines in the cargo hold. Even Yang Da Boss was taken aback by the scene when he went down to the cabin.

  "Don't tell anyone, take good care of this ship. There are brothers on your ship who want to have fun. Come up yourself tonight and play on this ship. After we capture Ryukyu, throw these women there and build a comfort station for 500 people for the brothers. From now on, whenever we catch such goods, replace them with new ones and sell them directly to remote villages in China."

  Actually, he suddenly thought that capturing Japanese slaves was also a good business. You know, Japan was quite poor at this time. Landing in those relatively decent cities naturally brought rich rewards, but now there are only a few decent cities in total. If you accidentally get stuck in a poor place, you can't recover the cost of landing and fighting, so it's better to catch some Japanese women to sell, and catching some Japanese beautiful boys seems to be quite good too. At this time, among Chinese scholars, this kind of thing was still very popular, just look at the prosperity of opera performances.

  The next morning, under the leadership of several Ryukyu people brought by Xue Fu Cheng, a large fleet of warships set off from Keelung Harbor and headed towards Okinawa, also known as the "Big Island" in the Ryukyu language. As for the landing site, there was no need to consider it, since there were no Japanese garrisons on the island at that time, only a few armed police officers, so they didn't have to worry about the problems that the US military had considered before, and they could just land directly at Baie de l'Orphelinat.

  "Mr. Yang, actually there are still many islands in the south with people on them." The guide who was leading the way said with a smile all over his face.

  "This matter will be left for the Ryukyu army to deal with later." Yang Feng said with a wave of his hand, as if he didn't have time to bother with such trivial matters.

  "Are you saying we can have our own army?" The guide exclaimed excitedly.

  "Of course, Ryukyu is an independent country. As an independent country, it should naturally have its own military. However, with your current strength, you will certainly be unable to resist foreign invasion. So I will maintain a garrison of 1,000 men in Ryukyu. When the time comes, Your Majesty can allocate a military base for me. If the situation is suitable there, I may even build ports and factories." Yang Feng said, starting from Taiwan to land in Japan was a bit far, but with Ryukyu as his current advance base, it would be no problem.

  A 600-kilometer journey, set off in the morning and arrived in the evening, anchored on the sea to rest, and early next morning this guy swaggered towards that Ba or Shuri.

  "This isn't a good omen!" muttered Okinawa Prefectural Governor Nara no Hito, gazing out at the drizzly sky. His eyelids had been twitching since morning, and to make matters worse, he'd even gotten a fish bone stuck in his throat during breakfast - all signs that today was going to be a terrible day. As a former samurai from Satsuma, he had an extraordinary intuition for danger, but even so, when he received news of a fleet flying the yellow dragon flag appearing off the coast of Okinawa, he was still left stunned.

  "Bastard, take a good look and tell me what kind of warship it is." He yelled at the officer who brought the news, grabbing his collar in exasperation.

  "It's the Yellow Dragon Flag, absolutely the Yellow Dragon Flag!" The police officer said with a pale face. Actually, there was no need for him to emphasize this, because at this time, the Magistrate was already staring out of the window with his big mouth open, and on the sea surface of Ba Wan Bay, a huge fleet with the Yellow Dragon Flag was slowly approaching.

  "Hurry, gather all the police, all native men immigrants prepare to defend against the invaders!" The governor of Nara pushed away the police, took out his own samurai sword, thought for a moment and then pulled out a Colt revolver, gritted his teeth and ran out. At this time, the whole city was in chaos, the alarm bells kept ringing, and the streets were filled with running police and armed civilians. Due to the lack of firearms, the vast majority of people were actually cold weapons, and some even carried fish spears.

  Nara Governor personally led a large army of nearly three thousand people in Nagasaki Bay to prepare for the enemy. As an excellent warrior, he quickly made meticulous arrangements. First, the port of Nagasaki was too small, and the enemy's giant ironclad warships were absolutely unable to dock. In fact, when he saw these huge ships comparable to the main fleet of the Allied Fleet, he already understood that if things went wrong, he would be defeated this time, but even if he was defeated, he had to maintain the dignity of a warrior.

  From the direction of this fleet, they were preparing to land on the beach with small boats, which gave him a chance to survive. First, use sand to pile up a cover on the beach, and this work was quickly completed by forcing those Ryukyu people with bayonets. Then, deploy the most combat-effective hundreds of armed police behind the cover, and when the enemy's boat approaches the shore, greet them with dense gunfire.

  In addition, a cavalry unit was deployed in the nearby woods. Of course, it's called a cavalry unit, but actually it's just a group of more than ten horses used for sending messages. Armed civilians were deployed on the other side of the defense line, waiting to launch a desperate charge after the enemy landed, trying to drive them back into the sea. However, looking at the dark cannon mouths on the warships in the distance, he didn't have much confidence that his soldiers could hold out until then.

  However, what surprised him was that the fleet opposite suddenly stopped, and then the three warships with a more unusual shape behind them began to move forward, and directly rushed towards the shore.

  "What's going on?" Governor Nara was perplexed, he knew that such a large ironclad ship would draft 4 or 5 meters deep, and if it went any further it would definitely run aground. A smile immediately appeared on his face as he decided to watch the spectacle from the shore.

  Five minutes passed and the three warships still did not run aground, at this time they were only one hundred meters away from the coastline.

  "Stranded, stranded, eight o'clock, how can you still not be stranded!" The exasperated Nara official shouted, waving his fist in a most unbecoming manner.

  "The enemy ship has run aground!" Just then, the soldiers behind the bunker suddenly let out a thunderous cheer. The three ironclad ships had finally run aground, just tens of meters from the shore.

  At this distance, cheers instantly turned into fear, this is not called running aground, but docking.

  Three warships looming close at hand brought deep-seated fear to the Japanese on shore, who felt tiny as ants in front of these iron giants.

  Then they saw the six double turrets on the bow of the ship, and the muzzles began to slowly depress.