In mid-December, on the outskirts of Guangzhou, Guangzhou Shipyard.

There was another group of high-ranking naval officials, but the workers in the shipyard didn't pay much attention to it, because they all knew that these high-ranking naval officials were here to participate in the launching ceremony of the warship.

Today, Song Binglin, commander of the Second Fleet of the Datang Navy, personally arrived here to support the launching ceremony of the cruiser Luoding.

The cruiser Luoding is also the fifth ship of the Lianzhou-class third-class cruisers, but for the Second Fleet, this cruiser is the first cruiser of the Second Fleet, which is of great significance to the Second Fleet, otherwise, Vice Admiral Song Binglin would not have personally come here to preside over the launching ceremony.

Standing in the dock, presiding over the launching ceremony, Song Binglin is full of spirits, two years ago, he was just an armed merchant fleet in the Datang Navy, but because of many meritorious contributions, he was successively transferred to the cruiser as the captain, and then served as the commander of the second detachment of the first fleet, and the second detachment, that is, the only two main detachments in the Tang Dynasty.

He led the second fleet to participate in the Battle of Nanao Island, and then participated in the Battle of Mawei in Fuzhou, and then led the fleet to continue northward and participated in the fleet's blockade of the Yangtze River estuary.

With the cooperation of the army, they successfully entered the Yangtze River and annihilated a Ming army naval division entrenched near Wusongkou.

He was soon promoted, became the commander of the Second Fleet, and was promoted to Vice Admiral, and he was also ambitious when he first took office, wanting to build the Second Fleet into a real ocean-going fleet, and firmly control the vast sea area south of Nanao Island.

At present, the garrison of the First Fleet of Datang has been moved to the coasts of Fujian, Zhejiang, and Nanzhili, with Wusongkou as the main base and Mawei, Xiamen and other ports in Fujian as auxiliary bases.

The coastal areas of Guangdong and the many naval bases on Nan'ao Island, which has been placed under the jurisdiction of Guangdong, were all handed over to the Second Fleet.

However, the current strength of the Second Fleet is a little weak, before the Battle of Nanao Island, there was a total of one cruiser and three frigates, but they were all seconded to the First Fleet, and His Majesty also said that these two frigates will not be returned to the Second Fleet, and the shortage of the Second Fleet will be supplemented by the newly built warships first.

Now, after the Second Fleet has been replenished, it only has two frigates, and as for the cruiser Luoding in front of it, it has just been launched, and it will be outfitted, sea trials and training in the future, and it is impossible to put into battle without half a year's effort.

The lack of capital ships has led to the fact that the Second Fleet can now only rely on more than two dozen armed merchant ships.

However, although the First Fleet is strong, their tasks are also more arduous, first of all, to support the Yangtze River Fleet in combat, cover and cooperate with the army's operations, and secondly, to block the mouth of the Yangtze River, including the entire Nanzhili and even Shandong waters.

And at the same time, you have to deal with a lot of pirates!

On the side of the Second Fleet, the task is not too heavy, and now the Tang Dynasty has negotiated peace and reconciliation with the Franco, and at the same time signed a treaty of friendship and trade with the Spaniards, after leveling these two world naval powers, the small indigenous countries in Southeast Asia, as well as the ships of other Western countries that occasionally appear in the waters of Southeast Asia, basically cannot pose any practical threat to the Second Fleet.

Now for the Tang Navy, the numerous pirates are their headaches.

Although in terms of the strength of warships and other aspects, the Datang Navy is actually no longer comparable to those pirate gangs, but these pirates are elusive, but they have also caused a lot of trouble to the Datang Navy.

Today, a detachment of the First Fleet, a frigate is sailing at high speed in the open sails, and in front of it are three smaller ships.

However, the three ships in front were all equipped with artillery, and the ships were small, so at a glance they were not serious merchant ships, not even armed merchant ships, but pirate ships specially used for sea raids.

"These pirates are so bold, they dare to rob my Datang merchant ships, they are simply impatient, don't sink them, outsiders still think that our Datang Navy is afraid of these pirates!"

The commander of the Third Squadron of the First Fleet, Rear Admiral Bao Qinghe's face was gloomy!

He was leading the fleet on patrol, but he saw a ship burning, and after rescuing the people who had fallen into the water, he found that these people who had fallen into the water were still half of his own family, and they belonged to the ships of the Pacific Shipping Company, which had just been established for a long time.

The Pacific Shipping Company is actually a shipping company invested and established by the royal industry, but at present, because the scale is still relatively small, it does not undertake external business, and it is to undertake the transportation tasks within the Datang government, especially the transportation tasks of the factories under the Ministry of Industry.

This transport ship transported a whole shipload of construction equipment and materials from Guangzhou to Wusong Port to be used for the shipyard to be built in Wusong, because these things are valuable and valuable, but if they are not valuable, they are not worth much, and they are more urgent, so they did not wait for the escort ships arranged by the navy, and they went on the road alone.

Originally, I thought that it should not be a big problem to advance along the coastline under the control of the Tang Navy, but I didn't expect that when I arrived near Zhoushan, I was attacked by pirates.

After the pirates plundered the ship, they found that the ship was full of worthless building materials and construction equipment that they couldn't understand.

When Bao Qinghe heard this, his face immediately darkened, and he immediately summoned several warships under his command to start searching for these pirate ships.

Eventually, the three pirate ships were found in the waters not far away!

And those pirates were naturally unwilling to be captured, and they didn't have the guts to fight the navy's warships, so they just ran away.

But their pirate ships are of course fast, but they are still traditional Chinese traditional sailing ships, which are the opponents of warships specially designed for naval warfare, which chased after most of the day, although several other armed merchant ships under Bao Qinghe's command have been left behind, but Bao Qinghe is fearless, and directly led the only frigate to catch up.

Seeing that the distance was approaching from one thousand meters to five hundred meters, Bao Qinghe showed a hideous smile on his face: "Look where you guys are still running!" ”

Five hundred meters, three hundred meters, the guns in front of the frigate are already firing one after another!

By the time it reached a distance of 100 meters, the frigate had already begun to turn and continued to close the distance, and then walked side by side with the last battleship of the other side.

Sailing side by side within 100 meters, the best position for the official battleship to exert its firepower, and after a few rounds of salvos, the opposite ship was on fire.

Bao Qinghe didn't care about them, but led the battleship to continue to move forward, and then used the speed of the frigate to catch up one by one, and then used the powerful firepower to name one by one.

Without giving them the slightest chance to resist, they directly hit the three pirate ships, two of which caught fire, and one hit more than half of the water, forcing the pirates on board to jump into the sea one after another.

"Fish them all up, and if you intervene and resist, you won't be killed!"

After Bao Qinghe commanded such an effortless clean-up operation, he began to return with dozens of pirates.

Interestingly, among these pirates were the Japanese and the natives of Southeast Asia, and of course, more of them were the Chinese from the coastal provinces.

For them, the Datang Navy's treatment has always been extremely simple, and the only way to deal with them is to take them back to the port, and then hang them on the dock and dry them!

Two days later, there were dozens of corpses floating in the wind on the wharf of Ningbo Port, but they were not the only ones floating in the wind, there were more than 200 other corpses.

The corpses of these pirates were lined up from one end of the port to the other, and the view from a distance was quite spectacular, enough to make anyone who arrived at the port of Ningbo tremble!

The suppression of pirates in the waters of Zhejiang is also the main task of the First Fleet of the Datang Navy at present, and there are really many pirates in this place, there are big pirate gangs, but more of them are small and medium-sized pirates, which seriously affects the maritime security of the waters of Zhejiang.

And this is unbearable for the Tang Dynasty, which plans to open Quanzhou, Ningbo, and Songjiang to trade after Guangzhou and Lianzhou.

The Tang Dynasty, which tasted the sweetness of maritime trade, even if Li Xuan did not promote it now, the officials of the navy and the cabinet would also try their best to promote the development of maritime trade.

The navy wants influence, and then it wants to compete for more military spending to expand the navy's fleet, and the cabinet wants the development of industry and commerce through maritime trade and tariff revenues, well, in the final analysis, it is all about money.

Datang opens up sea trade, who is the happiest, naturally is a legitimate businessman, but for some maritime merchants who relied on smuggling to monopolize sea trade in the past, this is very bad.

But anyone can go to sea to do business, how can they make money!

Therefore, many people have become pirates or support pirates, trying to crack down on the opening of the port and trade.

And those pirates have also been under huge pressure recently, and the continuous clean-up of the Datang Navy has caused them heavy losses, so the two sides also hit it off and started a joint effort, so the coastal waters of Zhejiang and even Fujian have not been very peaceful recently.

But in this regard, the navy is happy to see it, because if they act in a group, the Datang Navy will be desperate, so they will directly find their lair, and then dozens of warships will swing, hundreds of naval guns will be bombarded, and no matter how awesome the pirate gang is, it will be finished!

Therefore, although pirates are rampant now, in time, the navy is still confident that they will be destroyed.

The previous Ming army sailors could press these pirates to the ground and rub them, and there was no reason why the Tang Navy that defeated the Ming army sailors couldn't do it!

But the trouble now is that although these pirates are united, they still do their own things as before, and they don't give the Datang Navy a chance to directly catch the main force and beat it up, so the current Datang Navy can only see the moves, and gradually eliminate the pirate force by strengthening daily patrols and gradually cleaning up the coastal islands where pirates can hide.

However, the coastal areas of Zhejiang and Fujian were not peaceful, but they still did not stop the Tang Dynasty's determination to open ports and trade in Quanzhou, Ningbo and Songjiang.