"Where did Commander Lee's fleet go?" In the Viceroyalty of New Spain in the Kingdom of Spain, the colony of Florida, and off the coast of St. Augustine, Ding Yiyu, the former captain of the frigate gunboat "Swordfish" of the First Fleet and the current captain of the battleship "National Will", was asking his adjutant aloud.

"I don't know." The adjutant shook his head, then wiped the rain from his face and replied, "According to the plan, Commander Lee's battleship 'August 10' and four auxiliary ships will patrol near the Florida Strait to search for French smuggling ships and carry out interception attacks. Our 'war zone' is on the vast coastline from Georgia to Florida, and our main mission is to search for French merchant ships that have come here to import cotton. Until the end of April, we will not meet Commander Lee's fleet unless we leave it early. ”

Over the years, with the rapid development of the cotton textile industry in the East Coast Republic, European countries have followed suit, which has naturally increased the promotion of cotton cultivation in the New World. A large amount of barren land was exploited by investors, and then the "white gold" of cotton was planted, and exported to the major cotton textile companies in the old and new continents, the East Coaster's Rocha Port, which absorbed more than half of its share every year and controlled the pricing power of cotton, a key raw material.

The Florida colony, which had been run by the Spaniards for many years - but did not run very well - took advantage of this shareholder wind and gradually embarked on the fast track of development. Portuguese Jewish merchants, Genoese merchants, and Dutch merchants (Spain's economy was largely in the hands of these merchants) came in droves, bringing farm tools, fertilizer, and indentured slavery from the Old World, and then reclaiming wasteland in Florida. Cotton cultivation is carried out. Naturally, this led to a rapid increase in the population of the region. For example, in 1649, the populations of the two major cities of Florida, St. Augustine and Pensacola, had reached 4,500 and 3,700 respectively (referring only to whites and mixed-race whites). As for the population of the vast countryside, it is even more difficult to count, in short, the number of whites and mixed-race whites in the whole of Florida combined, there are still 30,000 or 40,000 people, which is very amazing.

If Florida grew by white immigrants from the Old Continent (usually in the form of indentured servitude, which had previously been prevalent only in England but was now widespread in most European countries), then the neighboring Spanish missions such as Georgia grew. It was the enslavement of the local Indians. Some "evil" businessmen bribed officials of the Spanish kingdom to buy large tracts of land in this area of obscure property rights (only a few Spanish missions, basically terra nullius), and then captured the Indians and returned to farm. However, because the enslavement and capture of Indians conflicted with the interests of Jesuit and other missionary groups, the development of these places was very slow, and the production of cotton was very small, which was not comparable to that of a mature region like Florida.

Therefore, the main patrol range of the East Coast privateer formation (a battleship and a draft supply ship) led by Ding Yiyu was still on the east coast of Florida, as for the long coastline that reached the Georgia Mission Territory north. This is not the focus of this inspection. They have been here for more than twenty days since they arrived in mid-March. Twenty days. They patrol day and night, haunting the waters east of Florida like ghosts, not raising the flag or waving it, but only covering their heads to intercept French-flagged ships - even if the French transport ship is not carrying cotton.

By this day (March 30, 1650), they had intercepted two 300-ton transports in the waters east of Florida, both French merchant ships laden with cotton from St. Augustine, one of which was sunk in pursuit, and the Frenchmen on the other were more fucked up, who, seeing that something could not be done, had dug a hole in the bottom of the ship and sunk the ship - of course, the French sailors were quickly beaten by the East Coasters.

In addition, there was a small episode during the interception, when the people on the east coast had just "finished the crime", a smuggling ship from Denmark happened to pass by. As a result, the hapless three-masted Galen merchant ship was ravaged by dozens of large and small guns on the "National Will" for a full hour, and finally had no choice but to surrender with a white flag. And this Danish merchant ship named "Green Oak" has also become the only harvest of Ding Yiyu and others in this month. By the way, the Danish ship, in addition to some industrial goods that the East Coast people did not look up to, was also loaded with nearly twenty adult cows, which appeared to have been shipped from Jutland and destined for Veracruz, Mexico. Some local farmers ordered the cows from the Old Continent, and there was no doubt that this was a smuggling business.

Now, the East Coasters, who were determined to "help the Kingdom of Spain in its fight against rampant Caribbean smuggling," immediately announced to the Danes that they would confiscate their ship and all its merchandise, and then sent more than 50 heavily armed militiamen, led by two senior naval officers, to drive the surviving Danish crew to the island of Tobago. They will be there to see if they can make some simple repairs to the ship, find some supplies along the way, and then wait for further orders.

Not far from New Granada, Tobago is largely territorial, with only a few Indian tribes on the island, fierce and unfriendly to outsiders. In the past two decades, the Duchy of Courland has tried to colonize the island three times, but they have failed and have been expelled by the natives. The people on the east coast had no intention of occupying the island, and they did not intend to establish permanent settlements on the island, and their activities were limited to the vicinity of the coastline, so the security concerns were not significant. After all, if it really doesn't work, can you still return to the ship, the Indians can't beat it.

According to the plan drawn up before the departure, there were a total of nine ships on this expedition to the Caribbean Sea, of which naturally three battleships acted as "thugs" and set up "toll stations" on the sea to intercept French ships, namely Major Li Yi's "10 August," Captain Ding Yiyu's "National Will," and Captain Huang Yang's "East Coast Doctrine." In it, Captain Ding Yiyu's ship and a fresh water supply ship formed a two-ship formation and cruised in the waters east of Florida; Captain Boxwood's ship also formed a two-ship formation with a fresh water supply ship, cruising off the coast of New Granada, south of Haiti; Major Li Yi, commander-in-chief of the expeditionary fleet, commanded a formation of one battleship and four auxiliary ships to cruise the strait between Cuba and Florida in search of French ships. The formation of these ships basically held several major communication routes in the Caribbean Sea, and if a French ship was unlucky, it was still likely to hit them.

After a period of activity within their respective cruising areas, all nine vessels will concentrate on the island of Tobago as planned, no later than the end of April. After meeting on the island of Tobago, the ships replenished ammunition, water, and coal, sorted out the booty, and the repair ship "Sea Engineer" also carried out some in-depth maintenance of the ships. After this, the nine ships will once again split up and go to their respective cruising waters to intercept them, vowing to dry all the French merchant ships into the sea. I don't believe that under the blow of this intensity, the French can still be indifferent.

On this occasion, the Executive Committee, the Government Council, and the Joint Staff Headquarters reached a rare consensus and expressed prudent approval of the Navy's privateering in the Caribbean. In particular, the Government Council, which represents the interests of the domestic business community, and the Southern Railway Company, which represents the interests of the Army, have praised the actions of the Navy, because the reduction of foreign smuggling ships will inevitably increase their exports of goods to the Viceroyalty of Peru.

After Lu Ming took office, the Joint Staff Headquarters won rich benefits for the navy. The Executive Committee promised to return 30 percent of the trophies recovered by the Navy in the form of special funds for building ships, so that the Navy could build one or two more "10 August" class battleships. However, the Navy may not be too interested in the "10 August" class, which has only two decks, and they may invest the money in the research and development of the "Executive Committee" class three-deck battleship, which has been established for more than a year, and even with the establishment of the Western Forging Plant, they have also begun to take an interest in the iron-ribbed wood-hulled ship and are ready to invest money in research and development. In short, there are many uses, and they are not limited to building ships, of course, these are all later stories.

The two ships led by Ding Yiyu stayed in the waters east of Florida for another 10 days, but the weather had been bad and rainy since the end of March, so the results were not good. In the next ten days, they caught only one French merchant ship, which was captured by the East Coasters very close to St. Augustine, and then the whole ship sailed to the vicinity of the island of Tobago with the East Coasters who had taken over the ship loaded with cotton.

Seeing that there was nothing to do (there had been a lot of fog at sea lately), Captain Ding Yiyu decisively called it a day, led two ships towards the island of Tobago, and arrived at the designated sea area on the night of April 24, where several ships had already stopped.

On April 28, the main fleet led by Major Li Yi also sailed over, and so far all the ships of the East Coast Navy going to the Caribbean Sea have gathered here. In addition to these ships on the east coast, there were also three captured transport ships of various countries (two of which were from France), which carried a lot of goods, such as clothing, metal utensils, mercury, graphite, lead, livestock, wine, spices, sugar, furs, cotton, etc., plus some gold, silver, precious stones, etc., with a total value of more than 600,000 yuan, which made the army and navy officers and men on the expedition wide-eyed. Sure enough, direct robbery is much faster than doing business to make money! (To be continued......)