The Drake's masts were broken, lost power, and were dragged by Wang Xinyu's ship to the waters of Zhoushan.

The Ming fleet that towed a large Western ship was very slow, but fortunately, after crossing the Taiwan Strait, it was all safe waters, and there were no Dutch ships north of the Taiwan Strait. As for the Spaniards and Portuguese, because of the Qing Empire's sea ban, they would not have come to the coastal areas of China north of the Taiwan Strait. They may go to Korea and Japan, but they don't need to go through the sea at the mouth of Hangzhou Bay, and after crossing the Taiwan Strait, the ships of the foreigners turn northeast. As for the Qing Imperial Sailors? The first battle of Xiamen was basically exhausted, and the remaining few small boats did not dare to come out.

Along the way, I wanted to be safe, there were no foreign ships, and there were no Qing army sailors.

Albert and the others originally thought that they were prisoners and had to do things for these Ming people. But on the road, Wang Xinyu's performance moved them the British.

Wang Xinyu lived on his trophy Drake, and along the way, he not only talked openly with Albert and others, but also let people take care of the wounded and sick British sailors, and even personally bandaged the wounds of the British wounded soldiers, and personally fed the British sailors with leukemia with tea, which made the British people very grateful to the boss and was willing to work for the boss with all their hearts.

Although it is an old ship of ninety years old, it is very well maintained, the wooden floor is polished, the interior space is spacious, and the decoration of the captain's room is also very luxurious. The upper gun deck on the same floor as the captain's cabin, because it is far from the waterline, the windows on both sides can be opened, and even the gun doors are opened when there is no wind and waves on weekdays to maintain the ventilation of the gun deck.

The upper gun deck is very spacious and bright, and there are long tables and long chairs behind the gun emplacements, which is not only the officers' dining room, but also the living quarters of some old gunners. The veteran gunners preferred to sleep on the floor in the upper gun deck, or simply at the dinner table, because it was well ventilated, spacious, and comfortable, much more comfortable than the lower gun deck and the sailors' quarters.

There were no portholes on the lower gun deck, only the gun doors could be opened. When the wind and waves are strong, even the cannon door cannot be opened. In the lower gun deck, because the heavy guns occupy more space, the free space in the gun deck is much smaller, but there are also dining tables and benches in the back, and between the gun emplacements and gun emplacements, there are also many gunners sleeping on the floor. The air in the lower deck was noticeably much more stuffy than in the upper gun deck, and it was inhabited by some low-level gunners.

Further down is the sailors' quarters, where ordinary sailors and hand-to-hand combatants used for broadside battles live. There were no portholes in the sailors' quarters, only vents leading to the upper deck, and the thick masts passed through the lower quarters and reached the bilge, where they were fixed to the bottom of the ship. The air in the sailor's quarters is stuffy, but it is the place where the largest number of people live. When a large amount of goods are looted, a part of the goods must be loaded here. At the time when the battleship had just left the port, the lower dwelling compartments were inhabited not only by people, but also by hens and ewes. The hen is used to lay eggs, and the ewes can produce milk. But before long, the hens and ewes were killed and eaten.

When Wang Xinyu walked into the sailor's living quarters, he could still smell the smell of chicken manure, sheep fat, sweat and various peculiar smells mixed together, which was very unpleasant. One can imagine how bad life was for those grassroots sailors. Bathe? Fresh water on board is precious, and where is there so much fresh water for bathing.

Below the sailors' quarters is the lowest deck, which is completely below the waterline, and at the back of the bilge is the food tank, which is usually used to store cured meats, sausages, cream, cheese, biscuits, oats, flour, peas, fresh water barrels, beer barrels, and rum barrels.

Wang Xinyu listened to Albert's introduction and felt that it sounded like the sailors' food was very good, but in fact? Albert explains: "Why fly with beer and rum? It's not that ocean-going sailors are born drunkards, because a month after sailing, the fresh water stored on the ship will stink and even grow green algae, and the fresh water is difficult to swallow, so you have to drink beer instead. But the beer was quickly finished, and the unfinished ones turned sour, so the rum had to be mixed with the smelly fresh water, so that the sailors could drink a little. ”

As for what to eat, only when they had just left the port, the sailors were able to eat fresh vegetables, pigs, beef and mutton, chickens, ducks and geese. There are also hens and sheep on board. But soon, the pork and beef will be eaten, and then the chickens and sheep will be killed, and the fresh food will soon be eaten up. Next, every day is faced with cured meats, sausages, hams, bread with stinking maggots, and the most extravagant thing is pea soup made in stinking fresh water.

The maggots they eat every day are all maggots, but the sailors also eat these maggots, which are also high in protein, and they can't be cleaned up at all.

"Your life is really hard!" Wang Xinyu said with a sigh.

"The lads are used to it, we all came here like this." Albert replied.

During the Age of Discovery, European pirates looked beautiful, but their lives were very difficult. But there were still many people who were willing to come out, because the moldy and smelly things were much better than what the poor peasants ate at home, and if they did not go to sea, but at home, most of the produce of the peasants would have to be handed over to the nobles who lived in the castles, and what they had left was barely enough to fill their stomachs, and sometimes not enough to eat. When you go to sea as a seafarer, you can at least eat meat and eat enough.

Originally, Albert brought enough food to bring them back to Chennai from Java Island, but at first they drifted on the sea for more than a month without finding their target. When it was easy to find the target, he was chased and killed by the Dutch all the way, and he didn't know how many detours he had made, but he ran out of food, so he had to take the risk of robbing Wang Xinyu and them, and then became prisoners.

"Boss!" Albert told Wang Xinyu, "I heard that after you came back from Zhoushan, you are going to Manila to buy a soft sailing boat?" ”

Wang Xinyu replied: "That's right! We now have a Drake, and we simply can't meet the needs of large-scale transportation. “

Albert smiled bitterly: "The ships of the Spaniards are very expensive, their ships are far inferior to our English, and they are willing to sell some merchant ships made of miscellaneous wood, which are not at all comparable to our warships made of oak." But just like that, a 500-ton ship will sell for 10,000 pounds! It is about 100,000 taels of silver for your silver! As for the battleships, they sold them even more expensively, and ships like ours could not be taken without 300,000 taels of silver! So I advised the boss not to ask the Spaniards to buy a boat. ”

"Can you British ships be sold to me cheaply?"

"Of course! Let's put it this way, originally our kind of ship was the main warship of the British Royal Navy. But now it is outdated, our country has mass-produced frigates of the third rank of eight hundred tons, and also built battleships of seventeen hundred tons, and even battleships of almost two thousand tons! A large number of old fourth- and fifth-class cruisers that had participated in the Anglo-Spanish War and the Anglo-Dutch War were eliminated and disposed of cheaply to those pirates who had licenses. So our ships are definitely cheap, and they are all real battleships! Albert said proudly.

Through Albert's introduction, Wang Xinyu learned that the prices of the sixth-class plundering ships and fifth-class cruisers sold by the British were frighteningly cheap: originally a sixth-class privateer with a cost of 20,000 taels of silver and a displacement of 150 to 200 tons, the disposal price was only 5,000 taels of silver; The price of a fifth-class cruiser is a little more expensive, but it is also cheap, a fifth-class cruiser of more than 300 tons to 400 tons, the original cost is about 100,000 taels of silver, and the processing price is only 30,000 taels of silver; The Drake, the capital ship of the year, was sold a little more expensive, the original cost was about 200,000 taels of silver, and now the British sold it to pirates for 100,000 taels of silver.

As for the battleship, it was a sky-high price, a brand-new first-class battleship cost more than 200,000 pounds, about more than 2 million taels of silver! A second-class battleship, one will cost seventy or eighty thousand to one hundred thousand pounds! And it is impossible for the British to sell the battleship Wang Xinyu.

In 1921, a pound could be exchanged for four or five oceans, while in the seventeenth century, the unit of calculation was a pound of silver, which was indeed worth a very high value.

How many oak forests do you have to cut down to build a battleship! It takes more than three years to spend a lot of labor, so it is very expensive. It was as difficult to build a first-class battleship back then as it is to build a 100,000-ton nuclear-powered aircraft carrier now! Therefore, in the whole of Britain, there are few first-class battleships, and the real main force is the eight-hundred-ton third-class frigate.

"I believe that sooner or later, I will be able to earn money to buy battleships, and not just one, I will buy at least two first-class battleships, six or seven second-class battleships!" Wang Xinyu said confidently.

"But boss, now we can't afford to buy a new 3th class frigate. Now there are no old 3th class frigates for sale in our country, and if there were, I could buy a few at a very cheap price. Albert sighed.

"Now what you have to do is help us train seafarers first, and I will buy some merchant ships first?"

"I don't need to buy merchant ships, when I go to Chennai, I will go directly to the East India Company, and I can buy a batch of sixth-class privateers and fifth-class cruisers, and use these ships as ocean-going merchant ships, which can not only transport goods, but also rob those Dutch and Spanish merchant ships! If you want a large-capacity merchant ship, then it is better to build it yourself, and build a merchant ship from fir and other timber, the price will not be too expensive. That would be much more cost-effective than buying a merchant ship. Albert is still trying to sell Wang Xinyu the old ships that the British have eliminated.

Wang Xinyu thought about it and felt that it was still very cost-effective to buy old ships, there were a large number of privateers of more than 100 tons and 200 tons, plus a group of fifth-class cruisers, which could sweep the entire Chinese sea and the South China Sea, and those privateers of more than 100 tons could also sail into the Yangtze River, and even sail all the way to Chongqing! The firepower of privateers is not comparable to that of the Qing army's sailors, and they can easily cut off the transportation from Jiangnan to Beijing, and can block the communication between the north and south of the Yangtze River.

With a large number of privateers, they can go directly to the southwest, open up the connection between the Thirteen Families in Kuidong and the outside world, and rescue these heroes who insisted on resisting the Qing Dynasty before the Qing court eliminated them.

However, what Wang Xinyu didn't expect was that his plan was later strongly opposed by Zhang Huangyan and almost miscarried. Without Zhang Huangyan's cooperation, Wang Xinyu was not familiar with the Yangtze River route at all, and no matter how powerful the Yangtze River Fleet he formed, it would not be able to reach Wuchang, let alone Chongqing.

"Report to your lord! We're almost in Zhoushan! Li Rui came to the captain's office of the Drake and reported to Wang Xinyu.

On the sea, there were several small boats of the Qing army's sailors cruising. They saw the huge Ming warship from a distance, followed by a Xiyi soft sailing ship with the Ming battle flag, and they were frightened on the spot, and before the Ming fleet arrived, those Qing army sailors ran away without a trace.

"King Yanping's fleet is here!" When the soldiers and civilians of Zhoushan saw the arriving Ming army fleet, they rushed to the dock to greet them.

When people saw a huge soft sailing ship, the Zhejiang soldiers on the dock talked a lot.

"Strange, how come there is still a Tessie warship?"

"Yes! That ship is so big! ”

"Why is the ship of the Taixi people also flying the battle flag of our Daming?"

"That must have been bought by King Yanping!"

"Let's hurry up and report to Lord Zhang first! Let's just say that the fleet of the king of Yanping is coming! A petty officer with a general appearance said.

Someone reported to Zhang Huangyan, Zhang Huangyan hurriedly ordered someone to prepare horses, and he wanted to personally finish the dock to meet the envoy of King Yanping.