New Shun 1730

From the very beginning, the military reform idea of ​​the Dashun Navy was not to rely on its own battleships to defeat the British Navy and land in England.

Although Liu Yu thought so, he hoped that after the war, the old emperor would die and the new emperor would foolishly dismantle the seriously overstaffed battleship fleet. If the battleships were built for this goal, they would definitely exceed the standard after the war, and it would be extremely overstaffed. Then the sailors, navy, craftsmen, shipyard workers, lumberjacks, wood processing plants, naval food factories, etc. would make a big fuss.

However, the old emperor was not fooled and did not build battleships with all his strength. Even after being awakened by George Anson's battleship voyage around the world, he still remained calm and considered the long-term, maintaining a stable production speed and the number of battleships.

Therefore, Dashun had a lot of battleships in Europe, but not so many that they could fight the whole game and annihilate the British Navy.

Of course, Dashun's real strategy has not yet had the opportunity to show up, after all, it takes time.

It takes time to change hands in Bengal; it takes time to rob in the Caribbean; it still takes time to smuggle in the North American colonies.

Time is on the side of Dashun, and reality has not yet shown the terrible scene of the future, which leaves the British with no more choices.

Moreover, this is not a conspiracy, but an upright and even directly written plan.

Knowing it, what can we do?

Give up the English Channel, disperse the navy to the colonies to protect the routes, and then do some dispersion, bathe and burn incense, and pray for another divine wind to blow away the French landing fleet?

Moreover, in France's previous colonial strategy, it has always firmly controlled West Africa, and even tried to implement the black French reform plan in West Africa.

And Senegal to the Caribbean and America is actually much closer than going from Europe, and the routes are much more familiar.

Once Spain joins the war, then the standard triangle route of Senegal, Suriname and Havana can directly strangle the trade between Britain and its colonies.

You know, India is nothing now. The pearl on the British crown is the Caribbean island. India is just a scrap on the crown, not to mention the jewel of the crown.

So, if the skin is gone, where will the hair be attached? This simple truth can lead to the following conclusion: only with a crown can there be shining pearls on the crown; without a crown, there will be no shining pearls on the crown.

So, before William Pitt came to power, the debate in British politics was whether to protect Hanover or Britain?

And with the participation of Dashun in the war, the debate in British politics became whether to protect the crown or the pearl?

This is something that even a fool can judge.

Therefore, in fact, at this time, the route from Cape of Good Hope to Gibraltar, and even the triangular route area between Suriname, Senegal and Port-au-Prince, can be said to be unimpeded.

There may be a few lonely cruisers, but the warships escorting transport ships are enough to deal with it.

The good news sent by the clipper also told the commander of the support fleet to decide the time to go north by himself, as long as he didn't miss the monsoon season.

Chen Qinghai, the commander of the support fleet, did not go north immediately after receiving the news.

Instead, he asked the various units to rest at the Cape of Good Hope, eat more oranges and lemons, eat fresh vegetables, eat fresh meat, and enjoy the autumn at the Cape of Good Hope.

The combat engineers came at the right time. During the five-day holiday, they got enough rest at the Cape of Good Hope and also got enough vitamin supplements that were urgently needed for long-term sailing. Although there was no word for vitamins at that time, Dashun knew that eating lemons and fruits could prevent scurvy.

April autumn is the season when grapes mature at the Cape of Good Hope. The continuous vineyards here make the engineers who are resting here almost soak in wine.

The price is very cheap, and the reason is still the same old thing, that is, the Dutch habitual economic blind activism.

For example, the sugar crisis in Southeast Asia.

For example, the wine crisis in South Africa.

The Dutch are prone to this kind of blind economic action. They have suffered losses since the 17th century and have been suffering losses until the 19th century. They have not learned their lesson.

The reason for the large-scale planting of grapes here is that the French tariff war at that time caused the Netherlands to impose heavy taxes on French wine in order to counter it.

And the small area of ​​the Netherlands certainly cannot produce wine on its own.

Therefore, the Dutch East India Company at that time chose South Africa with a Mediterranean climate to promote grape planting.

With the promulgation of the French "Edict of Fontainebleau", a large number of French Protestants with nothing but technology ran here, and the grape industry has developed greatly.

But... historically, the reason why Spain went to war with Portugal in the Seven Years' War was that Portugal became a colony of Britain, which involves a simple economic problem.

That is, Portugal liberalized textile tariffs on Britain.

In return, and as a countermeasure to France, after all, France is a major wine country, and Britain liberalized wine tariffs on Portugal.

So, the blind Dutch once again made a blind economic route similar to the Batavia Sugar Crisis.

In recent years, life has become even more difficult because Dashun and the Netherlands have been smuggling together. Merchants have become rich, plantation owners and Cape farmers are crying, and Britain no longer wants Dutch wine.

But the places where grapes are grown are all mountainous areas, and other crops cannot be grown. They can only make do with this, which makes the price of wine extremely low.

The Cape is now a co-managed city of Dashun and the Netherlands. The Protestant and Dashun immigrant areas are separate.

Dashun did not rob the Dutch colonists' plantations, but divided up the land elsewhere.

Dashun grows vegetables, raises cattle, sheep, and grain.

The Dutch mainly grow grapes.

Therefore, the engineers who came here to repair and prepare for the last leg of the voyage had a pretty good life.

Local vegetables, tofu, buns, steamed buns, and flower rolls can all be eaten.

The cheap wine from the Netherlands that cannot be exported to Europe on a large scale and can only be sold to Africa can be drunk as water or stepped on a bucket.

Buffalo meat, ostrich eggs, oranges, lemons, these strange things can also be eaten.

And basically there is no need to pay silver. In Africa, the "cloth of sorrow" dyed with Dashun indigo is the hard currency, and it is an important trading item in the slave trade in West Africa at this time.

After a few days of rest, the engineers were able to carry out another long-distance voyage, and it was basically guaranteed that there would be no large-scale scurvy before reaching the Mediterranean.

The cool autumn at the Cape of Good Hope also prevented the emergence of enemies such as plague.

When they finished their rest and officially boarded the ship to set off, the senior officers of the support fleet looked at the vast ocean and sighed involuntarily.

"Today, we have truly surpassed the previous dynasty and stepped into the Western Ocean of this dynasty. I vaguely remember that when the Duke of Xingguo came to my house to find me and asked me to take the Jinghai Palace exam, how could I have thought that I, a landlubber, would be able to step on these thousands of miles of waves today and find a chance to be a marquis from the waves?"

Chen Qinghai was full of emotion facing the senior officers standing with him, and he really felt as if he was in another world.

These twenty years have really given him a feeling that every five years is a generation apart, and this feeling is especially true among naval officers.

At the beginning, they learned Latin, French, sailing, sail control, and navigation.

Then they learned star maps, positioning, measurement, and artillery battles.

Then they learned long-distance navigation, supply, surveying, and economic principles.

Then they had to learn the lunar distance angle method, star charts, and advanced surveying of sea navigation.

This group of people, from the hard sailing ships that were visible to the naked eye at the beginning, witnessed the dramatic changes in the sea of ​​Dashun over the past 20 years.

Almost every five years, they had to make new supplements to what they had to learn.

Everyone felt that they were like wood chips floating on the sea, moving with the waves and being pushed forward by the tide of the times.

Some of my classmates gradually couldn't keep up and were left behind by the times. They retired in Busan, Vladivostok, Ezo, and other places where they might never fight a decisive battle at sea in their lifetime. They got the rank of lieutenant colonel and slowly decayed like those old warships.

The younger generation, new faces are constantly emerging. The young interns in their first batch of captains, or the trainee captains after they became the commanders of the squadron, batches of people who were washed by the times, keenly grasped this opportunity and climbed up.

Chen Qinghai knew that after this voyage to the West, the opportunity period would end. The combat effectiveness of the Dashun Navy would remain, relying on tradition and shelf.

But the era of more than 20 years of ups and downs, everything was in full swing, full of vitality, and new faces constantly emerging, will never come back.

The naval era in which the captain's son was still the captain and the sailor's son was still the sailor had begun at the moment when the Dashun Navy officially went to the West.

Although Chen Qinghai had already boarded the car, he still had some nostalgia for the past era of vitality. He knew that all this would pass, because he was sure that Dashun would win.

The smallest glimpse that gave him confidence was the lemons loaded on the ship. Before this, no one knew why they would spend money foolishly to buy oranges and lemons at the Cape of Good Hope and ship them back. Even if there was nothing to ship, it was better to have an empty ship than to spend money to buy lemons and lose money.

Sun Tzu said:

He who wins before the battle has more calculations; he who loses before the battle has less calculations. More calculations are better than less calculations, let alone no calculations! From this point of view, the victory and defeat are clear.

The General Staff, which has been established for many years, has been doing what in the navy in these years? Before, not all officers knew it.

Now it seems that the General Staff, which was originally prepared, has been doing one thing for more than ten years: preparing for today's voyage to the West.

From artillery, shipbuilding, fighter planes, diplomacy.

After the lunar distance angle method, in the name of Venus transit for the common knowledge of all mankind, crazy surveying, drawing, and compiling standard longitude and latitude maps all over the world.

From soldiers' boots, woolen uniforms, lemons, oranges, cabbage and tofu, the land has been piled up like a mountain for more than ten years, and people have been sent here to cultivate the land day by day, perhaps just for this last stop before sailing to the West.

The baskets of lemons loaded on the ship now are the source of confidence for Chen Qinghai and other officers.

The more you count, the better, and the less you count, the more you win.