The countless ship spines split the white waves, like brave knights fighting in close combat.

Smoke filled the entire ship, the main sails were all furled to prevent the stray sparks on deck from igniting them, and the scorching cannonballs roared through the upper, middle, and lower gun decks.

Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!...

Amidst the scorching blaze, splinters flew everywhere, and bodies hit by the heavy cannons were blasted into blood mist in the air, with severed limbs scattered all about.

But unfortunately, the brutal bombardment was just beginning.

"Return fire! After one volley, all gun crews may fire at will!"

"Get all the powder monkeys moving, more powder, I need more powder."

"Get all those cannonballs out in the shortest time possible..."

The fast sailing ships made by the Kingdom of Hightins were quite different from the large Garen ships of the Kingdom of Castilia.

The former had a more streamlined and graceful shape with a greater length-to-beam ratio, which was the primary factor in improving sailing speed.

The hull of the Hightins fast sailing ship was lower, with fewer superstructures, and the towering stern castle was replaced by a more gradual two-deck aft castle.

Even though they didn’t have the sheer power to completely flatten the deck like a heavy cruiser, their forecastle and aft castle heights were still 25%-45% lower than the standard large Garen ships.

Furthermore, the former could also be fitted with more sails, and improvements to these sails gave the fast sailing ship superior performance when sailing upwind at wider angles.

In short, this type of ship was designed entirely for cannon combat from the start and never intended to be used as a boarding battle platform.

Therefore, at this moment, the internal war of the Strait Fleet was undoubtedly the pinnacle duel of "Line Tactics" against "Line Tactics" of this era.

Once a battleship formed its battle line and settled into its combat position, it was strictly forbidden to leave its lineup for "independent navigation," violators would be dealt with as deserters.

They would likely be shot on the spot during wartime, without even a chance to face a military tribunal.

Moreover, since both sides had armament personnel identical even in ethnicity, with long sides equally long and short sides equally short, the consequences of face-to-face bombardment were especially dire.

"Ah—!"

"The waterline’s been hit, shipwrights and damage control team, get on it quickly."

"Doctor! I’m requesting a quota for [Accelerated Healing], bandages aren’t working, the bleeding won’t stop..."

"Reload! Fire at will until we’ve taken them down!"

The sound of cannonfire, screams, and officers’ shouts intertwined, bringing this civil war to its climax right from the start.

True Third Level Battleships with more than 74 guns were completely different from cruisers.

The most common 74-gun Third Level Ship typically carried: twenty-eight 32-pounder guns, thirty 24-pounder guns, and sixteen 9-pounder guns, with a terrifying projectile mass of up to 1760 pounds in one volley.

Some say that a wooden battleship equipped with heavy cannons is like egg shells wielding iron hammers, the very opposite of the defensively strong and offensively weak Edge Fortress.

Though this statement might be exaggerated, the effect of close-range shooting within a hundred meters is indeed similar to an Army Musketeer Corps executing a firing squad at twenty meters.

Officers of the Great Nautical Age all learned a piece of military knowledge.

A 32-pounder cannon, when loaded with 8 pounds of propellant, could penetrate 1.2 meters through an oak bulwark from a thousand meters away.

Surely, the side of the ship boasted thick wooden walls formed by densely arranged ribs, with its thickest part reaching a meter in thickness.

But even so, when faced with iron balls fired from cannons hundreds of meters away, they would still be easily penetrated, and as the distance decreased to within a hundred meters, their defensiveness became dismal.

Believing in that seemingly thick oak bulwark, is as absurd as believing car doors can stop rifle bullets.

It’s merely a false sense of security conjured by the "brain" for the soldiers.

Of course, the Navy needed to rely on non-explosive solid iron balls, continuously firing hundreds or even thousands of times to perforate the enemy ship’s hull.

Yet even then, the battleship might not sink, as the underwater portion of the hull would still remain intact.

For the soldiers, this might not be good news as it signified a longer duration of cannon execution.

And once retreating under high sea conditions, waves would seep through the riddled hull, resulting in the inevitable capsizing of the ship.

Just ten minutes after the first cannon shot was fired.

Whoosh—!

The [Golden Deer] and the entire Seventh Fleet of over thirty Fifth Level Ships, escorted by a large group of storm elves summoned by Byron, smoothly seized the upper hand, storming in front of the Sixth Fleet of the Security Fleet under the Earl’s Party.

Before any external reinforcements from both sides had joined the battlefield.

The Earl’s Party had at least a main fleet equipped with more than ten Third Level ships: the Second Fleet and Fourth Fleet, along with the Sixth Fleet of the Security Fleet.

The Royalist Party, on the other hand, had the main Third Fleet, the Fifth Fleet of the Security, and the Seventy Three Support Fleet from the colonies.

The commanders on both sides maneuvered three fleets each to engage in battle.

The principle of the horse racing story held true, the original plan of The Kingmaker Warwick was for the weakest fleet, the Security Fleet, to hold against the Royalist Party’s only main fleet, the Third Fleet.

The strongest Second Fleet in his hands was to take the second strongest Colonial Seventh Fleet of the Royalist Party, and his second strongest Fourth Fleet was to take down the weakest Fifth Fleet of the Security Fleet.

They did not aim for complete victory, only to break apart two of the opposing battle lines.