The commander of the exploration fleet is Li Shaojie, and the deputy commander is Van Pitt. The eight modified sailing ships attached to the fleet will be assigned to the two exploration squadrons, and the captains of each ship and the backbone personnel at all levels on board will be selected from the Admiralty to serve as outstanding personnel, including He Wu, Liu Shouyou, and others, all of whom have been outstanding personnel trained by the Far East Admiralty for many years.

In addition, the co-captain of each ship is a Dutch instructor drawn from the Far Eastern Training Fleet. This group of Dutch instructors was the group of prisoners captured by the Far East in the raid on Hirado that year.

They have been serving in the Far East for almost a decade and have been working as instructors in the Jeju Island Training Brigade of the Admiralty of the Far East Company. Recruits, cadets and non-commissioned officers of the Far Eastern Admiralty will be trained in the training brigade.

Because the Far East and the Dutch colonists were in a hostile state on the islands of the South Seas, and the Far East Company was generally prejudiced against Westerners, a group of Dutch sailors with rich maritime experience such as Van Bit could only stay in the beautiful Jeju Island all year round to enjoy the coconut groves on the beach.

Of course, these Dutch are quite satisfied with their current life, first of all, the Far East is very well paid, their position is instructors, and their salaries and various subsidies are above the middle level in the Far Eastern Army.

The most respected people in the Far Eastern Company are not the powerful, but the people who are really capable.

These people have been at sea for many years, and they dare to cross the ocean with a broken ship, and they are unrivaled in the Far East in terms of their skills in maneuvering sailboats and their experience in sailing across the oceans.

Therefore, as instructors of the Admiralty training fleet, they also fully enjoyed the feeling of being respected, and many captains and boatswains of the Far East Admiralty would take the initiative to salute them when they saw them, and affectionately call them instructors. makes a bunch of original scumbags now act like high-level intellectuals every day. It's indecent.

Moreover, the treatment of the Far Eastern Army is very good, especially such a unit as the training fleet, which belongs to the nature of academies, and is relatively superior in terms of housing and other treatment. The training fleet trains and practices in the waters off Jeju Island all year round, and there is no danger. It also allows them to engage in respectable professions every day, making these Dutchmen live a very nourishing life.

They are now married to North Korean women in Jeju, and they are already full of children and have good family conditions. Companies that have families in Europe have also brought their families to Jeju Island through the Ministry of Intelligence to reunite them with their families.

Now they can't change except for a white skin, in fact, they are far Easterners through and through, and they and their families are fluent in Chinese. Eating the food of the Han people, especially their descendants, after receiving the six years of basic compulsory education in the Far East, they changed their Han nationality and became authentic Far Easterners.

At present, the Far East Admiralty training fleet on Jeju Island has developed considerably, with dozens of improved sailboats. Because the Far Eastern Admiralty has been expanding, the training tasks in peacetime are very heavy. Almost all year round, it is not idle.

And when the Far East Company needs to mobilize all of the company's maritime capacity, the training fleet will also be requisitioned. For example, in the past two years, the company has received displaced people along the coast of Daming, and the training fleet has always participated in it, and there are more than six months a year, pulling the displaced people to and from the coastal area of Daming, Liaodong, Nanyang and other places. Last year, the company's military committee launched the Indian campaign, and the training fleet also undertook part of the shipping task of transporting troops and materials.

Since the inception of the training fleet, the Dutch have used their excellent boat handling skills and vast seafaring experience. Indeed, a large number of qualified naval officers and men have been trained for the Far East Navy, and they have made great contributions to the Far East Navy's success today.

The company has established an exploration fleet, and has also transferred a large number of Dutch instructors from the training fleet to serve as deputy positions in various important positions in the exploration fleet. Although the Far Eastern Navy developed to this day. A lot of resources have been invested, but there is still a big gap between the ocean navigation and the Western colonizers.

There really is no shortcut to this, and it can't be changed in a short period of time. After all, Western colonizers have practiced colonial trade for more than two hundred years, accumulated a lot of seafaring experience, and have also fought storms in rough seas for hundreds of years.

Everyone only remembers Magellan and Columbus, but forgets the countless other sea adventurers lying in the depths of the ocean. In this era, navigation technology is extremely backward, and sailing across the ocean is basically a matter of life.

What the Far East lacks is such accumulation and heritage, and the road has to be taken step by step, and the Far East Navy is still only a primary school student, and it may take many years of hard work to truly become the dream of the empire that never sets on the world in those days.

Li Shaojie, commander of the exploration fleet, attached great importance to the three-month training for survival in the tropical rainforest. He was well aware of the harsh environment of the islands in the South Seas in this era, and in many cases, poisonous insects, snakes, pythons, and malaria alone could put an expedition in a desperate situation.

Therefore, he demanded that all members of the expedition fleet must study seriously and be assessed every month. And he also led by example, participated in this training from beginning to end, and the assessment results were excellent every time. Under his leadership, all the members of the expedition fleet did not dare to slack off, and they studied hard during the training period and achieved good assessment results.

Li Shaojie also proposed to the Military Commission to set up a wilderness survival school. As Far Eastern companies continue to expand, they are bound to face many complex and harsh environments. For example, extreme areas such as hot tropical rainforests, barren Gobi, vast Siberian snowfields, and endless deserts will test Far Eastern companies.

The Military Council attached great importance to this proposal and studied it. It was decided to increase this expenditure in the Military Commission's military budget for next year and to gradually build several schools in the north, Nanyang, and other places. Carry out some basic training for the company's personnel who go to serve and work in harsh areas to avoid unnecessary casualties.

The Exploration Fleet also hired a group of local natives in the South Seas, who were all attached to and loyal to the Far East Company. The reason why the exploration fleet hired them is because these local natives are hunters who have been living in the rainforest all year round, and they have a strong ability to survive in the jungle.

The Exploration Fleet not only recruited these experienced natives of the South Seas into the Exploration Fleet, but also made them instructors to train all fleet members to survive in the rainforest.

After months of preparation, the exploration fleet was finally ready, and both detachments were ready to enter the rough Pacific Ocean. Fleet Commander Li Shaojie and Deputy Commander Van Bit both set off with the Pacific Exploration Squadron. (To be continued.) )

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