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Chapter 1312 Troop Transport Ship 3
In this regard, Europe's approach is to hide soldiers among the people, maintain only a small number of standing warships in peacetime, and immediately recruit sailors from the public in times of war.

For example, the Dutch Navy has less than 1 people and more than 50 warships of various types during normal times. Compared with nearly 30000 ocean-going cargo ships, it is not even a fraction.

But in wartime, cargo ships can be quickly converted into armed merchant ships or privateers, and merchant sailors can be transformed into naval soldiers, depending on military spending and the number of naval guns.

The Ming Empire adopted another approach, which can be called hiding troops in the army. The Ming Navy had more than 200 warships, not counting the 5 or so combat personnel of the Land Warfare Command, which doesn't sound like a lot.

But these 5 people are not sailors in the ordinary sense. According to European standards, they are almost equivalent to 5 captains, first mates, boatswains, gunners and navigators.

Assuming that each warship is equipped with 30 officers of various levels, these 50000 people can control more than 1600 warships without reducing their combat effectiveness too much.

In other words, as long as the Ming Navy has enough ships and naval guns, it can immediately expand more than 8 times, and its combat effectiveness will not be affected by too many new recruits. This is much better than Europe's use of merchant sailors to make up the numbers.

Of course, the cost would be much higher. It is expensive to train high-quality sailors, and it is even more expensive to retain high-quality sailors. Only the Ming Empire could afford it, but any European country would have to bankrupt the king.

In fact, the Ming Empire could not afford it, so it kept expanding, and the navy was the main force of expansion. In other words, the Ming emperor was using the plundered wealth to support the navy.

This also explains why he suddenly wanted to attack the New World. The Asian waters had been almost robbed, and he had to find new, high-value economic growth points, or targets for plunder.

Although he had never engaged in direct combat with the Ming Navy, Cohen had participated in their military operations more than once, and even worked with the Ming Emperor to command the Banda Zia Landing.

Whether measured from the perspective of naval or land warfare, the European coalition forces would be defeated if they were equal in number, with no chance. They could only win if their numbers were three times greater and the weather and terrain were particularly suitable.

He wrote down all these experiences and insights on his voyage back to Europe, and passed them on to the Parliament of the Republic through the East India Company's Council.

However, it has been almost two months, and the materials submitted have fallen into oblivion. No one has ever asked about the relevant matters, and I have only been urged every few days to speed up the formation of the squadron.

Just as the squadron was formed, it received a large order to transport thousands of coalition soldiers and equipment to the Crimean Khanate's port of Kaffa. This shows that the Republic's Parliament did not read its report seriously, or did not believe it.

"If I had a choice, I would rather lead a hundred Marines to fight against a regiment (the Dutch Republic was organized by the army reformed by Prince Maurice, and the size of the infantry regiment was reduced to about 500 people, while the number of Spanish and French infantry regiments at the same time was more than 3000). Their rifles that can accurately shoot 300 meters are too powerful. I don't want to be used as a living target!"

Although William did not know much about military affairs, he had lived in Batavia for more than ten years and had been to Luzon, Annan, Guangzhou and other places many times. He knew the basic organization and weapon performance of the Marine Corps just by hearing and seeing, and did not give the European army any face at all.

"It may be that losing is the right thing to do, otherwise the nobles will never have the motivation to make changes." Even an uneducated boatswain can quickly judge the comparison of military strength. Even if it is a bit one-sided, it also shows a problem. The gap in strength may be obvious. Taking the initiative to attack in this state is definitely not a good choice.

Thinking of what the Ming Emperor had said to him, Cohen felt that even if the European coalition forces lost the war, it would not be too bad. Because the Ming Emperor had never intended to invade European lands, he just wanted to set a new set of rules and supervise their implementation.

Needless to say, this set of rules is definitely beneficial to the Ming Empire. However, given the Ming Emperor's consistent style, he would not kill all of them. As long as they are willing to abide by the rules and participate, they will be given some profit.

This approach must have been frustrating for European countries, but it could also be an opportunity, forcing them to learn from the Ming Empire. If they learned, they would have the potential to continue to develop, but if they didn't, they would slide into the abyss like Spain.

"Are we going to change it to the Ming Empire? That's not bad, but... what's going on? Who gave the order to lower the sails? You drunkards, thieves, and criminals, do you want to be whipped?"

William didn't quite understand why the nobles would change only after they lost, and why they would change. Just as he was about to ask a few more questions, he instinctively felt the ship slow down, and there was a creaking sound from the friction between the sails and rigging. He immediately flew into a rage, and ran to the front deck while cursing.

"Hey, William! Look up and ask the lookout what's going on ahead!"

Cohen's reaction was different from William's. He also wondered why the fleet lowered the sails and slowed down without the flagship's order, but he did not immediately blame the sailor. Instead, he looked up at the top of the main mast. After a moment, he found the problem. The lookout was signaling with a flag, as if he had discovered something wrong.

Speaking of flag language, this was the first major move he made after returning to Europe to form the East India Company's fleet. Having served in Batavia for so many years, it would be nonsense to say that he had not coveted the technology of the Ming Navy. He had more or less inquired about some of it, such as shipbuilding, sailing equipment, artillery, navigation and other technologies.

Too complicated technology lacks the necessary core calculation methods, and it is useless even if you look at it every day. But there is one thing that can be mastered without too much knowledge, that is the maritime communication method adopted by the Ming Navy, flag language.

The navies of European countries also had flags, such as hanging flags of various colors and numbers on the mast to express the meaning of the agreement. But they were all very simple, such as return, column, horizontal formation, ready for battle, etc., and they were powerless to express more complex meanings.

The method adopted by the Ming Navy is more conducive to communication. Two small flags, with different colors and waving movements, represent different words. When connected together, they can form a sentence with richer meaning.

In order to overcome the shortcomings of the Chinese vocabulary being too large and difficult to correspond to actions, the Ming Navy simply used the 26 Latin letters to replace Chinese. Each action plus the different colors of the flag represented a letter. The receiver only needed to memorize the 26 sets of actions, and they could communicate simply over a distance of hundreds of meters or even kilometers.

However, after a long period of observation, Cohen found that the Latin used by the Ming Navy was not the same as the European spelling. A few were similar, but most had no meaning at all. At the same time, it was not the language of any European country, which was very strange.

According to rumors among Ming Dynasty maritime merchants, this language was newly created by the Ming Emperor for the navy and army in order to keep it secret. It is called the New Concept Language, and its specific spelling remains a mystery.

(End of this chapter)