The Soul of the Han Dynasty in the Late Ming Dynasty

Chapter 409
At the end of April, the weather was already very hot. Most of the sailors on the Japanese ship were shirtless, and few of them wore helmets and armor.

Huang Han's team must maintain a military appearance at all times, and there is no such thing as a man with arms. Now they all put on summer clothes, and no one wears armor when sailing.

After discovering five merchant ships of unknown origin, how could Huang Han let them go? He immediately issued an order to seize the ships through semaphore. The seven warships were separated to increase the search area.

Seeing the flagship waving the flag, the captains realized that the business was coming, and immediately passed the semaphore to each other to get closer to the flagship. Soon, the seven warships could use binoculars to clearly see the armed merchant ship that was about to be robbed.

All the people on board couldn't help cheering, no wonder, it was so boring to face the vast sea all day long, and the "Red Banner Army" was very excited to have prey.

The seven warships with full sails and full drive went straight to the target through the wind and waves. Everyone knew that the first large-scale naval battle of the "Red Banner Army" navy was about to begin.

Seven warships of our side faced five armed merchant ships of the enemy. All the gunners were in a state of combat readiness, checking the sub-guns of the Fran cannons, checking the fixed powder packs of the Hongyi cannons, etc.

The Marine Corps is not equipped with armor. They have loaded their guns and installed bayonets. Most of the heavy infantry are veterans who have seen blood, and they only start to wear armor at this time.

The seven warships were busy, but they were busy and not chaotic. No one was nervous, and everyone had smiles on their faces.

Because everyone knows that the mentor is watching from the command cabin. If you are brave enough to fight and be seen by the mentor, your future prospects are limitless. Besides, how enjoyable it is to rob pirate ships, artillery, goods and gold and silver treasures!
Huang Han is a rather shameless person. He always advertises himself and the "Red Banner Army" as the embodiment of justice, and deliberately discredits all maritime merchants in his lectures.

Now the soldiers of the "Red Banner Army" and merchant sailors all know that nine out of ten sailors are not good birds. Maritime merchants will be guest pirates. In the chaotic society at sea, there is basically no captain who does not have blood debts in his hands.

The great, glorious, and correct "Red Banner Army" is a regular army and a national army. Soldiers must not be trained to become murderers who have no scruples about murder and robbery.

Therefore, Huang Han advocated that he represented justice, and it was a last resort to use violence to control violence.

The "Red Banner Army" going to the sea will destroy all the pirates, but the "Red Banner Army" is different from the pirates. They don't kill easily, and try to surrender without fighting as much as possible. The pirates who choose to surrender will save their lives.

The seven warships sailed at full speed with the wind and waves, and it didn't take long to approach the five armed merchant ships sailing in formation. The speed of these ships was about five knots. It was obvious that the approaching "Red Banner Army" warship was spotted by the enemy ship.

Through the binoculars, you can clearly see the panic of the sailors and gunners on the five Japanese ships. They have never seen such a large ship that can maintain a speed faster than their own oarsmen.

This is the characteristic of Japanese Zhuyin boats. Some models are equipped with sixteen giant oars, which can be speeded up by manpower paddling. Sometimes even two or three people work together to paddle the giant oars, so that Zhuyin boats can form a sprint-like speed in a short time.

Why short sprints?That's because when the manpower is limited, after half an hour of paddling with all their strength, the sailors will have weak legs and feet, and the speed of the boat will naturally slow down.

Often it takes only half an hour to sprint to decide whether to catch up with the ship that is about to be robbed, which doubles the efficiency of robbing.

If you want to do business without capital in the sea where the jungle is prey to the jungle, you can’t do it without some special skills. The first requirement is speed. If your own ship’s speed is not superior, even if the ship is strong and the guns are strong, it will be useless.

These five armed merchant ships belonged to a maritime merchant. The owner of the ship was the Japanese daimyo Tsugawa family, and the leader was Tsugawa Toshin, who also served as the captain of a Zhuyin ship.

Zheng Zhilong, who has just risen recently, controls more than half of the trade in the East and Southeast Asia.

The Jin Chuan family only owned a dozen armed merchant ships, and their strength was not enough to compete with Zheng Zhilong. They chose to be soft and rely on their old face to pay 2000 taels of silver per ship at a preferential price to allow them to sail to Luzon or Daming.

The Zheng Zhilong Pirate Group received a protection fee of 1 taels of silver, and the five ships of Tsugawa Dushin all received an iconic Zheng family flag, which is equivalent to the tax-paid symbol of later generations.

The Zheng family is very awesome, and if they hang up the banner they gave, they will agree to provide protection.

If the armed merchant ships under Zheng's banner were robbed by other forces, Zheng Zhilong's fleet would kill the maritime merchants or professional pirates even if they chased them all the way to the ends of the earth.

Because daring to violate the new ocean order established by the Zheng family will pay a bloody price. There is no place to reason at sea, only life and death contests. Zheng Zhilong is no different from other pirates, killing people like hemp, and even more ruthless.

With the banner of the Zheng family and five armed merchant ships sailing in a team, the Jinchuan family should be safe and sound.

But this world has never been unreasonable, and seven large ships appeared outflanking the wind and breaking through the waves, and their menacing appearance made people feel terrified.

The ships of the two sides approached, and the Japanese ships were waving a flag. This flag was worth 2000 taels of silver, and it was the proof that Zheng Zhilong Group was protected by the Zheng family's warship with the protection fee.

Huang Han is the commander-in-chief with the seal of General Ping Liao, and Zheng Zhilong is the little guerrilla general of coastal defense. His flag is nothing! The "Red Banner Army" did not recognize the Zheng Family Banner, but only five sea-going ships with their cargo probably worth no less than 10,000+ taels of silver.

Even closer, the "Red Banner Army" warship has long been ready for battle.

No one yelled to persuade them to surrender, because the sailors and gunners on the other side's armed merchant ships couldn't hear it, and they couldn't use the semaphore. Now there is no standardized unified semaphore.

The semaphore used by the "Red Banner Army" is only an internal agreement, and only the "Red Banner Army" system can understand it.

Other battalions, including pirates, also used flags to convey messages. The flags of the Ming army were still very standardized. Basically, any trained regular army could understand them. For teams with lower quality, at least grassroots military officers could understand flags.

The flag language of the pirates is completely an agreement of their own people, there is no standard, in the eyes of the "Red Banner Army", it is just waving the flag randomly, and it is difficult for gods to guess.

Therefore, it is impossible for the "Red Banner Army" preparing to bombard to communicate with the opponent in semaphore, and they are not ready to speak until the opponent shoots a white flag.

The white flag means surrender. Everyone on the earth knows that the warring parties in the Ming Dynasty also acquiesced that the white flag is a declaration of surrender and renunciation of force.

(End of this chapter)