I want to be emperor

Chapter 743 Entering Africa
In the summer and June of the 27th year of Chengshun, in the west Indian Ocean, along the east coast of Africa.

A medium-sized fleet is sailing south, led by a huge warship. Although the ship has huge sails, there is a huge chimney standing in the middle of the hull, and a huge blue scorpion hangs on the mast. The green dragon flag with a red background.

According to the official regulations of the Great Chu Empire, the army uses the black dragon with a black border and a red background as its flag, the navy uses a blue dragon with a red border and a blue background, and the guards use a blue dragon with a red border and a blue background. All three flags have a red background.

The royal family uses a more special flag with a yellow edge and a red background.

Just by looking at the Qinglong flag, one can know that this fleet is the fleet of the Great Chu Empire Navy.

This is the African Exploration Fleet sent by the Indian Ocean Fleet of the Great Chu Empire Navy. The flagship is the new cruiser Busan with a displacement of more than 2000 tons. In addition, there are two cruisers of the same level with a full load displacement of more than 500 tons. far number.

The remaining four ships are the comprehensive supply ship Black Bear with a full load displacement of more than 3000 tons, the coal supply ship Baihu with a full load displacement of 500 tons, and the supply ship Willow with a full load displacement of more than 400 tons. The Chunyan, a troop carrier of more than [-] tons.

The various transport ships and supply ships in the Great Chu Empire are named after the names of animals and plants.

The battleships in the Great Chu Empire are usually named after the provincial capital, the government directly under the cabinet, and a few specific prefectures and counties, such as Yingtian and Hantian, provincial cities such as Suzhou and Hangzhou, Songjiang, Shanghai, Jinling, etc. Place names with special meaning.

As for why not use the name of the provincial capital alone, the answer is simple and straightforward... purely because the number of provincial capitals is limited, and the Great Chu Empire has too many battleships...the number of active battleships in the Great Chu Empire Navy is nearly a hundred, and only the provincial capital is used And the name of the capital is not enough... so I simply included some big cities.

Cruisers are usually named after state capitals, such as Pusan, Liuzhou, and Fengzhou.

Frigates are generally named after counties. For example, Longchuan, the first ship of the Longchuan-class frigate, was named after Longchuan County, Heyuan Prefecture. The new generation of thousand-ton frigate, Changshu-class, was named after Changshu County, Suzhou Prefecture.

Inland river gunboats usually use the river where the fleet is located plus the grades of A, B, C, D and the number as the name of the ship. For example, the Changjia 16 gunboat refers to the No. [-] gunboat of the Yangtze River Fleet (above [-] tons).

Offshore patrol ships also use the same name, such as Guangyi No. [-] patrol ship, which is the No. [-] patrol ship of the second-class [-]-ton class under the Guangdong Fleet.

Communication ships usually use the names of rivers plus numbers, such as Dongjiang No. [-] communication ship, which is the sixth ship of the Dongjiang class communication ship.

A large number of various transport ships, including troop carriers, coal supply ships, comprehensive supply ships, etc., use animals and plants in general, and individual names of animals and plants can be named, such as tigers, white tigers, black tigers, and swallows can be called spring swallows.

There are also some other messy miscellaneous ships, which are basically clarified by adding numbers and designations.

Generally speaking, the rules for naming warships of the Great Chu Empire Navy are very simple, and the requirements are often not very strict... Sometimes cruisers use the names of big cities, and battleships use the names of ordinary cities.

This is mainly because you can’t distinguish between big cities and small cities... For example, Yangzhou, it’s not a provincial capital. In the Ming Dynasty, the tertiary industry relying on salt merchants was not bad, but today, 27 years after Chengshun, industry and commerce The economic development of Yangzhou under the tide is actually not good. Today's economy is not as good as Tongzhou next door, which has seized the opportunity to vigorously develop the textile industry.

But I can't stand the reputation of others... So there is a battleship Yangzhou, which is still a first-class battleship with a displacement of more than 3000 tons.

The name of Tongzhou next door is only an old-style cruiser with a thousand tons for the time being.

Therefore, the distinction between the names of battleships and cruisers is actually not so strict sometimes.

----

The ocean-going reconnaissance fleet consisting of three ocean-going warships, four supply ships, and troop carriers appearing on the east coast of Africa today is naturally the African exploration fleet of the Great Chu Empire. The reason why this fleet includes supply ships The number exceeds that of warships, naturally because the Great Chu Empire lacks a supply base on the east coast of Africa.

At present, the westernmost colony in the Great Chu Empire, which is also a ship supply base, is Hongkou City at the southern end of the Red Sea.

However, the development of this colonial port has not been a few years. At the same time, because the distance is too far, and the colonial focus of the Great Chu Empire in the early years was also on the Indian Peninsula, the colonization of West Asia and North Africa was actually not on a large scale.

The Red Mouth City on the coast of the Red Sea was established purely for the purpose of doing business with the Ottoman Empire, and providing a place to stay and supplies for the merchant fleet. There were no more than a hundred troops stationed there before.

Such a small port is simply unable to provide a large amount of daily supplies for such a large fleet, let alone provide coal supplies.

There was no coal stockpiled in this port before...

After the exploration fleet set off from Mumbai, India, and went westward, they could no longer get coal supplies.

When a ship equipped with a steam engine goes to sea, food and fresh water can be disposed of close to the coast. Whether it is purchased from the natives or robbed by force, you can get more or less.

But coal can’t be obtained in large quantities in the indigenous places... After all, this is not at 01:30, but hundreds of tons of coal at every turn. Except for the Great Chu Empire, no indigenous people will So much coal is stored in the port city.

In order to avoid any troubles when the fleet goes to sea, there is no coal and the steam engine cannot be used. Therefore, it has become the practice of the Great Chu Empire Navy to assign special coal supply ships to the fleet.

This time the expedition fleet is going to South Africa, and the voyage will be at least tens of thousands of kilometers. This is not counting the stops and turns in the middle. During such a long voyage, once there is no wind, the steam engine will have to be used. This steam engine burns a lot of coal as soon as it is started.

Steam engines are also needed to assist when entering and leaving ports along the way. If you encounter enemies and fight, steam engines are even more indispensable.

For this reason, other things in the exploration fleet can be omitted, but coal must be brought, which is the survival guarantee for ships when encountering bad weather and enemy ships.

Otherwise, they can only sail in the sky like those sailing ships, and they will not be able to take the initiative when encountering enemies.

And the leader of this exploration fleet is Commodore Gao Yingfan, a new-generation admiral who was born in the eighth period of the Naval Academy and quickly climbed up in previous foreign expeditions.

This time, he was ordered to lead the fleet to explore various situations such as the deployment of indigenous people along the east coast of Africa, the European barbarian colonies, and more importantly, to obtain some hydrological conditions along the route.

It provided an important intelligence basis for the subsequent Great Chu Empire to enter the east coast of Africa.

Gao Yingfan was also an old navy man. He was standing on the bridge of the cruiser Busan, looking at the turbulent sea ahead and the looming edge of the continent to the west.

After a simple rest and replenishment in Hongkou City, they bypassed Somalia in the northeast corner of East Africa from the Gulf of Aden, then passed through the waters between Somalia and Socotra Island, and entered the vast western Indian Ocean with the state. All the way down the east coast of Africa.

When passing through Socotra Island, Gao Yingfan also sent people to the island, and had some exchanges with the officials of the Mahri Sultanate who controlled and ruled the island, and discussed about renting a small area on the island as a trading post , Possibility of traveling to and from supply ports for ships.

After seeing the powerful firepower of the seven huge warships of the exploration fleet, especially the cruiser Busan, officials of the local Sultanate said that this matter can be discussed.

So Gao Yingfan, on behalf of the empire, signed a treaty with the officials of the local Sultanate, formally leasing a piece of coastal area on the island as a leased land. Unfortunately, there is no deep-water good port on this island suitable for mooring ships, and it is difficult to park large tonnages. , deep draft vessels.

Otherwise, the Great Chu Empire Navy is planning to take this place directly, and then serve as an unsinkable battleship in the Gulf of Aden.

However, even if there is no good deep-water port, it is still possible to park some small and medium-sized tonnage ships with relatively shallow drafts. In addition, the location of this island is too important, so even if the natural conditions are relatively harsh, the Navy of the Great Chu Empire is also eyeing this place. Island, I plan to set up a military base or something here in the future.

Because this island just happens to be stuck at the mouth of the Gulf of Aden, about 250 kilometers away from the eastern end of Mali on the west side of Solo, and about 380 kilometers away from Yemen in the north. It can cover and control the surrounding Arabian Sea and East African waters.

Of course, the natural conditions of this island are relatively harsh, and there is also a lack of deep-water ports. In the future, the Great Chu Empire Navy will not make large-scale construction projects here. In the future, the main military base in this area will still choose a coastal port in Somalia or Yemen. of.

And these things are beyond Gao Yingfan's ability to deal with. Anyway, he just set up a leased land here when he was ordered to go along the way, so as to provide a springboard for subsequent actions.

After leaving the Gulf of Aden, their exploration fleet headed south all the way, but after continuing south, they encountered many ports and ships of European colonists.

The Portuguese, the Dutch, and even the English established numerous colonial strongholds on the east coast of Africa, some of which were simply large colonies, while others were small trading bases and supply ports.

Going all the way south along the coastline, Gao Yingfan found that the east coast of Africa is easier to occupy, and it also has trade profits. At the same time, the ports with good geographical conditions have basically been snatched up by the Portuguese, leaving only some corners and corners that are still vacant. No smokers.

As the fleet went south, they not only needed to explore, but also needed to confirm future supply ports and military bases. For this reason, they had to go deep into some coastal areas to explore.

At the beginning of July, they arrived at a small coastal port city that Portugal has not yet set foot in and is still controlled by local indigenous people... It is too much to say that it is a city, and it is more appropriate to say that it is a small fishing village.

Here he also saw the ignorant and ugly local aborigines.

It's not that Gao Yingfan has never seen a dark guy. Many aborigines in India, especially the large number of aborigines in the southern peninsula, are also quite dark.

But after arriving in Africa, he discovered that the natives in the southern peninsula of India are brown at best...the African natives in front of him are really black!

The whole body looks black, except that the teeth are still a little recognizable when they open their mouths... so Gao Yingfan couldn't tell who these dark natives were from for a long time... all of them were black. Huhu's appearance is simply indistinguishable.

Since he couldn't tell the difference, he didn't bother to score... He directly disembarked a marine battalion that was not full of strength on board the troop carrier, without using any naval guns to bombard it, and didn't use sailors to disembark for support. The team plus two [-]mm light cannons wiped out the group of dark natives who were an eyesore.

Then ordered the remaining ships of the fleet to enter this river bend to anchor and rest.

At the same time, let the captured natives build camp forts. If the labor force is not enough, send soldiers to the surrounding area to catch some back.

That's right, he planned to occupy this place and build a military base. He even chose the name, so he used the transliteration of the local native's name for this place: Pemba.

In his opinion, Pemba is a good place. It is a concave port, and inside it is a small bay with a width of seven or eight kilometers and a length of more than ten kilometers. The entrance of the bay is only a little over two kilometers.

The area of ​​the bay is large enough and the water depth is sufficient to accommodate a large number of ships.

The east entrance is only more than 2000 meters away, and it is easy to defend. As long as a fort is deployed at the entrance of the harbor, the enemy can basically be blocked from the harbor.

A proper natural port is an excellent port that can be compared with Qingdao and Lushun Port in China, but it is just a barren land in the barbaric and backward East Africa. In such a large bay, there was only Hundreds of Aboriginal fishermen live here.

In addition, this place is just located in the central part of the east coast of Africa, and it can be used as a transit point and supply port for colonizing South Africa in the future.

Moreover, there is some distance from the Portuguese colonial control area, and the Portuguese have not yet rushed to establish a town here for actual control... This is convenient for the Chu army to build a military base here without interference in the early stage.

This is also a major disadvantage of European colonial countries with sparse populations such as the Portuguese and the Dutch. There seem to be many overseas territories, and there are large colonies on the map, but there are not many that can actually be controlled. Most of the cases are on the coast. The occupation is mainly based on several ports for trade, and it is not possible to talk about the actual rule of the local area.

It is very different from the colonization of European countries with large populations such as Spain and the British. The colonies established by the Spaniards in the Americas were large-scale immigration and rule. The British did the same in Mumbai, India before. of.

Because of the small local population, the Portuguese could not effectively control the large colonies on the east coast of Africa. This is why the exploration fleet of the Great Chu Empire was able to bring this place smoothly, and then landed and occupied the port.

Even be careful, it is still unknown whether these Portuguese will know that the Great Chu Empire Navy has established a military base in the hinterland of their East African colony in a few years.

In fact, not only the Great Chu Empire did this in East Africa, the Dutch and the British would also sneakily establish some supply bases in East Africa for supply.

It's just that it won't directly send a fleet over like the Great Chu Empire, and then directly occupy a harbor with good conditions to build a military base.

The Great Chu Empire has nothing to fear, and it is not afraid of the Portuguese discovering... This uninhabited land is here. You Portuguese can get it as a colony, but my Great Chu Empire can't?

Besides, although the ultimate goal of the Great Chu Empire's African strategy is to occupy South Africa and then mine gold there... But in this process, it is natural to gradually occupy and control the east coast of Africa.

The Great Chu Empire does not allow itself to have colonies of other countries behind it.

It didn't work in the Indian Peninsula before, and it doesn't work in East Africa now.

This will have to be done sooner or later, and there is no need to give them face, so there is no need to worry about the reaction of these Portuguese, and the military base will be built first.

At that time, if the Portuguese say that this area belongs to them, Gao Yingfan will dare to directly lead the fleet to bombard the port under the Portuguese control.

Let those Portuguese know to be more cautious when speaking, and don't dare to say anything.

If you talk nonsense, you will get a big mouth!
(End of this chapter)