On May 10, the First Fleet left the ocean near Massachusetts in a rainy weather.

Lu Ming walked on the thick deck of the "10 August" in an oilcloth raincoat, the sea was a little rough and the ship was very bumpy, but Lu Ming was patrolling the deck as if he were walking on the ground. Having been on the ship for several years, he is now an old sailor.

"The British are so poor that they have been here for a week and have only managed to grab a fishing boat to transport furs." Second Lieutenant Demer, who had already served as the captain of the battleship "August 10", muttered. Coming from the Netherlands, he looked down on these bitter Brits, if Lu Ming hadn't refused, he would have been ready to bring someone up to serve the broken villages of those Brits.

"Do you see their poor side?" Lu Ming turned around and looked at the navigator behind him. At this time, the rain was a little heavier, and the hair on Demere's forehead was completely wet, and it was wet and sticking to his forehead.

"In 1620, the Mayflower arrived in Plymouth, Massachusetts, carrying the Leyden Mass and some 'strangers' (1), and half of them died in the first winter, but it was with the help of the Indians that they learned to plant and hunt, and barely took root." Lu Ming said slowly, "It's only been ten years, and now the power of the British has spread all over Massachusetts. The Massachusetts Bay Company's immigrant ships have been bringing in a steady stream of immigrants from the mainland, and now they have a self-government. If they continue to develop like this, they may become a formidable competitor to our country in the future. Lu Ming patted Demer's shoulder and said worriedly, "Okay." My Navigator. Now back to your post. Check out our routes. ”

"Yes, Captain." Demer saluted, and before turning to leave, he couldn't help but ask, "Will this colony really become a formidable enemy of our country?" ”

"Maybe." Lu Ming replied noncommittally.

"Then destroy her! From now on, we will come to cut the wool once a year to see how she develops! Admiral Demel clenched his fist vigorously and said.

The rain was getting heavier and heavier, and all the drainage holes on the battleship "10 August" had been opened. Five warships cleave the waves in the rough waters and head for their next destination. After wasting a few days in Massachusetts, the First Fleet had decided to head south to the Chesapeake Bay. Only wealthy Virginia was able to provide enough wealth for the First Fleet.

While the First Fleet was struggling to move forward in the storm, William. The British fleet under Clifford's command was openly anchored in the harbor of St. Augustine, the capital of the Florida colony of the Kingdom of Spain.

Since the siege of the city by pirates two years ago, the Spaniards have learned the hard way and spent tens of thousands of pesos to repair and expand the fort at the mouth of the Matanzas River and the castle in the river port. Today, the forts at the mouth of the river have also been fortified, the number of artillery pieces has increased to 16, and some army soldiers have been deployed to defend them. The castle walls in the river harbor were also enlarged and heightened, not only the gun emplacement at the head of the city was doubled, but also wooden stakes and chains were installed in many parts of the river. Prevent being attacked by enemy ships approaching and raiding.

Of course, so many new things have been added. No one can't do it. For this reason, the Florida general of the Kingdom of Spain, who was stationed here, repeatedly asked his superiors to increase the number of people. So, last year and this year, the Viceroy of New Spain sent several additional groups of immigrants to St. Augustine. Among them were some Indians from Mexico, Spaniards and Italians who emigrated from the mainland, and many Central Europeans from Austrian prisons.

With these new immigrants, the population of San Agustín exceeded 3,000 in one fell swoop, making it one of the largest cities in New Spain. The new settlers from Central and Southern Europe reclaimed a lot of wasteland under the organization of General Florida, and they cultivated corn, sugar cane, and tobacco on the wasteland, and after two years of development, St. Augustine, the best place in East Florida, once again had some prosperity in its former glory.

And this is precisely the reason why these British fleets came to trade. This year, however, they have encountered something different – the old market, which has been unchanged in the past, seems to have changed somehow this year.

To put it simply, the Spaniards did not seem to be very interested in the cloth they were trading, and they seemed to be willing to pick and choose only among the woollen woollens, and they shouted that the price was too high for the English to lower the price a little.

William. Clifford and his lieutenant Nick glanced at each other, and both saw something bad in each other's eyes.

Clifford came from the East India Company and had been making a profit by re-exporting Indian cotton cloth. After the imposition of high tariffs on Indian cotton cloth in Britain, he has been using the Netherlands, North France and other regions as markets, among which the Dutch market is the most important. The affluent Lowlands provided Clifford with a lot of profits, making him a formidable merchant within the East India Company.

However, due to the increasing investment in the local cotton textile industry in the Netherlands in recent years, the market competition has become more and more intense. The quality of cotton cloth spun by the Dutch people is getting better and better, and the price is surprisingly cheap, and many Indian cotton cloth markets have been eroded. In order to get out of this increasingly unfavorable situation, William. Clifford spent a lot of money on some of the old Spanish relations and was granted concessions to trade in certain Spanish ports in the New World.

The large market of one or two million people in the New World is not to be underestimated, and the purchasing power of these people is generally very strong. Clifford and some of his partners made a lot of money through this disguised market monopoly, until the black encounter in Colonia two years ago. Since then, they have not been to La Plata, not even to Portuguese-controlled Brazil, and have basically abandoned the market and started to run the Caribbean periphery with all their peace.

But today, something seems to be wrong.

"William, we're old friends, you can't fool me like this." A middle-aged Spanish businessman looked at William with a slightly angry face. Clifford said: "Look at your Indian cotton cloth, light and breathable is enough, but the toughness is not enough at all!" If I wore this kind of cotton clothes, I would not have worked for a month and the clothes would wear out. Moreover, your price is still 4 pesos a horse! God, the East Coast cloth is only 2.5 pesos a horse that is better than the quality of Indian cloth, and if I buy your cloth, I'm sure I won't be able to sell a horse. Okay, William, for the sake of my old friend, I want all the floral and dyed cloth you have, but you have to lower the price. The current price is too high, this year the east coast cloth impact market impact is very strong, even the high-end cloth market has to reduce the price for sales. ”

"What? You were talking about the East Coasters? "William. Clifford frowned and asked in an inquiring tone.

"Yes." The Spanish merchant nodded silently and said, "Some merchants of St. Augustine united to charter a ship to go to the east coast and buy a large number of East Coast white calicos back to St. Augustine. I asked people to buy a horse and see it, and the quality is really good, not only lightweight, breathable, but also tough, and the quality is also very stable. To be honest, Indian calico is not competitive in this regard, not to mention that you have set an unsuitable price for these cotton cloths. Nowadays, it may be possible to make a little money only on dyed and flowered cloths, which have not yet been set foot in the East Coast. ”

"Are you from the East Coast again......" William. Clifford thought with some annoyance and some fear, "It's not enough to swallow the market of La Plata, and now it's finally reaching out to the market in the Caribbean." ”

Faced with the complaints of a middle-aged Spanish businessman, Clifford was speechless. He can't keep up with the 2.5 pesos (2 yuan) per piece of calico on the east coast, because this is basically his cost line. It seems that the only way to sell these Indian calicos is to transport them to Guinea or even Moorish territory.

Soon, Sheldon, Hampton, Hill and others also came over dejectedly. Their woolen wool has sold a lot, but the price is far from the high price they imagined. The Spaniards even threatened that if the British insisted on such unjustifiably high prices, they would turn to the East Coasters to buy wool. This move completely crushed the shareholders of the British businessman's adventurous company, who, after a brief round of negotiations, had to painfully slash the price, almost overwhelming the margins to the thinnest.

Amid the lamentations of the English merchants, William, who sold only a small amount of dyed cloth. Clifford turned his head into the distance.

"Perhaps, it's time to do something to limit the unbridled development of people on the East Coast." He thought to himself, "The bureaucrats of the East India Company should also wake up, and it is time to do something." ”

On May 13, the British merchant fleet, which had been wandering in St. Augustine for two or three days, raised its sails and left the city that had brought them so much wealth and headed north towards Jamestown, Virginia.

The unsalable portion of the goods and the cheap sale of large quantities of woolen woolen made the English merchants somewhat frustrated, because it meant that they were not able to return enough money to buy tobacco in Virginia. If they don't buy enough tobacco, they will lose a lot of money. It is important to know that Virginia's tobacco was in short supply in Britain and even continental Europe at this time.

(1) Lydon Mass: This is a group of Protestant Brownists who were persecuted by the Anglican Church, and later moved to Leiden, the Netherlands, to form the Leiden Mass. After living in the Netherlands for 12 years, they decided to move to the New World on the grounds that "the children were being corrupted by the debauchery and perverse nature of Dutch teenagers". These men were the first Puritan immigrants to New England to be aboard the Mayflower, along with another group of immigrants (known as strangers) who had gone to the New World for "economic speculation". (To be continued......)