The Dutch merchant captain who stopped behind the ship was named Lamb, a middle-aged man with distinctly Spanish features.

The seafarers who crossed the Atlantic to make a living were basically the same, even the captains were not much different, and poverty was not only in the patched jackets, but also in the filth of sea salt particles sticking to their hair.

Born in a small fishing village near Amsterdam in the north of the Netherlands, he worked as a seaman as a teenager, sailed as far as England on the other side, worked as a porter at the docks, and until he was middle-aged with some savings, he opened a small woollen mill outside the city, Spain had the best Merino sheep, and everything flourished until the war.

It was King Philip who changed all that, and the bankruptcy of Spain cost the Dutch bankers, and the increase in the price of wool to collect taxes led to the bankruptcy of many artisans, including Lamb's.

There was no way out to sea, the king forbade Dutch merchant ships to trade with the New World, and the internal Inquisition further intensified its persecution of the Protestants.

After the petition failed, the Dutch iconoclasm, which was later called the world's first bourgeois revolution, began, but the Duke of Alva led an army into the Netherlands, and as many as 8,000 lowlanders died under the anti-riot committee.

Caught in the chaos, Lamb protects his sailors and workers, and can only join the beggars at sea, sometimes attacking Spanish transports, but most of the time they are just saving their lives.

Fed up with hiding at sea, Lamb eventually returned home after the fighting had subsided a bit, and continued to transport on his only ship, subject to Spanish law, which allowed him to transport goods rather than buy or sell.

The seafarers who had traversed the stormy seas in the dangerous sea had just dared to stop and gasp for breath in the face of the long-term pursuit, and in the blink of an eye, they were terrified by the negotiations between the French pirates and the Ming warships.

In fact, until now, they don't know where these people with a large fleet of ships flying the 'Long Snake' pennant come from, but they simply saw a ship like a navy in the mortal realm and came over, hoping to be rescued.

According to common sense, someone on the big ship should have put down the dinghy to negotiate with them at this time, but no, the owner of this fleet did not seem to see them, or was not interested in dealing with them at all, but simply negotiated with the French pirates.

Immediately after, Lamb saw the flags on the big ship swing a few times, the drums rumbled like thunder rolling in a storm, and the rest of the ships in many shapes they had never heard of moved in whole motion.

"Captain, they're gaining the upper hand and going to fight the hateful French!" The shirtless and lean sailor slipped off the sail rope, fell the deck, and got up in horror: "What shall we do!" ”

How did the Netherlands, a place not yet as big as Shuntianfu, manage to gain a place in the Mediterranean trade dominated by Spain, Portugal, France, and England, which were dominated by the great European powers?

It is the manufacturing industry, to be precise, the thriving shipbuilding industry.

In the competition between countries, it has always been common sense to rely on the strong to bully the weak, and the overwhelming victory over the strong enemy with the weak body means that the weak and the strong have been easy to attack and defend.

The process of a weak country becoming a strong country is the real rebellion.

The Netherlands was doing this, and the secret to their ability to do so was on this ship that Lamb owned, this Dutch ship.

The shape of the ship is not special, the thinned planks are difficult to block the shelling, but the ultra-light hull can bring more speed, but there are no guns on the ship, not even artillery platforms; There were no muskets, the sailors did not have a single shot, and even on board there was nothing superfluous except for the necessary water rations.

Only the goods brought by the cargo mission they undertook from Amsterdam.

Lamb and his sailors sailed such an unsuspecting merchant ship across the North Sea into the Atlantic, across 7,000 kilometers of pirate-infested perilous waters to their destination in Puerto Rico.

Lamb had no other choice, and watched as the gunsoft windows of the Jiazi ship, which were a man taller than his ship, opened one after another in the military order, and an incomprehensible shout was heard from the deck, and a dark gun door was pushed out of the cabin.

At this time, Lamb finally determined that this was the Chinese fleet, to be precise, the warships of the Ming Kingdom.

This perception made Lamb think that those French pirates were like fools, didn't they know what kind of monsters the Ming Kingdom was? Two years ago they were on the other side of the world, and now the warships are in the Caribbean, what does that mean?

Not to mention, the French pirates really don't know, everything they know about the Ming is limited to the fact that the Ming Kingdom had caused Philip's army to collapse in the Philippines, and the Ming Kingdom was negotiating with Spain on trade cooperation in the New World.

Lamb knew that the Ming Kingdom was because Spain was at war with the Ming when he last shipped the goods, but in fact, Spain did not block the news about the defeat in the New World, and Philip's brain in the court knew about it and couldn't hide it.

They just deliberately ignored the extent of the defeat, and for European countries, rich China is supposed to be strong, and losing to the Ming is not a shame for Spain.

What's more, the most eye-catching thing in Europe at this time was that the Portuguese king Sebastião personally conquered Morocco, the Portuguese king was killed, the Mahazan River, the Portuguese army was killed 8,000, and 15,000 Portuguese troops, including large and small nobles, became prisoners of the Moors.

The war that destroyed the fortunes of Europe's first far-sea empire for a hundred years, and the huge defeat that led Portugal to sell iron and iron to redeem their families held in Morocco was far more remarkable than anything else.

"Stand with the Ming warship!"

Before the battle began, the shirtless men with their strange hairstyles on the ship showed very unprofessional and worrying business skills, and almost everyone was busy getting dressed when the French centipede ship approached them.

The sea was so hot that no one could be seen on the sea for three or five days, and the soldiers of Kangguru did not have strict military regulations like the Banner Army, they did not wear any clothes at sea, and some of them did not even carry weapons.

Even Lamb didn't expect them to protect him, he only hoped for the Ming warships with countless portholes and thick iron cannons, which he believed were the only ones that could defeat the huge Spanish Galen.

The French pirates' Calais ship would not be its opponent either.

In the next hour, the smoke that filled the sea proved that Lamb had made the right choice.

Every seafarer on a merchant ship was as sure as he was that they had the privilege of meeting the bravest warrior in the world.

If you just say 'brave', Li Dan also agrees with this.