From Chief to Ball

These glasses are better than those of any workshop in Europe.Especially some glass handicrafts have the same luster and quality as crystal.

And those mirrors are several times better than the Venetian mirrors.Once this kind of mirror appears, it will be popular in European courts, making Venetian mirrors no longer available for sale.

As for swords, muskets, gunpowder, and those weird lamp oils that look like whale oil, they can be sold at a good price.

One-thirtieth of the share, this is like robbery.If the fleet is full of such goods, he does not want gold or silver, but only needs some of these goods to be shipped back to Europe, and he will become a rich merchant and a celebrity in Amsterdam because of this adventure.

As for the crooked mind, the captain didn't move.A small group of pirate wolves may not be the opponent of this fleet, and if the young captain can fulfill his promise, there is no need for others to share the profit.

Driven by interests, the captain took out the chart and told Chen Jian that about four latitudes further south, and to the east there was an archipelago, which was a distribution center for pirates to sell stolen goods and smuggle.

This is not a secret, any captain who is rampant in this sea area knows it, including those Spaniards.

These goods can be sold out within a month, and many people will choose to take over.

Chen Jian said that he wanted sucrose, sugarcane seedlings, dyes or gold and silver coins, but was not very interested in the rest.

Cane sugar and sugarcane are both locally produced goods, and there are also many dye smugglers and pirates. As for gold and silver coins, which are the common currency, this is not a problem.

But the captain still made a request. He hoped that Chen Jian could pay the remuneration he deserved with the goods on the ship.

The captain understands the profit in this, and he will make a fortune when his ship is repaired and returns to Europe.

Chen Jian generously agreed, and the limited communication between the two parties revolved around interests.

Chen Jian wasn't too worried about the possible dangers. Although the people in the fleet didn't have much combat experience, they still looked scary.

Off the small island, the Lan Fang demonstrated a sidestring salvo to help the captain as an intermediary to deepen his impression.

Along the way, wet and dry detonators and glycerin explosives were assembled, a musketeer salvo, two Molotov cocktails filled with gasoline and a thickener for the rest of the mixture.

The ground shook, the smoke filled the air, and the flames raged.

In fact, most of these people have never been on the battlefield, nor have they killed anyone.This is not a battlefield, there is no such panic, and the drill is scary enough.

Looking at the smashed stones and those weird explosives that are far superior to black powder, those musketeers who shoot extremely fast and do not need to be too scattered, those Molotov cocktails that stick to the stones as if even the stones are on fire... on the Dutch ship Shocked, the sailors kept crossing themselves with lingering fear.

"God... Where did this group of people come from?"

Chapter 12 Smuggling and Looting

Before setting sail from the small island, Chen Jian detained the captain of the Dutch ship and some sailors in the name of friendly exchanges.The Dutch ship was temporarily under the command of the chief mate, and at the same time, I also sent Wei Yuan and other interns to the Dutch ship to observe and learn their sailing skills.

The handling of the two ships is completely different, and the lifting sails, canvas, and ropes are also completely different.It will take many years to develop a sufficient crew of sailors.

Money can solve many problems, such as buying a boat.But money cannot solve sailor skills and excellent seamen, which is a very helpless thing.

Wei Yuan looked at this ship, which was completely different from the one he was familiar with, and studied with the same discipline as when he was just an intern back then.

I took a peek at their weapons and found that they mainly use swords, and the quality of the cannons doesn't look very good.

The large-caliber arquebus mounted on the side of the ship is very bulky, but it should be suitable for long-distance use.

The language barrier makes it difficult to communicate about many things. You can only study while watching, which is very inefficient.

Enter the Lanfang.

Chen Jian was pondering over the sea chart, asking about some ports, cities and forces here.

On the chart, at about thirteen degrees north latitude, there is a dotted island.The north is said to be a Spanish colony, and it is a rather large island.

This dotted island has become a place where pirates and smugglers communicate with each other.

More than ten years ago, during the British-Spanish naval battle and the magical Irish kamikaze, the Dutch seized the opportunity when the Spanish navy was weak and flooded into this sea area in large numbers.

Their British and French counterparts have also done many great things before, and once captured Spanish colonial towns and demanded ransom.

Since there is no barrier between the Isthmus of Panama and China and the United States, the life of the Spaniards here is much more difficult than in history.

Due to the open sea area, longer coastline, weakened navy, the verge of bankruptcy of the royal family, too far away to control, etc., this place is full of holes infiltrated by smugglers and pirates.From time to time, they have to face things like pirates landing and robbing, which is not much different from the Japanese pirates encountered in the Ming Dynasty.It's just that Daming is transported by water instead of official sea transport, and the item of robbing official ships is missing.

As there are more and more pirates in this sea area, many pirate leaders emancipate their minds, seek truth from facts, seek development and adjust structure, guided by the relationship between supply and demand in the market economy, a large number of new entrepreneurs have emerged.

Plant food, brew wine, open shops, work as repairmen, sell slaves, run brothels on the island... Some pirates have completed the transformation from robbing and running to sitting on the ground, making this island gradually prosperous.

Chen Jian did not choose to dock at the port of an island where pirates were infested, but chose to dock on an uninhabited deserted island. He commanded the sailors on the ship to use felled wood to build a simple fort and a simple wooden fort, and stationed here.

The time of stationing should not be too long. If it is too long, the sailors may not be acclimatized.Even if you use boiling water, bleach to disinfect, etc., the disease is likely to appear.

He is not afraid of the pirates here.With his current strength, ordinary pirates dare not stare at him for fear of getting burned.He has little experience in naval battles, and most of them are only on paper, but if he wants to, relying on the trainees, sailors and escorts on board, he can completely capture several small towns in the Spanish colonies.

After counting all the goods and checking out the reward promised to the Dutch captain, Chen Jian dispatched the Amethyst.

The Dutch ship was detained on the island. The Amethyst was loaded with the Dutch captain, [-] escort soldiers and cargo samples. The Dutch captain was responsible for finding someone who was willing to take over and traded on this island.

While waiting for the reply, Chen Jian walked around the island and found some traces of people's existence.

But now there is no one on this island, only the remnants of some primitive villages.

Chen Jian reckoned that the people on the island were either killed or taken away as slaves in plantations and sugar rolling mills.

It is estimated that the people on this island are now extinct. The average lifespan of plantation slaves is too short, and the slaves of sugar rolling mills can't live too long.The animal-powered winch for sugar extraction is too rough, and if you are not careful, your arm may be caught in it. The supervisor next to it will take out a knife decisively to chop off the slave's hand, and use a bucket to catch the blood so as not to pollute the syrup. .

In the future, people from their own ethnic group will come here to open up plantations, and it is estimated that they will follow the same route.If you're lucky, a law that prohibits Chinese people from being slaves of any kind can be promulgated.

Plantations are labor-intensive enterprises, which can be avoided by forming exclusive collective plantation farms with strong organizational power, but his mind is not here, and he can only throw it to the wealthy businessmen and adventurers in the country.

There is a shortage of labor here, and it is very close to Africa. The practice of selling black slaves will soon prevail.If it’s only okay on these islands, I’m afraid that those big manors and farmers in China will find out that it is cheaper to use slaves than hired labor, and they will introduce a large number of slaves into the country... There will be a lot of troubles in the future.

This is another difficult public opinion battle, and once the world is no longer alone, all kinds of strange ideas will rise.With the foundation of primary genetics and breeding, when the theory of evolution is developed, things like racism will probably appear soon, and the domestic ideology will at least go through a period of chaos for decades.

How should the colony be managed?If you make a wrong move, you will probably face colonial independence in the future. No one has experience in these things now, and Chen Jian doesn't know if he can persuade or influence domestic policies.

It seems that everything is going well in the future, but in fact, every step of the way is in crisis, especially if you go on the wrong path from the beginning, the future will not be lost, and it will be more difficult to change.

……

Soon after, the Amethyst returned with good news.

Some ships came to this island for trading, and some pirate leaders or privateer captains came to see this fleet commander from a mysterious country. They were deeply impressed by the neat uniforms and guns of the escort.

The people in the fleet finally saw all kinds of people.Red-haired, yellow-haired, white-skinned, charcoal-covered...

Every day there are things that may seem ordinary in the future but are eye-opening today. Only those in the fleet know how vast the outside world is through the conversations with those people.

Chen Jian also got what he wanted as he wished, gold and silver coins from various countries, sucrose, sugarcane seedlings, carmine dye...

Several pirate leaders also found Chen Jian, hoping to work together with Chen Jian to make a big deal.Because Chen Jian's fleet was supposed to be huge, and it seemed that the sailors on those ships were also elite soldiers, so they hoped to cooperate with Chen Jian to plunder the Spanish fleet, or directly attack Spanish towns to rob ransom.