The facts proved that Ahmed had made the right choice. They had barely set out before Bulgarian intelligence agents spotted them, but by the time the main force of the Bulgarian Navy arrived, they had long since slipped away like a peach blossom fleeing the orchard.
After all, the distance was so short—if they wanted to run, what could be easier? The newly fledged Bulgarian Navy had encountered its first problem!
It was not that they could not defeat the enemy, nor that they could not find them! The problem was that the enemy simply refused to fight a decisive battle, hiding in port like turtles in their shells. They finally came out once, but before you could get there, they had shrunk back inside. What could you do to them?
Fortunately, the Ottoman Empire was truly rotten through, riddled with holes like a sieve and utterly incapable of keeping secrets. Bulgaria could easily determine where the main Ottoman naval forces were stationed; otherwise, they would have been even more passive!
Ferdinand could do nothing about the navy's sluggish operations. If it had been the army, Bulgaria still had several generals worthy of the name.
As for the navy? One only had to look at how even the Minister of the Navy was an Army lieutenant general to understand its state!
Well, there was no helping it. The French and Russian instructors training them were all junior officers. As for commanding battles like this, they would have to feel their own way through it!
Colonel Burtia, commander of this battle, had been promoted by Ferdinand from among the short men to pick out a general, becoming the first victorious captain of the Sofia.
He had once served in Russia's Black Sea Fleet and taken part in the Battle of the