Chapter 555 The bigger one
Li Nai still had things to rush to Guangzhou to deal with, so he did not personally send them to the dock to board the ship. He only asked a steward to guide them and help them carry the wooden boxes containing gifts.
It was already dark when they arrived at Lijiazhuang last night, and it was only when they went out early this morning that they could see the true appearance of the place. The main roads in Lijiazhuang are only one foot, four or five feet wide. The two cross-shaped main roads, one east-west and one north-south, are paved with cement and appear to be very smooth. There are evenly spaced street trees on both sides of the road, and there are small flower beds, stone benches, stone tables, pavilions and other facilities every ten feet or so along the street. The environment is by no means what you would find in an ordinary farmhouse.
Yan Mingjun couldn't help but praise a few words after seeing it, and the steward responded proudly: "The layout and construction of the two main roads in our village are all copied from the landscape avenue of Victory Port in Sanya, and hundreds of workers were dispatched. It cost more than 20,000 taels of silver and took nearly a year to complete. ”
"It turns out that the place where the Haihan people live is like this!" Yan Mingjun responded with sudden realization.
The steward shook his head and said: "The masters of Haihan are very talented. We are just imitating, but we cannot copy the original appearance of Sanya. If you two adults go to Sanya in the future, you will naturally understand."
When Li Nai saw the landscape avenue built by Haihan in Shengli Port, he thought it was very satisfactory, so he asked an artist to draw it and brought it back to Lijiazhuang. After obtaining the consent of his father, Li Jifeng, he remodeled it according to the style of the Shengli Port Landscape Avenue. Enter the main road in Lijiazhuang. Of course, the Haihan Construction Department also took part in the design and organization of construction. As for the cement used here, "Fu Ruifeng" deployed its own ships and transported them back from Victory Port. Anyway, Lijiazhuang's defenses also require a large amount of cement, so transporting ten or eight more ships is not a big problem.
If anyone else wanted to carry out such a big project, they would definitely not be able to do it with more than 20,000 taels of silver. Li Nai also relied on his relationship with Haihan to directly pull goods from the cement kiln at a price close to the cost price and transport it back to Lijiazhuang himself, so he was able to control costs to this level. Wealthy businessmen who came and went here had the same idea after seeing the results of Lijiazhuang's reconstruction. This project in Lijiazhuang greatly promoted the development of Haihan Cement Industry. Of course, compared with the Landscape Avenue and Victory Fort in Sanya, it is still small. The amount of work is far different, and it is not something Lijiazhuang can afford.
Li Jin suddenly spoke: "This road is obviously more than one foot wide. Why is it that no one walks in the middle, but all on the side?"
"Master Li, this is to leave enough space so that cars and horses that need to travel quickly can pass through the middle. In addition, have you noticed that when walking up and down this road, you always lean on the right side of the direction of travel? This also It is also to keep traffic flowing smoothly so that there will be no congestion on this road even when we go to work early every morning," the manager explained enthusiastically.
Yan Mingjun said: "You must have learned this from Haihan?"
"Indeed." This steward has followed Li Nai to the Sanya area many times. Like his master, he has become a fan of Haihan. Whenever he has the opportunity, he spares no effort to publicize Haihan's advancements to others.
Walking out of the village gate tower in Lijiazhuang, Yan Mingjun immediately noticed the large residential area only one mile away from here. This residential area is full of neat wooden houses, stretching westward row by row, with no end visible from Lijiazhuang.
Yan Mingjun asked in confusion: "That place is?"
The steward explained: "That is the Lijiazhuang immigration camp, and the people living there are the people who will later take a boat to Qiongzhou Island to settle down. These people come from all over Guangdong, as well as from Huguang, Jiangxi, and Fujian Those who want to make a living and survive can just sign up here. After they arrive on Qiongzhou Island, the Haihan people will arrange things for them, including food, housing and salary, which is better than outside. It’s much better to be a refugee.”
"This place is so big, it should be able to accommodate three to four thousand people, right?" Li Jin had a different perception from Yan Mingjun. The first time he saw this camp, he looked at it from a military perspective, although this camp did not have No matter what defensive measures were built, Li Jin could still tell that the layout of the barracks here looked like a military camp.
The steward responded: "If it is busy, five thousand people can barely stay. However, it is usually kept within three thousand people. Haihan will regularly send ships to transport people away. Today, we are following the adults' fleet south. , there are at least two immigrant ships.”
"If two to three thousand people are transported away every month, then the rate of population accumulation is really scary!" Yan Mingjun was indeed shocked when he heard the number reported by the steward.
It is very common for wealthy families to purchase servants in large quantities, hire servants as long-term workers, etc., but I have never heard of any family that can bring thousands of people to their own house. He had heard about Haihan's recruitment of immigrants before when he was a fellow magistrate in Luoding Prefecture, but he had never imagined that the scale could be so large.
Yan Mingjun thought that after these thousands of people were transported to Qiongzhou Island, they had to arrange food, accommodation and work. How large the Haihan people's business must be to support such a large population. In addition, after going to Qiongzhou Island, most of these people should be helping the Haihan people farm and work, but I am afraid that many people have chosen to join the Haihan militia and serve as swords and guns in the hands of the Haihan people.
In addition, Yan Mingjun also thought about another problem that may arise after the large influx of people into Qiongzhou Island. The number of immigrants who obey Haihan's orders may be constantly approaching and overtaking the local residents. If the number of Haihan immigrants has exceeded the original people, then who is the real power holder in the local area? The population of Danzhou was around 40,000 according to statistics from the Tianqi period. It is said that many people have moved away in recent years. The main direction of migration is to go to Qiongnan Sanya to work for the Haihan people. One can imagine the local situation in Qiongnan. I am afraid that most people have already taken orders from Haihan.
Thinking of this, Yan Mingjun couldn't help but feel more and more pessimistic about the prospect of taking office. Compared with the Haihan people's method of gradually strengthening themselves and cannibalizing the Ming Dynasty, the Ming Dynasty did not seem to have any effective countermeasures. If one day the Haihan people raise a flag to rebel, how many people on Qiongzhou Island will be able to respond to the court's call and rise up against Haihan?
With this mentality, Yan Mingjun returned to the ship somewhat depressed. His family rested at the guest house at the dock last night, but they had already returned to the ship. Seeing that he was in a bad mood after coming back, they thought something unpleasant happened to Lijiazhuang last night. Yan Mingjun didn't bother to explain. When the servants came to tell him to sail, he just nodded to indicate that he understood.
The fleet left Lijiazhuang Pier, slowly turned around and continued southward along the Pearl River waterway. After walking on the river for more than an hour, Yan Mingjun finally let go of his depression and walked out of the cabin to the deck. Li Jin lay on the side of the ship and looked around. When he saw Yan Mingjun coming out, he quickly greeted: "Brother Yan, come and see this Haihan sailboat, it is really novel!"
Yan Mingjun followed the instructions and walked to the side of the ship and observed with him the two Haihan warships escorting the fleet one by one. The most intuitive difference in appearance between this kind of boat and Chinese sailboats is the sail ropes. They use soft sails, but there is a layer of scaffolding to fix the soft sails, which is different from Western-style sailboats.
Li Jin seemed to want to test Yan Mingjun and asked: "Brother Yan, can you see anything different about this Haihan sailboat?"
Yan Mingjun said: "Although I don't know the art of shipbuilding, the mast of this Haihan sailboat seems to be much higher than our ship, and the sail used is larger than ours, but the material used is lighter. It seems to be easier to adjust according to the wind direction than ours.”
"What Brother Yan said is true. In addition, if you look at the draft position of the bow of their ship, the blade-like collision angle is not a vegetarian. I guess it is mostly made of fine steel. If it is a slightly smaller ship , was hit by this collision angle at full speed during close combat, and would have been torn into pieces immediately," Li Jin added.
Although Li Jin's major is not navy, he still has the basic vision as a soldier. Apart from the terrifying firepower possessed by this warship, based on the details that can be observed now, Li Jin believes that the strength of the Haihan warship is probably no less than the main warship of the Ming army.
"It is said that the Haihan sailing ship is extremely fast. If it is just following our fleet, I may not be able to see them moving at full speed." Li Jin said with regret.
The speed of this fleet of alternate officers was extremely slow, and even though it was going down the river, it could only maintain about four or five knots. Therefore, although the fleet set off from Lijiazhuang Pier in the early morning, by the time it got dark, it had only barely arrived at Wanshan Port, the second stop of the journey.
If we follow the normal sailing schedule, we can of course continue sailing southward overnight. However, the voyage arranged by Haihan is as slow as possible. One more day of delay will give Qiongzhou Island one more day to plan. Therefore, several stopping points were set up during this voyage, and we tried our best to arrange for a rest in port at night.
Wanshan Port has become somewhat famous in recent years. In addition to becoming an important maritime transshipment and supply port at the Pearl River Estuary, another important reason is the incident in the waters near Wanshan Port at the end of the first year of Chongzhen. The fierce naval battle made the navy of the Haihan Militia famous. From then on, no armed force in the Pearl River Estuary dared to show off its power and treat itself as the boss - this also included the Ming Navy troops stationed near the Pearl River Estuary.
During the Battle of Wanshan Port, many maritime merchants witnessed the entire process in the port, so the public's understanding of this battle was relatively complete. In addition, merchant ships and civilian ships have been coming and going here for a long time, so there are not many secrets at all. Although almost all the candidates came here for the first time, they had basically heard of the name of this place, and also knew that the coastal defense fort here was said to have the most powerful firepower in the Pearl River Estuary area.
But when they actually saw the fortifications built against the mountains at the north and south ends of the port when they entered the port, they had a more real sense of these statements. Under the setting sun, I saw the cannon muzzles pointing at the entrance of the harbor. Each one was very close. It seemed that it was not difficult to imagine what kind of blow the pirate Liu Xiang's fleet suffered after they rashly broke into this place. Rumor has it that as many as double digits of pirate ships were sunk in this small harbor at that time, and the casualties were even more numerous. It's no wonder that Liu Xiang fled back to the coast of Fujian in one breath. Being attacked by such fixed forts and movable forts on warships would be a nightmare even if he thought about it.
However, their attention was soon attracted by the ships docked in the harbor. It's not that there are many ships crammed into this small harbor. After all, Wanshan Port has limited space, and the number of ships docked is at most twenty or thirty. Any more ships may congest the waterway. What really attracted their attention were the two large sailing ships docked at an independent dock on the left side of the channel.
"The Haihan people... actually... have such a large warship!" Li Jin felt something stuck in his throat, and he said these words intermittently.
Yan Mingjun was already grinning from ear to ear because of surprise. He just stared blankly at the two ships on the shore.
Docked at the Wanshan Port military dock are two "exploration-class" warships. Of course, they did not appear here for no reason. They also came here for this group of candidate officials. During the next voyage, the two ships will escort the official fleet until it reaches Qiongzhou Island.
If the size difference between the two "Exploration-class" warships in the previous escort fleet and the sailing ships in the fleet is not too big, then the two "Exploration-class" warships docked on the shore are obviously larger. A lot came out. The sailing ship that Yan Mingjun and Li Jin were riding was just a circle smaller than the "Exploration Class". However, although the two large warships we just saw were similar in appearance to the "Exploration Class", they were smaller in size. But it was nearly half the size of their ship, and even the gun windows on the side of the ship were much more, which showed that its combat power should still be above it.
The two looked at each other and saw the shock in each other's eyes. Li Jin finally managed to squeeze out a sentence: "This is probably... the largest ship in the Haihan Navy, right?"
Yan Mingjun also nodded with difficulty and said: "That's how it should be!"
In terms of the size of this ship, it is basically the same tonnage as the Dafu ship, the main flagship of the Ming Dynasty, but the firepower configuration is definitely not at the same level. The location of Wanshan Port is several days' voyage from Sanya, the base camp of the Haihan people. The fact that the Haihan people dare to send such a large warship to station in such a far place at least shows that they should not only have these two ships of the same type. level warship. As for naval warships of this tonnage, as far as Yan Mingjun and Li Jin know, the entire Guangdong Navy probably only has three or four in existence.
(End of chapter)