1627 Rise of the South China Sea

Chapter 556
However, even if the Guangdong Navy has such a large warship, it cannot be dispatched at any time if it wants to.For a warship of this tonnage, there are hundreds of sailors and sailors on board, and the basic consumption of a day's dispatch will cost hundreds of taels of silver. If it is for drills or combat, the consumption of firearms and ammunition on board and additional combat pay will be added.This is undoubtedly an expense that cannot be ignored for a navy that has not purchased a new ship in the past 20 years.Therefore, the only few large ships in the Guangdong Navy are basically docked in the Shuizhai Wharf for a long time as decorations. The upper limit is that they can sail for ten or eight days a year.

The Haihan people obviously have no economic scruples. Their base camp is far away from the southern tip of Qiongzhou Island, but they sent this large warship to Wanshan Port at the mouth of the Pearl River. The voyage between the garrison and Quanzhou, Fujian is over.With the scale of Wanshan Port, this kind of large warship obviously does not intend to stay here for a long time, but temporarily docks in this small port because of certain missions. It will definitely not be implemented in peacetime. This trip to the sea is just throwing money into the sea non-stop!
Regarding the behavior of the Haihan people, the two alternate officials of the Ming Dynasty can only give evaluations like "rich and willful".Although this Wanshan Port is the territory of Daming, it seems that the right to speak in this place is not in the hands of Daming.

Compared with Lijiazhuang Wharf, the procedures required for landing at Wanshan Port are even stricter. After all, this place is a paramilitary base, and civilian and commercial use are only auxiliary functions.However, the officials had already experienced it once in Lijiazhuang, so they didn't feel particularly disgusted at this time.After they boarded the pier, they were also received by local directors Chen Yixin and Li Dou.

Because of the commercial functions of Wanshan Port, Li Dou still lives here more often, and after Chen Yixin was successfully promoted with the establishment of the Guangdong Military Region, he ran back and forth between Wanshan Port and Zhennan Port at the southern end of Hong Kong Island. .This time, he hurried back from Zhennan Port in advance after being notified by the Guangzhou Office.

The military still attaches great importance to this group of alternate officials. On the one hand, it must deter them in various ways at the beginning of the contact between the two sides. On the other hand, it must ensure the safety of these people on the way and let them They feel that they have been valued by Haihan, so as to lay a good foundation for subsequent methods of buying, wooing, and taming.

However, Chen Yixin was not personally interested in having too much contact with these alternate officials, and their destination was not within Chen Yixin's jurisdiction. Chen Yixin had no need to care about the future fate of these people.The reception banquet in the evening was just a formality. After a round of toasting, Chen Yixin left in the name of business, and asked Li Dou to accompany him.

"This little Haihan officer is so handsome!" After returning to the residence arranged by Haihan after the banquet, Li Jin couldn't help complaining: "Brother Yan, did you notice the look in his eyes? At that time, we didn't pay attention to us court officials at all!"

Yan Ming Jundao: "He does have the capital of toughness. Brother Li, look at the forts inside and outside the port, the warships, and the soldiers of the Haihan militia that we saw when we went ashore. It is indeed much more decent than my Ming Dynasty official army. People want money and money, they want people, and with these reliance, they will naturally be able to speak hard."

Li Jin also knew that what Yan Mingjun said was indeed the truth, he sighed and said, "This place is four or five hundred miles away from Qiongzhou, but I don't know how rampant the Haihan people will be on Qiongzhou Island!"

The closer the two got to Qiongzhou Island, the more disturbed they became.The expectation of the new position and the new environment before departure was also erased bit by bit by the ruthless reality on the way.They knew that the Haihan they had come into contact with now was probably just peeking at the leopard, but just the scales and half claws that Haihan showed intentionally or unintentionally made them feel so many disadvantages and shortcomings of their own side that are too numerous to enumerate.And Haihan, a powerful organization, is really willing to return the control of Qiongzhou Island to Daming?Yan Mingjun and Li Jin were not too optimistic about this anymore.

There was nothing to say all night, and the next morning, after everyone had breakfast, they came to the pier to board the ship again.At this time, Chen Yixin appeared on the pier and announced new escort measures to the officials: "After departing from Wanshan Port, two "expedition-grade" armed merchant ships dispatched by our side will join the escort team and escort you all to the capital city of Qiongzhou .I wish you all the best of luck!"

Li Jin muttered in a low voice: "This is still a merchant ship? According to the laws of Ming Dynasty, merchant ships can't exceed [-] materials, and this ship can probably have [-] materials!"

Of course, he also knew very well in his heart that even if the existence of Haihan's armed ship violated the laws of Ming Dynasty, no one would dare to seek Haihan's bad luck.This kind of warship is an unsolvable existence in the waters near Guangdong. With so many Daming officials present, no one really stood up to question it.

The two "Explorer-class" warships that joined in Lijiazhuang turned around and left the port first, and then the fleet carrying alternate officials sailed out of the port one by one. Finally, the two largest "Explorer-class" warships slowed down in Wanshan Harbor. Slowly turned around and sailed out, falling at the end of the entire fleet.

According to the route established by the Haihan Shipping Department, the fleet will not sail directly from Wanshan Port to Hainan Island, but will travel southwest along the coastline of Guangdong, and then turn south after arriving in the waters of the Leizhou Peninsula, passing through the Qiongzhou Strait Proceed to Haikou port for docking.This voyage is about one-third longer than the straight-forward route, and every night they stop at the shore to rest, and they will leave at dawn.As a result, the time required for the entire voyage from Wanshan Port to Hainan Island has been at least doubled from about four days.

However, the stops along the way after leaving Wanshan Port do not have such perfect conditions as Lijiazhuang and Wanshan Island.Most of the ports they called in the next few days were fishing port towns, and there were no decent catering and accommodation services at all, and these officials did not go ashore to stay at night.At this time, with comparison, everyone will know how thoughtful the board and lodging service provided by Hai Han is.

However, although there is no such part of the service content, the militia escorting the fleet did not relax their due security at all. Every night, a platoon of soldiers will be stationed on the shore to be responsible for the security of the area around the dock.Of course, in addition to protecting the safety of the fleet, the military is also on guard against unidentified people sneaking into the fleet from these places and smuggling to the capital of Qiongzhou.

After seven or eight days at sea, the fleet finally sailed into the Qiongzhou Strait.It just so happened that the weather was fine these days, and the officials knew that they were about to reach their destination, so they finally felt a little more relaxed, and they took their families to the deck to breathe.

Not long after the fleet sailed past Luodousa Island at the southeastern tip of the Leizhou Peninsula, officials who thought the rest of the journey would be dull again witnessed a scene they would never forget in their lives—two huge sailboats puffing out gray smoke from the sterns, and Galloping on the sea at extremely fast speed.After the two ships made an arc on the sea, they approached the fleet from left to right, and the red and blue flags on the top of the mast showed that their identities were also Haihan militia.

The two warships that joined the fleet at Wanshan Port were about half the size of the two new large ships.And the more gun ports on the sides of these two large ships are also reminding the audience watching them not to ignore the true identities of these two ships.

However, these two large ships did not intend to join the fleet, but passed the sea on both sides of the fleet at full speed, and then headed southwest.Compared with the astonishing speed of these two ships, Yan Mingjun and Li Jin felt that the boat they were on was almost as slow as a turtle.

"This... is this also a warship of the Haihan people?" Li Jin looked at Yan Mingjun in horror and asked.

Yan Mingjun didn't know how to answer, and there was no one from Haihan on this boat, and there was no one who could provide the correct answer for a while.But judging from the appearance of the two ships and the flags hoisted on the ships, they are exactly the same as the escorting Haihan armed ships, but I don’t know what the large amount of smoke from the stern of the ship means. It didn't look like the boat was on fire, and it was obviously difficult to generate so much smoke and dust by ordinary boiling water for cooking.

But this is not the focus of their attention. The real reason for their shock is the terrifying size and super high speed of this big ship.There have long been rumors among the people that there are huge iron ships made by the Haihan people in Shengli Port, and the reputation of the Haihan people who are good at shipbuilding and sailing has long been widely spread, but the rumors are rumors, and there is still a gap between the feelings after seeing the reality with their own eyes. .Such a huge warship probably only existed when the Sanbao eunuch went to Nanyang, but now there is no such huge warship in Daming, it is unexpected that the Haihan people who have been entrenched on Qiongzhou Island , but quietly built such a huge warship.

When the two looked at each other, they both saw deep disappointment on each other's faces.In their minds, although Daming has stumbled in recent years, with constant internal and external troubles, he is still an invincible existence after all. Even the wild boar skins outside the northern customs who attack Daming every year, the Ming people still think that they are just a bunch of vagrants. Just barbarians of force.And in the vicinity of Daming, there has not been any civilization that surpassed Daming. Even if the trend in the past few years is not very satisfactory, it still exists in the Kingdom of Heaven.

However, after coming into contact with the sudden rise of Haihan, some of their inherent concepts are constantly being broken and refreshed.This group of overseas visitors entrenched in the southern tip of Qiongzhou Island not only managed to make the sea trade business flourish, and made the local government and almost all the big businessmen along the coast of Guangdong work for a long time, but also formed the so-called militia army by themselves. The combat capability is even stronger than that of the official army.And the Haihan warships seen in the past few days also proved that their strength at sea is equally terrifying. At least the large warships seen today cannot be built by the current Ming Dynasty no matter what.

However, the scene of encountering two "majestic-class" flagships in the Qiongzhou Strait was not an intentional arrangement by the military, but a real coincidence.It happened that Wang Tom led the team to practice the two-ship offensive formation in the nearby waters in the past two days, and encountered this fleet coming south from the Leizhou Peninsula.Of course, Tom Wang would not waste limited resources to escort the fleet to Haikou Port, so he just walked around and left after the demonstration.The expenditure of personnel and time is a small matter, but the life of the boiler is a major issue for the "Majestic" warship. Every time the steam propulsion training is used, there is a strict time schedule, which is not suitable for implementing such a formal arrangement. Extra temporary tasks.

But even such a glimpse was enough to shock the Ming officials on board.Even people who don't have any knowledge of surface warfare know that this sea combat ship has great advantages, let alone this large warship equipped with a large number of artillery and traveling at such a fast speed?It's no wonder that the Haihan Militia can do things that the Daming Navy cannot, and even asked the Guangdong government for a cruise guard mission in the Qiongzhou Strait.

With very complicated moods, the fleet finally arrived at Haikou Port more than three hours later.There was no such grand occasion on the pier as they had expected before they set off, such as the sound of gongs and drums, crowds of people, and the people pouring out to welcome the new parents and officials appointed by the imperial court. The soldiers, and a few Haihan people, the scene was exactly the same as when the fleet docked at Lijiazhuang and Wanshan Island.

But this time the Haihan people's inspection methods are obviously more rigorous than the previous two stations. Each ship has a dozen Haihan militiamen on board, and the identities of all the people on board have been checked.Although the attitude was not rude, the officials could also feel that these people did not seem to take their identities seriously.

Finally, some people couldn't bear such an attitude and broke out. On another boat docked next to Yan Mingjun's boat, a chubby official shouted: "I am the official of the imperial court, you can't be so rude to me. Tell those in charge of you to get over here!"

This clamor obviously attracted the attention of the Haihan people on the pier. Yan Mingjun saw someone raising his hand as a signal, and immediately a man who looked like an officer ran and boarded the ship.

"What's your problem?" The officer obviously didn't intend to give the wronged official any face, and asked coldly after boarding the ship.

"I am the new magistrate of Lingao County, what qualifications do you have to inspect my luggage?" the fat official shouted angrily.

"This is Haikou Port, not Lingao County." The officer said solemnly, "Also, you are an officer of Ming Dynasty, but I am not a soldier of Ming Dynasty!"

(End of this chapter)