Chapter 765: Tearing a Small Hole in the Blockade Chain
The next morning, the Leisure turned towards Sweden, preparing to replenish its cargo there.
This would certainly take some time, but it was better than sailing to North America with an empty hold.
However, the brig had barely sailed 20 nautical miles north when the lookout once again shrieked an alarm.
Madeno only finally saw two minutes later that a British frigate was rushing towards them from the Leisure's front-left.
For the past two months, from the English Channel to the North Sea, British warships, like hungry wolves, had been patrolling everywhere, and with bad luck, they would encounter several.
The Leisure was clearly unlucky.
What's more, this time the British warship was very cunning, using a reef to block their line of sight, and was now less than 8 cables away.
One nautical mile is 10 cables. On the vast Atlantic, the two ships were practically face-to-face.
The Leisure desperately turned to port, but a sailing ship needed a wide arc to come about. By the time it was heading in the same direction as the British warship, Madeno could already make out the color of the British uniforms in the distance with his naked eye.
The Leisure, of course, wouldn't docilely stop.
A month prior, Britain had declared a "total trade embargo" against France, allowing the British Navy to capture and detain any French merchant vessel.
Stopping now would mean arrest by the British, and the only outcomes after that were imprisonment or forced labor.
After a few minutes of this standoff, the British warship opened fire.
With a deafening roar, seven or eight massive geysers erupted around the Leisure, startling everyone on board into terrified shouts of "Run!" and "Faster!"
The British gunners were highly skilled. After two ranging shots, two 18-pounder cannonballs accurately struck the Leisure, tearing a hole in its stern cabin and another in the gun deck.
Madeno could even hear the triumphant shouts of the distant British officers, likely urging their crews to reload.
He closed his eyes in despair.
If this continued, the Leisure would be sunk before long...
"Mr. Madeno!" the boatswain suddenly rushed over, shouting at him, "Please give us orders, what do we do now?"
"Me? Give orders?"
"Yes, yes. The captain is dead, Mr. Journeau is also severely wounded, you're the acting captain now!"
Journeau was the first mate.
Madeno felt a sudden dizzying sensation.
He had only joined the smuggling ship to earn some living expenses. How could he possibly command the Leisure to contend with a British warship?
The British cannons roared again, and the Leisure's hull shuddered violently once more; it was unclear where they had been hit this time.
Madeno hesitated for only a second, then, pale-faced, said to the boatswain, "Hoist, hoist the white flag, strike the sails, surrender..."
"Oh, oh, alright."
Just as the boatswain was about to turn away, the lookout shouted, "Ship approaching, four o'clock position!"
Madeno instinctively raised his telescope to look and couldn't help but freeze.
It was a strangely shaped three-masted sailing ship, flying France's blue-fielded fleur-de-lis flag, and it was heading straight towards them.
On the suddenly appearing three-masted ship, Baron Foucard, looking at the distant British frigate, shook his head anxiously. "Mr. Bar, the Cloud has an important mission; you shouldn't take such risks."
Captain Michel Bar, however, smiled. "You needn't worry. I am confident I can escape danger at any moment. Don't you think we're like knights challenging a dragon right now? Oh, my grandfather was a knight; during the Thirty Years' War, he once..."
The lookout's voice came through the speaking tube, "Enemy at 700 yards (about 640 meters)."
Captain Bar gave Baron Foucard an apologetic look and turned to instruct the first mate, "Turn one point to the west, pass along that fellow's broadside, and maintain your distance."
He then shouted into the speaking tube, "Boilers to pressure, prepare to engage paddlewheels!"
Baron Foucard looked out the porthole and saw that the British warship's starboard gunports were already open. He couldn't help but swallow hard and murmured, 'God help us.'
A few minutes later, the Cloud sailed past the frigate's starboard side at 450 yards (about 410 meters), and three cannons on its port side spat flames at the British.
Of course, at such a distance, the Cloud's 18-pounder cannons couldn't possibly damage the enemy ship, but it was like someone spitting at a fierce beast—little harm, but maximum insult.
Sure enough, the British warship seemed to hesitate for a moment, then turned to starboard and charged straight towards the Cloud.
Madeno watched the strange ship, slightly larger than the Leisure, draw away the British, so moved he almost cried. He immediately wrenched the rudder hard and desperately fled in the opposite direction.
Once the Leisure had put some distance between itself and the British warship, he hastily looked back, only to see thick black smoke billowing from the brave, strange ship.
He raised his telescope in confusion and only then noticed that the strange ship had two paddle-wheel-like wooden wheels mounted at its stern, which were now spinning, constantly churning the water.
"What is that?" Demuville, the newly appointed second mate nearby, also saw this sight. "Is it on fire?"
Madeno shook his head. "It's a steamship. I heard about them in Ostend. Many of these ships are used for transport on the Rhine River; they're very fast."
Demuville's eyes widened, and he nodded.
As the two ships were about to disappear over the horizon, he could already see that the distance between the steamship and the frigate behind it had grown significantly.
The Cloud was not the same kind of steam paddleboat used on the Rhine River; that type of small vessel was certainly unsuitable for ocean voyages.
This was a special merchant ship that the Brest Shipyard had urgently rushed to complete two months before the war began, at the Crown Prince's request.
Its propulsion system followed that of river-going paddleboats, but it used an improved LJ26H steam engine, capable of providing 29 horsepower.
This steam engine seemed somewhat weak for an ocean-going vessel, only helping the ship increase its speed by less than 1 knot.
But for escaping the entanglement of British warships, 1 knot was enough.
To be frank, paddlewheel ships were not well-suited for ocean travel, as strong winds and waves could easily destroy the fragile paddlewheels, and there was nowhere to resupply coal. But Joseph didn't care about these issues.
As long as they could break through the coastal blockade, once they entered the vast Atlantic, the chance of being discovered by the British became negligible.
In an era without radar, finding a single ship on the open sea was harder than precisely picking out a single grain of wheat from a field.
And the British couldn't blockade the Americas as well, so even if the paddlewheels were damaged later, it wouldn't matter; they could simply sail across the Atlantic using sails.
These "makeshift" special merchant ships were currently the only means of breaking through the British naval blockade.
However, because the Brest Shipyard dedicated most of its capacity to building steam warships, only seven of these special merchant ships currently existed.
But they could bring back sugarcane and cotton from America, which held strategic significance for French trade.
After all, for every pound of sugar France acquired, Britain would receive one pound less.
It's worth noting that since the war began, due to panic in the British market over sugar supply—currently, the largest sugarcane growing region in Europe was in France, supplying nearly half of Britain's sugar—the price of sugar in Britain had more than doubled compared to before the Caribbean independence movements!
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