If Li Zhi wants to make money from maritime trade, he must use the best force to protect his ships. The veterans of the Selection Group have rich combat experience, so they are naturally Li Zhi's first choice to take on board.
Li Zhi got on the boat and stood on the top of the poop and shouted: "Turn on the steam engine!"
The steward on the ship ran down the poop and passed Li Zhi's order to the craftsmen in charge of the steam engine. After hearing the order, the craftsmen turned over the coal and burned it under the steam engine. The fire became more and more intense, and the steam engine made a huge sound.
The sound started to move little by little.
The paddle wheel gradually rotates, and the paddles slap on the sea surface, creating bursts of waves. Driven by the paddle wheel, the ship drives towards the deep sea little by little.
Li Zhi's steam engine ship was successful.
The sailors on the ship cheered in unison and shouted loudly.
The Nova drove faster and faster, heading towards the open sea. The guide on the ship ran out, threw a wood chip from the bow, and then ran with the wood chip, calculating the time it took for the wood chip to reach the stern. After calculating for a while, he was a little surprised.
I was speechless. I was stunned for a long time before shouting loudly to the crew: "You can run sixty miles in one hour."
After hearing the guide's words, the old boatmen on the boat were even more stunned. This machine can run sixty miles an hour without oars or sails. It is really unbelievable. You must know that the wooden sailboats of this era ran very slowly.
Even if there is a favorable wind, it will take more than ten days at the fastest from Tianjin to Hirado in Japan.
According to the speed of this steam engine ship, wouldn't it take six or seven days to reach the Japanese country and make a round trip in half a month? This ship can run without a sail, so wouldn't it mean that it could go back and forth to the Japanese country dozens of times a year?
Not to mention that the ship's speed improves safety. If you encounter pirates, just run at full speed. The sailboat will never be able to catch up with the steam engine ship.
Everyone looked at Li Zhi in awe, admiring the miraculous invention of the Governor.
Li Zhi saw everyone looking at him with rounded eyes, smiled, waved and said: "The gunners are in place!"
More than seventy gunners ran into the second deck and began to operate the guns. There was one cannon at the bow and stern of the Nova, and nine cannons on each side, for a total of twenty cannons. One heavy gun was equipped with eight gunners.
Seventy-two gunners were needed to operate the nine cannons on each side.
The eighteen-pound heavy gun was loaded with shells, gunpowder and primer. The gunner adjusted the elevation and angle of the gun and aimed at a dilapidated small fishing boat three hundred meters away from the Nova. The dilapidated fishing boat was driven out by Li Zhi as a target.
use.
The new flintlock-ignited cannon no longer uses a match rope to ignite. The gunner holds a rope and prepares to fire.
"Fire!"
Amidst the deafening roar, the nine heavy guns on the port side opened fire. On the bumpy sea, the cannons rose and fell with the ship, and the hit rate was relatively low. Nine shells flew past, but none of them hit the fishing boat.
The boatmen who were supported by Chayunke on the ship had never seen such a large heavy artillery. They all lay on the side of the ship and watched the cannon fire. They were startled by the roar of the cannon fire, but at this time, none of the cannons hit the fishing boat.
, they shook their heads and sighed again.
The Nova turned around and opened fire with the nine heavy guns on the starboard side. More than seventy gunners switched to operating the cannon on the starboard side. The cannons opened fire one after another. This time, a shell hit the fishing boat, knocking it out of control.
The entire sail was shattered.
A cheer suddenly erupted on the deck of the ship.
The hit rate of naval guns at sea is relatively low. However, this is because the target of fishing boats is too small. If the target is a merchant ship of several hundred tons, the hit rate will be much higher.
Li Zhi waved his hand and said: "Buy a few more scrapped fishing boats and let the gunners practice firing! Practice until one out of ten shots is fired!"
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After the ship was launched into the sea, Li Zhi began to purchase various materials to be sold to Japan.
At this time, China's foreign trade mainly consisted of two shipping routes, the Nanyang and the Orient.
Nanyang is to the Philippines, Thailand, and even Indonesia. This route is longer and earns money from Western colonists:
At this time, the Spanish occupied the Philippines, which was now called Luzon. The Spanish discovered a large number of silver mines in Latin America and were very rich. Chinese maritime merchants sold silk and porcelain to Manila in Luzon to earn eagle pesos, and Spain
People then shipped and sold Chinese goods to Europe, making huge profits.
There are also people who do business with the Dutch, and traders often sell goods to Batavia, which is the Dutch colony in Indonesia. The Dutch are known as sea coachmen, and the Chinese luxury goods brought by Chinese sea traders are shipped by them.
to the whole world.
When returning from Nanyang, the merchant ships brought more specialties such as pepper, spices, and pearls. When Li Zhigang crossed over, the pepper business his family did came from Nanyang. Sometimes traders would bring some ivory and ivory that Western colonists trafficked in Africa.
Gold. But compared to China, which is rich in products, not many overseas goods can be sold back to China. The most merchant ships bring back is silver.
However, the direction of the Nanyang Waterway is due south, and the distance from Guangdong and Fujian is closer. The distance is only half of that of northern maritime merchants. Northern merchants cannot compete. Therefore, most of the maritime merchants in Nanyang are merchants from Guangdong and Fujian.
The other waterway is the waterway of the Japanese country in the East.
The so-called Japanese country is Japan in later generations. Most of the time it was called Japan at this time, but the Japanese people called themselves Japan, so some people gradually called them Japan. Japan was located in the east of China and was rich in silver, gold and copper, so the price of goods was very high. Japan
Due to the high prices of goods in the Ming Dynasty, cheap goods from the Ming Dynasty were very popular in Japan. No matter what kind of goods they were, they would be profitable as long as they were sold to Japan.
But Japan had a large samurai class, which was required to wear silk clothes. The samurai uniforms worn by senior samurai were all made of silk, and the female relatives of samurai families also wore silk. Therefore, Japan has a high demand for raw silk from China.
Most of the merchant ships sailing to the East sold raw silk, and during the Tianqi years, the profit margin was 150%.
Of course, with the outflow of Japanese silver and the inflow of Chinese silver, this huge price difference gradually decreased. By the twelfth year of Chongzhen, the profit from a load of raw silk was only 30 to 40 taels.
Most of the ships that were sold back from the Japanese country carried copper, Japanese knives and tatoos. Of course, they also brought more silver. Whether it was the East or South Sea route, a large amount of silver was imported to China.
For merchants in the north, the East Ocean is much closer than the Southeast Asia. Maritime merchants in the north mainly travel to the East Ocean.
The route Cha Yunke took was the Japanese route to the East. Therefore, the translator he assigned to Li Zhi could only speak Japanese, and the surveyor only knew the route to the East. Under these conditions, Li Zhi could not travel to Nanyang, but he could travel to the East.
It was Li Zhi's first time to go overseas and he didn't know what would sell well in Japan, so he bought some of everything.
Li Zhi bought fifty loads of fine Dengzhou white raw silk, priced at one hundred and seventy taels per load.
Li Zhi had heard from Cha Yunke that the best Dengzhou white raw silk only cost one hundred and seventy taels per load, so he went to the big silk merchants for that price.
Tianjin is a distribution center for goods from the north to the south, and you can buy everything. Li Zhi asked Zheng Kaida to buy raw silk. The silk merchant was not willing to sell it to Zheng Kaida at the beginning, saying that Zheng Kaida was a new face and would cost 170.
Five taels per load. When Zheng Kaida reported the name of Prince Li Zhi as Taibao, the businessman was so frightened that he immediately lowered the price.
In addition to raw silk, Li Zhi also brought 20,000 pieces of Lijia fine cloth produced by textile factories.
The large-scale sales of Li's fine cloth in the Ming Dynasty would have an impact on the economic system of the Ming Dynasty, where men farmed and women weaved. Li Zhi did not dare to produce too much. But when it was sold to Japan, there was no such concern.
