The opinions of the Red Mansion side were quickly unified, and several crew members on the Pride were quite excited, because they realized that since they wanted to buy a ship, they must need a captain, so Hu Xiaolin and Peng Qiang were a little impatient, and the two of them stood up together and said, I officially propose to you that I want to apply to be the captain!

Gu Jin, who was sitting in the front, listened to it and nodded frequently, and then turned his head and suggested to Sun Lao and the others who were sitting next to him, I feel that this proposal is good, if the plenary meeting adopts this proposal to buy a boat, I think that it is a good personnel arrangement to send Xiao Zhu Xiaoxu and Peng Hu to these sailing ships for exercise and exercise in the next step, as for their current positions, they can arrange other people, after all, this can form an echelon-type captain training model, think about it carefully, and feel more and more that it is a very good personnel arrangement......

Immediately after that, Boss Luo made a suggestion: in the near future, Wanshan Island will be provided with a set of simple lead bomb production equipment, the equipment is very simple---- nothing more than a set of lead bullet melting and forming molds, in this way, in addition to the hand @ grenade @ bomb body, as long as lead and copper can be purchased in Macao, Wanshan Island will have a basically complete ammunition production capacity.

The plenary meeting immediately agreed to Boss Luo's proposal.

In short, this meeting decided that even in the face of pressure from the Qing court, even if we do not hesitate to fight, we will never give up Wanshan Island!

Everyone agrees that the Wanshan Islands are relatively close to the mainland, and it is relatively easy to obtain labor for construction compared to other places, so the strategic value of this archipelago is very important to us, no matter how you evaluate it.

Of course, we must always be prepared for a possible large-scale attack by the Qing army.

First of all, it is necessary to instruct the trade representative office in Macao to find ways to strengthen intelligence gathering through various channels of contacts, so as to obtain timely news of the Qing army's attack

At the same time, the meeting also made clear the minimum goal: in the last resort, in order to reduce the pressure on the Macau authorities, we may leave Macau, but we will certainly not give up the big and small Wanshan Islands.

The meeting also decided: if necessary, the Pride should always be ready to participate in possible naval battles, and if it is clear that the Qing army will have a larger attack, then it will not hesitate to throw the Nicole into battle!

For this reason, a group of members of the Fire Pond Club in the venue became quite excited, because it was really possible to spread the flames of war into the Pearl River Estuary.

Shelling Humen!

Send the Xin'an City Garrison to the city of Guangzhou!

Let the Tartars taste the power of the 57-style rifle and the hand @grenade @ bullet!

Battleline infantry tactics will be available in advance!

Forcing the Qing court to sign a treaty of trade with us!

Discussions like this made the venue very lively, and in the end, it was Sun Lao who came forward to let Yu Hewei, the CEO of the "Beishang Fund", speak, which made the theme of memories not crooked......

Immediately afterwards, all the shareholders agreed to the proposal put forward by President Yu on behalf of the board of directors of the "Beishang Fund": a budget of 50,000 taels of silver was specially set aside for the resettlement, reclamation and armament construction of the large and small Wanshan Islands, and the budget required the Macao side to rapidly expand the size of the garrison and the rapid expansion of the maritime defense force---- including the purchase of two sailing ships with a displacement of no less than that of the Assassin and equip them with our newly developed 600-millimeter light mortar guns to form combat effectiveness as soon as possible.

Obviously, the people of the Huotang Club were overjoyed by this final decision, and the "pacifists" of the Vegetable Garden Club were not opposed to such an outcome, after all, they were only against "reckless militarism", and of course they supported the idea of resolutely not abandoning Wanshan Island, because of the huge trade interests there, and therefore they supported any move to further strengthen the defense of Wanshan Island.

Zhu Beiguo believes that after careful assessment, considering that the Qing court will implement the order to move the sea in two years, and just a few months later, there will be a major historical event in which the Zheng family enters the Yangtze River and Bingfeng points directly to Jinling---- so it can be concluded that the military strength of the Qing court will be seriously contained by this series of events, so the Qing court does not have the strength to use troops against us for the time being.

Conclusion: Not only will we not abandon the large and small Wanshan Islands, but in the face of a possible limited attack by the Qing army, we are sure that we will win the battle and keep this strategically valuable forward base.

In view of this, the meeting put forward some follow-up construction projects for the large and small Wanshan Island, such as the preliminary construction preparation of the glass factory, and also included Lao Wang's suggestion, he said that another set of sulfuric acid/carbonic acid sugar production line in the cave should be opened immediately, and installed in the current sugar factory in Xiliuhekou, and then the existing core production equipment of the sugar factory should be dismantled and sent to Xiaowanshan Island for installation and production.

Lao Wang explained that although it is a little late now, if the equipment of the sugar factory can be delivered in time and installed and put into production in time, it should be able to catch up with the end of the ripening season of sugarcane in Liangguang, although most of the sugarcane in Liangguang is ripe and harvested in early winter, but some of it is still ripe in early spring.

And at this time, there are still huge quantities of crude brown sugar and even worse quality black brick sugar on the market, in fact, these are high-quality raw materials for white sugar production, as long as the Macao Trade Representative can purchase these raw materials, then the sugar factory can be put into operation immediately, after all, we have the technical advantage, so that the sugar cane and jaggery sugar conversion rate level is much higher than this era, so once the sugar factory is put into operation, it will definitely be profitable.

Lao Wang finally concluded: All in all, setting up a sugar factory on Wanshan Island not only has a high profit, but also saves the Pride from transporting sugar to Macao in the future......

As for the glass factory, because the quartz sand from Xiaowanshan Island was still in the experiment, no definite conclusion has been reached yet, so it has not been included in the discussion for the time being.

The contents of this plenary meeting were quickly put into action, and in a hurry, the Pride set sail from the Red Pier on December 31, the last day of 1658.

The Pride's first destination is, of course, Minado.

There, as usual, King Unduhara's trade representatives, Zheng Fu and Haruban, would trade with the Pride.

A total of 40,000 taels of silver, glassware, glass mirrors, sugar, sweet potato wine, Australian calico and other Australian goods will be delivered near the deserted beaches of Menado, as well as arms, including 200 Federation Type 1 single-shot handcuffs and 4,000 rounds of ammunition, as well as the latest 50 57-style hand@grenade@ bullets, which are worth 9,700 taels of silver.

After completing these deals, Pride will continue northward, with Macau and Xiaowanshan Island as its target ports.

At present, the Pride is carrying various types of cargo worth 200,000 taels of silver, in addition to 350 Type 57 rifles produced by the Shuguang Machinery Factory, 500 Type 57 hand@grenade@projectile bodies, and the latest weapon developed by the Shuguang Machine Factory: three 600-mm light mortar guns.

Also loaded with the core equipment of the sugar mill and the power engine, as well as a set of 10 kilowatt coal-fired Stirling electric motor equipment in the cave, will soon be able to use electricity on Xiaowanshan Island.

In addition, there are specially prefabricated fortified black ** additives from Baisha Chemical Group to Wanshan Island, and various basic pharmaceutical chemicals provided by Wuzhou Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd., including the newly developed anti-plague basic preparation - zinc sulfate.

In the past year, thanks to the support of labor and the official grid connection of the Moon River Hydropower Station, the traversal who remained in the Red House has made rapid progress in scientific research and industrial project development.

Two days later, on January 2, 1659, the Nicole also left the Red Pier, and in addition to going to the port of Jolo to complete the trade activities with the Sulu state, it was also to carry about 100 Han Chinese tenant slaves from Vietnam back to Mornington Island, as part of the trade agreement between the two sides.

Next, Nicole will go to Sin'an City to deliver all kinds of Australian goods to Pimont's "Diao Company", and then bring back large quantities of coal, all kinds of ores, and all kinds of basic industrial raw materials, and of course, rice and fruit, as well as the goods needed by the growing and booming department store.

In addition, by the way, they also had to bring all kinds of supplies to Hou Xianglin, and bring back orphans adopted by the Dili Church and so on.

By the way, Sun Lao also takes the Nicole to Sin'an every time, and now the production of sugar cane and rice on the estate of Duchess Margaret is very large, and it is already a big customer of the Australians, the key is that I heard that Sun Lao has made the Duchess pregnant, and Hou Xianglin is also quite fruitful---- he is about to become a father......