That's not the Spaniards.

On the contrary, the Spaniards wanted the head of the leader of this fleet.

In the early morning, when the drizzle had stopped, and the sailors on the Golden Deer were diligently wiping the water stains left on the deck by the previous night, the Comptroller walked into the captain's room with a calm expression, and reported that it had taken the night last night to arrive at the value of the cargo obtained from the robbery of three enemy ships.

It was a huge fortune, but it was commonplace for them, and no one would be surprised by it.

Captain Francis Drake sat staring at the thick dark circles under his eyes, sitting on a chair in the captain's room with a pipe in his mouth, squinting and carefully wiping a beautifully shaped black upper body plate armor.

There was a small pit in the chest of the plate armor, and the random lead that flew out of the window of the Spanish ship during the last night's battle hit his body, and he didn't even feel it at the time, and it was only when he found it in the morning that Drake broke out in a cold sweat.

Drake's teenage years were nothing special, his father was a devout Protestant, and later served as a temporary chaplain overseeing shipbuilders and sailors, and as a teenager Drake traveled between France and the Dutch coast to learn seamanship.

At the age of seventeen, he became the captain of a small sailing ship along the coast, and after hearing that his distant relative John Hawkins had made a huge profit from the triangular trade, he sold his ship and joined the fleet to start a new life.

His rise to fame began with a defeat when their fleet was nearly wiped out by the Spaniards in the second year of Longqing, after which he and his cousin Hawkins began an endless raid and plunder on the Spanish-controlled colonies of the West Indies and Central and South America.

It was a new journey for him, which had set sail in London Portsmouth last summer, when Drake, who had a warrant for revenge from Elizabeth I, led five small Galen ships to attack the West Indies and then south to the east coast of South America.

After the plunder, the Spanish treasure convoy mobilized a large number of ships to form an encirclement, blocking its retreat from the West Indies and blocking the narrow Strait of Magellan to the south, forcing him to continue sailing south to bypass Tierra del Fuego.

Prior to Drake's fateful journey, Tierra del Fuego was thought to be connected to the fabled southern continent until he discovered that there was a vast strait at the end of South America that led to the China Sea.

For the English people of this era, the vast Pacific Ocean to the west was called the China Sea.

His fleet was lost after rounding Tierra del Fuego, leaving only the flagship Pelican, and in return to his patron, Sir Haydn, the ship's coat of arms, the Golden Deer.

Drake, who rounded the Strait of Magellan and sailed into the back garden of the Spaniards, was very happy, most of the ships here were armed merchant ships or merchant ships, and even if they encountered warships, they were only Galen ships of five or six hundred tons, and they did not see the behemoths of more than 1,000 tons in the West Indies.

Although the Golden Deer was only 150 tons, it had 16 gunwales, and with his unique sidestring attack, it was completely invincible against armed commercial Galen ships under 1,000 tons.

No, in a month his fleet had grown to five more, and in addition to the Golden Deer, there were four Spanish ships ranging from one hundred and fifty to three hundred tons, most of whom had been liberated from the Spanish colonies on the coast.

He had to go all the way, first to the northern end of the Americas, and if there was no route back there, he was to complete the circumnavigation of the world and return to England.

In his impression, the China Sea went west, and as long as he did not go to the coast of the Ming Dynasty, no one could be his enemy on this route.

Of course, this is only the old yellow calendar he knows.

Drake sailed northward, with the brisk English Galen Golden Deer in front of him, and four slow Western-style Galen ships laden with heavy booty to carry their cargo, and in one night traveled nearly 150 miles at a speed of nearly four knots, and on the way he also bombarded a small Spanish trading station along the coast with a cannon.

Shao Tingda drove the Liujia ship and slowly followed his ass, dragging it for three or five miles at night, and when it was dawn, he was ten miles behind, and followed this strange fleet all the way to the north.

He had sensed that the fleet did not belong to Spain, and that all the Spanish ships he had seen had red flags on their sails, and this one had a cross flag, which looked a bit like the Portuguese flag but was only similar.

Whoever it was, Shao Tingda was happy to see a-stirring stick come to the sea to fight the Spaniards, especially if the-stirring stick seemed to be able to fight.

Drake is really good at playing.

With the help of the agarwood telescope, Shao Tingda clearly saw that when approaching the port of San José in Guatemala, the cross ship emptied the two galleons of the captive, some of the goods were loaded onto the ship, and some of the goods were simply thrown into the sea.

The Golden Deer followed, and the two ships, which were probably spread with gunpowder near the harbor, burned brightly, and the sailors jumped into the sea to be picked up by the Golden Deer, and then continued their voyage north without looking back.

Shao Tingda, who had salvaged more than 60 boxes of water-soaked cotton cloth, tobacco and some rum, looked at the port where smoke was rising and said to his adjutant: "This person is not a simple widow, he should have an enmity with the Westerners, and he has suffered a loss in front of him." ”

This Red Cross ship was a novelty for the Ming army, and it was rare to see such a person who dared to run so unscrupulously on the sea with a single warship, whether it was a merchant ship or a seaport, they all dared to attack.

That's where it is.

As early as 50 years ago, the Portuguese were like this in Guangzhou at the beginning, and since they were beaten by Wang Hong, they stopped in Daming.

As for the pirates of the Ming Dynasty, it was not of this temperament.

The pirates here are like lone rangers, their target is the merchants, but the lard is blinded and dares to attack the navy.

The pirates of the Ming Dynasty were more like sea princes, not only in terms of ideology, but also in terms of environment.

Shao Tingda reaped great pleasure from peeping, and was not discovered by the Golden Deer until he was close to the confrontation between the Ming army and New Spain, when he sailed at full speed at night to overtake the lagging Western-style Galen ship, and let his men shoot a letter written in Spanish at the opponent's mast with bows and arrows.

"Further on, there are ships assembled by the Spaniards, and there is a port to the northwest where you can dock."

The port on the letter was the camp of the Ming army on the Boundary Peninsula, and after Shao Tingda released the letter, he no longer cared about this fleet, and drove the ship all the way to the port to return.

He had gathered almost all the information along the way, and if the ship went to the Boundary Peninsula, he would get more information there, if the Red Cross insisted on fighting the Spanish ships in front of him...... For the Ming army, why not?