Warring States Survival Guide

Chapter 111 Paving the way with human lives!
To go on an adventure at sea, a good ship is naturally indispensable. However, there were no good ships in Japan during the Warring States Period. Even now, Japan does not even have a proper shipyard. Those responsible for shipbuilding are relatively large pirate groups, and ordinary people have no chance to buy a ship from them.

Fortunately, Yu Da was a retired pirate, and a veteran pirate who had been famous in the past. He had some old connections, so after obtaining Yuan Ye's consent, he personally went out to buy a second-hand Guan ship at the price of 750 kan + 30 kan introduction fee.

As for the so-called Sekibune, it refers to a type of small and medium-sized ship that was widely active in the waters near Japan from the Muromachi period to the Edo period. It was named "Sekibune" because pirates often used it to set up checkpoints, crack down on smuggling, and patrol territorial waters.

Its bow is usually pointed, often with tassels hanging down. A device called "water thrust" is installed on the pointed corner, which functions similarly to the beak of a Western galleon. This design helps reduce water resistance, making it more suitable for breaking through waves.

Its hull structure is similar to that of the Atakubune, with the lower hull used to store cargo and ballast, built in an overlapping manner, and relatively fragile in structure. On the upper hull is a "general warehouse" for people to live and move around, which is usually only one floor and very low.

The power is a hybrid of paddles and sails. Depending on the size of the boat, the number of paddles ranges from 6 to 80, and the sail is a bamboo or wooden hard sail that can rotate degrees, can always catch the wind and is very easy to operate.

This is what a kanbune looks like. It can be used to transport people and goods near the coast. If a war breaks out, it can be converted into a warship at any time, that is, the hull is surrounded by bamboo "shield boards", and the sailors are equipped with bows, arrows, iron cannons and other weapons. When fighting, it can move around on the sea very flexibly, which is very suitable for fighting. If the ship is smaller, it will be called a "koyakibune".

In general, this is a very backward type of ship. Even if we don't look at it from a modern perspective, just measuring it against the average level of East Asia in the mid-sixteenth century, it is still a very backward type of ship - this thing doesn't even have a watertight compartment, and as long as the hole in the hull is big enough, it will unceremoniously turn into a submarine.

In any case, Yuanye would never dare to go out to sea in such a thing, at least he would not dare to drive it out of the Ise Bay, an area with relatively small winds and waves, to experience the test of the strong winds and huge waves of the Pacific Ocean.

However, Yu Da was very fond of this small and medium-sized Guan ship with a capacity of 400 stones, and his confidence seemed to have increased a little. In order to avoid losing all his money, Yuanye really put in a lot of effort to help him carefully select ten young men from the workshops and senior Langdang, and immediately transferred them to navy and put them under his command. He let him practice the ship day and night near Wanjin, and it would not be too late to set off after a few more cruises to develop tacit understanding.

At the same time, he also tried hard to recall the maps he had seen in modern times, trying to help him "guess" a safe route and maximize his chances of success.

According to his plan, it would be impossible to rush straight to those islands that humans had never visited in history. That would be almost suicide. He needed to take every step firmly and search one island at a time until he found the coral islands located on the outermost edge of the Japanese archipelago, where seabirds had been shitting for thousands, tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of years.

This can also be considered an alternative "leapfrog tactic".

He believed that this was feasible. After all, there were more than 13,000 islands around the Japanese archipelago. As long as they visited each island one by one and changed the long-distance voyage to seven, eight or even a dozen short-distance voyages, the danger should be reduced by several levels.

Then, it all depends on the captain's experience, courage and luck. If he can come back alive, he can help his wife and children change their fate and live without worries for the rest of their lives. From then on, the whole family can live a happy, stable and happy life.

Well, according to Yuanye's observations during this period, there should be a pretty good love story between this old man and young wife. A man like Yu Da, at his age, still has to come out and work hard, just because he doesn't want his wife and young son to be stranded on the island. It's just that such things are not easy to delve into, and out of respect for talent, Yuanye didn't ask much.

Through this period of contact, especially during the repeated discussions on how to get to those uninhabited islands, Yu Da also felt Yuan Ye's seriousness and generosity. He talked to him more often and was very dedicated in the daily training of the ten newly transferred sailors. He was not too shy - in this era, being over fifty years old was already an old man, and he would not be able to do the job for long. Yuan Ye was respectful to the wise, so he did not mind training a few new captains for him. There was no competition here.

He cooperated more and more, so Yuanye took the opportunity to ask him about the Japanese pirates. After all, as a modern man, he could not be unaware of the importance of sea transportation. Even though his current strength was not even worth a fart and he only had one ship, he had no capital to expand distant markets through sea transportation. But it did not stop him from inquiring about the situation of future opponents or partners first.

This kind of thing is not a secret, and Yu Da has no intention of hiding it. Just as a casual chat and to enhance the relationship, he briefly told him about the rather unique group of Japanese pirates - in Japan, pirates are actually a kind of "maritime nobles". For example, pirates in various parts of Japan have the right to levy taxes, especially in the Seto Inland Sea, which is the sea area between the Chugoku region and the Shikoku region of Japan. There are a large number of pirate groups active in it. They openly set up checkpoints and collect "sail money" - tolls based on the size of the sails;
Or they may charge a toll based on the value of the goods being transported, or simply take a portion of the goods and sell them themselves;
Or it could be “customs fees” – port entry and berthing fees. If you don’t pay the fees, you are not allowed to dock or trade.

Or it could be the "superior fee" - security fee, which guarantees that you will not be attacked by other pirate forces in the waters, a bit like a primitive cargo insurance;

In addition, there are all kinds of messy "customs fees", "standing fees" and "ferry fees". The middle and lower-level pirates will randomly choose passenger ships to stop, board the ship and ask the passengers for "gifts". If they don't give, they will beat or even kill them.

At the same time, pirates also did business on their own, reselling all kinds of goods, and even engaged in passenger transport business, with regular passenger ships departing for different ports. For example, according to "Laosongtang Yueben Xinglu", Song Xijing, as a Korean envoy, took a boat from Kyushu Island to Sakai Town. He rode on pirates' ships all the way, and he didn't just ride on the ship of one pirate group. Every time he reached the border of a certain pirate group's power, he had to change ships, and it took a while to get there.

In short, Japan's pirates are actually no different in essence from the local wealthy families on land. They all occupy a piece of land, manage the territory well, set up checkpoints and collect money. At the same time, they will follow the daimyo to participate in wars for various reasons and send navy to fight.

Yes, the navy of Japan at that time was managed by pirates. Each pirate group would have one or several "jingguzhong". When a war broke out, it would mainly be these people who participated in the war. They were probably similar to the Langdang of a samurai family. These people were the navy in the traditional sense. The other pirates were no different from ordinary people. Most of the time they stayed in one place and fished. At most, they would be transferred to help row the boat or something when the war was urgent. They were similar to miscellaneous soldiers.

After Yuanye figured out the question of "what are pirates", he felt in his heart that he would have to deal with these people sooner or later, but it would be useless right now. He just cared about whether there were any large pirate gangs around him, but it turned out that there were none here.

The sea area between the Chita Peninsula and the Ise Peninsula is not very active in maritime trade. After all, the trade line from Shimazu to Atsuta is on land, and pirates have no chance of getting involved. In addition, Oda Nobuhide and his father have always been very wary of anyone who dares to touch this trade line, and they would never allow pirates to cause trouble. Therefore, this area of water has been quite quiet in the past few decades, and no large-scale pirate groups have emerged.

There weren't even many vagrant criminals. The islanders in Ise Bay were all poor people who avoided labor and annual tribute. Not only would you not gain anything by robbing them, you might even have to pay money. And going ashore to rob... The samurai could not control the pirates in the sea, but the pirates could not beat the samurai on land, so after a long time, no one came.

Yuanye was vaguely disappointed, feeling that he had lost a channel for acquiring people or selling goods, but there was nothing he could do. His words did not count in this matter. He could only continue to focus on completing the task of digging bird droppings, continue to provide various conveniences for Yu Da, and plan carefully with him.

More than a month later, Yu Da felt that the time was right and the sailors were almost done with training - the rigid sailing ship did not require much from the sailors. Then, on a sunny morning, he set sail from Wanjin with sufficient supplies and various mineral atlases hand-drawn by Yuan Ye, and slowly sailed south along the coastline on the west side of the Chita Peninsula.

According to the plan, they had to first reach the top of the Chita Peninsula, then turn diagonally to the southwest to look for an island where a person could settle down. After resting there, they would enter the ocean and slowly look for an island. Using the island as a support, they would continue to look for the next island, until they found the minerals required in the wilderness album on an island, and then dig up a few hundred stones and bring them back.

A few hundred stones would be enough. Oda Nobunaga only wanted three thousand kilograms of gunpowder in the first batch, which is only about ten stones when converted into stones. As long as Yu Da's ship can dig back a few hundred stones of cooked guano soil, it will be more than enough, and there will even be a large surplus for their own use.

Well, Yuanye himself also needs a large amount of saltpeter. After all, his future troops must be equipped with a large number of matchlock guns, even more than Oda Nobunaga. Insufficient saltpeter will be a bottleneck for him, so he must find uninhabited islands covered with bird droppings. Otherwise, if there are only 3,000 kilograms of gunpowder, he can just ask everyone in the territory to shit more and it will come out, without having to worry so much.

He stood on the simple dock, watching Yu Da's "Ship No. 1" getting smaller and smaller and slowly disappearing in the sea fog. He hoped very much that they could succeed in one go, otherwise he would have to send out "Ship No. 2" and "Ship No. 3" and continue to use human lives to pave the way until this saltpeter route was paved.

Two months, maybe. If things go well, they should be back in about a month and a half. So let's assume it's two months. If we still don't see them coming back after two months, the second group will set off. Even if we have to pave the road with corpses, we must build the saltpeter route!
(End of this chapter)