Three pounds of biscuits per week, half a pint of oil, half a pint of vinegar. Three-quarters pounds of corned beef or corned pork on Sundays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays, peas and rice on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, and occasionally a pound of "poor Johnfish," a collective term for fish that doesn't need salt. There was no beer supply throughout the voyage, only rum stock and water.

The poor diet reminded Robert of an Atlantic voyage that was anything but pleasant.

To Robert's surprise, this supply of meat, which was less than that of a fleet sailing across the Pacific, was a great joy for the Chinese and Siamese sailors on board.

If meat had been supplied at this level on British ships, the crews would have rebelled. The British were all carnivores, and the weekly supply of six pounds of salted meat and three pounds of salted fish had already made the sailors of the British East India Company cry out for pig food. Not to mention the fact that there was only a third of the British supply of meat on the Adventure, no butter, and no cheese.

British sailors, for the sake of all kinds of salted meat and salted fish, would not hesitate to ignore the negative health effects of meat on the sea. They would rather risk all infectious diseases than give up their love of meat.

The British had long recognized that excessive consumption of salted meat by sailors increased their chances of scurvy, fever, and skin parasites, but the British Navy could do nothing about it unless they wanted to force them to become Caribbean pirates.

A large number of oriental sailors were added to the Adventure. Many senior sailors were sent to work ashore, and some with higher Chinese proficiency would go to work at the Jincheng Maritime School. Jincheng Naval Academy is one of the first naval affiliated institutions established by Chen Shouxu after conquering Peking University. The basis of the Maritime Academy was the literacy classes he had run on various cruisers during his voyages to the Pacific.

At the very least, the old men who remained on the ship were promoted to non-commissioned officers. The new Navy's dietary regulations for naval sailors in the Kaneshiro Navy have been changed to a relatively healthy diet consisting of rice, coconut, fruits, olives, cakes, and a small amount of poultry, white meat, salted fish, and salted meat.

The main substitution criteria are: 3 pounds of rice per serving of meat, 4 pounds of rice for a large salted fish, 1 pound of butter or 2 pounds of cheese for 1 pound of canola oil, and 1 gallon of beer for 2 pounds of coconut wine.

The Adventure was the best state of the city when it left the port, and it was equipped with some additional Asian equipment and received its first Asian sailors. The Adventure set sail relatively early, not in time for the Navy to complete the dietary reform, but replaced some of the salted meat and salted fish with rice.

The Senate of Kaneshiro, which was so poor that it was a trouser, gave the Asian soldiers of the fleet a diet that drastically reduced the supply of meat on the basis of the original one of the fleet. Robert, who had not yet adapted to the transition from a pirate captain to a captain of the Jincheng National Navy, was afraid that the sailors would rebel on the road, so he cut him down and threw his body into the sea.

However, after 10 days of sailing, he was sure that these hard-working, disciplined and obedient Oriental sailors were grateful to Dade for having the food they had today. This really made Robert handsome, and now he was no longer a pirate captain who was cautious in the face of sailors, but a serious naval captain. With the establishment of the post of inspector of each ship, the adventure was re-equipped with whips, daggers and other barbaric torture tools necessary for the navy.

The Kaneshiro Navy carried on the British naval tradition in this regard, whipping the prisoner in the buttocks rather than in the back as the Dutch did. Like the British Navy, Robert had the right to whip sailors 12 times on board without an inspector. Prisoners who wound others with weapons in a sailor's fight will be treated with a dagger to the mast. Serious theft and other crimes will be directly cut off. Other similarly egregious crimes may also be treated as being tied back to back and thrown into the sea.

In addition to the drag keel that threw a person down from the mast, the death penalty was directly reinstated on the battleship.

Chen Shouxu was originally a little disgusted by the brutal punishment he had made in the navy. But most of the fleet, captains and senior sailors' representatives said that the navies they had seen were all in this way in charge of sailors.

It is true that there are some dissenting people in the Navy. Except for a few people who entered the Senate, Chen Shouxu recruited everyone else into the bureaus directly under the ruling government, and he did not show a preference in the Senate, but he needed a different opinion.

European naval regulations are not entirely devoid of humanistic care, such as the rescue of those who have fallen into the water, which still inherits the original tradition. As long as the cries for help are heard and the person is still visible, the captain must lower the dinghy to rescue the boat, no matter how dangerous or urgent the situation of the boat. If the person overboard is not visible, it is at the discretion of the captain.

At the operational level, Chen Shouxu did not have the idea of acting against the will of the entire Senate and naval administrators, and he did not understand the management of European navies in the 17th century. Since the navies of the European powers gradually conquered the earth's seas from the 16th century onwards, there must be some truth to their provisions. There is no shortage of unruly sailors, and the navy is a branch of the military that needs to be dedicated at all times. In order to ensure that the military orders were enforced, on the basis of the naval regulations submitted by the Ministry of National Defense, Chen Shouxu deleted some of the corporal punishments that were really unnecessary, and signed the others in circles.

More than 1,000 nautical miles, the voyage of the Adventure to Batavia is not far, but during the southwest monsoon period, it is against the wind and the water, and it needs to sail in a zigzag manner. Naturally, Robert had to worry about sailing.

Ever since Anthony. Fan. After Dimon turned the United East India Company into the Dutch East India Empire, Batavia established a pure navy. There are many cruisers with more than 30 guns, more than 50 guns, and there are also several battleline gunboats with a deadweight of more than 1,000 tons, and the largest battleship can hold 800 soldiers.

Chen Shouxu did not send a cruiser as Maiden's ship, in addition to the fact that the cruiser really needed to be repaired, sending the battleship to the current Batavia was also an act of playing with a big knife in front of Guan Gong. I don't know if I will be watched by a whole Dutch fleet.

Maiden chose the Adventure as the ship for the mission. At the current stage, Jincheng still has to hold a modest and cautious attitude in the face of Batavia, keep quiet and make a fortune. Maiden looked at the information that the Ministry of Trade and Shipping had compiled for him before leaving, and the main part was sugar.

Sugar was not originally an important commodity. As recently as 1622, the price of sugar in Amsterdam was only 0.27 guilders per pound. That year, the United East India Company's homecoming fleet carried only 220,000 pounds of Chinese sugar to Europe. This is because the price of sugar in China is higher than in the Caribbean.

But ten years ago, around 1631, sugar prices in Europe began to soar. The price of raw sugar in the West Indies rose from 0.23 guilders to 0.59 guilders per pound in Amsterdam and to 0.67 guilders in 1637.

In this context, the board of directors in Amsterdam has repeatedly increased the amount of sugar purchased in Batavia. 400,000 pounds in 1631, 600,000 pounds in 1633, 1,000,000 pounds in 1636, and now 3,750,000 pounds in 1641. In Asia, the Dutch East India Company's European order alone was a big deal worth more than £200,000.

White sugar from China is the most interesting variety for the Dutch, and as long as Chinese sugar production can meet demand, the Dutch have little interest in Banten and Bengal sugar. In order to increase the benefits of sugar. In addition to encouraging the Chinese to cultivate plantations, in 1637 Van Diemen offered a 10-year tax holiday and interest-free loan to Rongguan, the Chinese owner of Batavia's first sugar factory. The sugar mill in Rongguan uses a stone mill propelled by a mixture of hydraulic and animal power.

Jincheng is not yet able to reduce the cost of large-scale reclamation of sugarcane plantations, and if it relies on its own plantations, the sugar produced will not be competitive in price. Among the neighbouring countries, Siam and Chenla are both large sugarcane growers, but their processing capacity is only at the level of brown jaggery. This intermediate product, which the Dutch have no interest in, is not sold at a high price.

Relying on Siam's raw materials and the processing capacity of the Chinese, Jincheng set up a sugar factory. The Sugar Company project is the first private enterprise loan granted by Nanyang Bank. Leizhou's sugar to Batavia has an extra high transportation cost than Jincheng. As long as Jincheng can achieve the same cost of sugar as Leizhou, or even slightly higher, the products will be competitive.

However, because of the bad relationship with the Heavenly Fang Sect, Batavia will be the most important trade partner of Jincheng for some time to come.

Maiden sighed, this kind of sales without a second home, the job may not be easy to do.

In the vicinity of the Sunda Strait, the Adventure briefly entered a combat voyage. Like the Philippine Inland Sea, the Sunda Strait is currently the most important shipping route for the Dutch, and it is also home to many local Celestial pirates. It's just that these pirates rarely attacked the merchant ships of the East India Company, and Batavia didn't bother to bother with them.

Sundanese pirates occupy a number of Channel Islands as forward bases, and they are active in the complex harbor rivers of Sumatra.

As in the Caribbean, behind the Sunda pirates, there is also a faint shadow of the British. There was once a pirate island where the leadership was British. Even some of our predecessors who sailed from the Caribbean to the East Indies were active in the Sunda Strait. Of course, the proportion of Europeans in the entire Sunda pirate community was still very small and did not dominate.

After crossing the Sunda Strait and arriving in Banten at 7 a.m., the Adventure did not dock at Banten Port. Banten was already very close to Batavia, and at 5 p.m. that day, the Adventure arrived in Batavia, the headquarters of the United East India Company, the economic center of Asia.

Batavia is a beautiful city, and Maiden thinks that even Amsterdam can't compare to Batavia. The city of Batavia is about 5,6 miles in radius. After the operation of the Cohen and Van Diemen headquarters, Batavia is no longer a hedged colony. The Batavia city wall built by the Chinese has been almost completed.

Yang Kun, who was in charge of the general contracting of the project, asked the East India Commission for a contract price that was too low, only 14 riyals for one piece of earth, and a little more than one tael of silver. In order to attract Chinese immigrants to Batavia, the Dutch paid the Chinese a very high salary. With slightly high labor costs and incomprehensible contract prices, Yang Kun went bankrupt in the project of repairing the city wall.

The founder of the city of Batavia, Jean. Pete Eitz. Cohen originally wanted to name his Asian headquarters after his hometown of Newhollen, but Amsterdam refused. The name Batavia originates from an ancient ethnic group that is related to the Dutch by blood.

The United East India Company employed about 2,500 European employees in Batavia, of which 1,800 were military. With the addition of non-company employees, there are only about 3,000 Europeans in the city. However, there are more than 5,000 Chinese who pay the poll tax in Batavia, and if you add the population under the control of black households and Chinese, the number can easily exceed 10,000. In fact, it was a colonial city ruled by the Dutch, but by the Chinese. At the beginning of the construction of the city, Cohen chose Chinese maritime merchants as the company's allies. In 1619, Cohen instructed in the population plan of Batavia, "Whatever nationality Batavia absorbs, it must be a majority of Chinese, and then Batavia can survive." “

In order to win the Chinese, in addition to luring with high salaries, Batavia did not hesitate to use force. The East India Company had been forcing the Chinese from the surrounding Sultanate to move to Batavia. Chinese merchant ships from Banten had to complete the task of transporting people to Batavia when they left, or else the sailors on board would be arrested. In order to fight against the Dutch, the Sultan of Banten even introduced the death penalty in the country, and the Chinese would be threatened with the death penalty if they left Banten.

The first Chinese Kapitan Su Minggang was a close friend of Cohen's. Banten and Mataran imposed a long-term rice blockade on Batavia, but the Chinese were able to transport smuggled grain from these two countries to Batavia. On the other hand, the Chinese were also able to gain a status in Batavia that they could not get in the countries of the Heavenly Sect. The population of Batavia was divided into four classes, the first class Dutch, the second class Chinese, the third class Javanese, and the fourth class slaves.

At the heart of the city's defense was the Batavia Fort by the sea, a fort with four corners. The two sharp forts facing the city are the Ruby and Pearl Castles, and the Sapphire and Diamond Castles facing the sea. Each fort had 16 9-and-a-half-pounder guns. Heavier cannons were located on the main structure of the castle. The defenders of Fort Batavia were commanded by a major himself, who himself was based at Fort Sapphire and had 50 men under his command. The deputy commander was a captain and also had 50 men and was stationed at Fort Ruby. Fort Pearl and Fort Diamond were each led by two sergeants.

The Adventure fired an 8 salute and sailed into the anchorage of Batavia. The Dutch East India Company port manager boarded the ship, and Maiden put down the book, which he had turned over many times. Just as Maiden was about to greet the pilot, he exchanged pleasantries and a set of his friendship with the West India Company. The East India Company was a shareholder of the West India Company, and the upper echelons of the two companies had some dealings.

The pilot's first words surprised him. Neither a cold or hostile attitude towards strange ships, nor the arrogance and domineering that represents the Batavian throne. The pilot's first words were, "You have to watch out for crocodiles." Please tell your sailors that there are many saltwater crocodiles under the water in the harbor, and this morning there was a British ship that did not take care of the sailors, and a swimmer was swallowed by a saltwater crocodile, you must be careful. ”

……

Cooper Island and Un Rust Island are two small islands outside the port of Batavia, both with piers. Cargo from foreign merchant ships was generally unloaded on the two islands. There happened to be a vacant seat at the dock on Cooper Island, and under the guidance of the pilot, the Adventure slowly approached.

Opposite Cooper Island is the island of Anluster, where there is a dock called "t Eyland Onrust", which at this time has no drainage function. The dockyards in Batavia are stone berths. It's just that on both sides of the berth there are large winches and struts, which allow the vessel to roll sideways to expose the keel.

There are two large windmills and two cranes on the island of Anluster. The Dutch tricolor with the letters V.O.C. flutters around the large cranes on the pier. There are three Galen ships docked at the pier on the island of Un Roucher, one of which is a British ship flying the flag of St. George.

For the sake of defense, the East India Company's merchant fleet and naval base were located on the canal channel behind the side of Fort Batavia, with the naval base being further back. The Dutch were no less enthusiastic about infrastructure than the Portuguese, and they dug several canals in Batavia to facilitate warship movement and logistics. The canal also has a certain drainage function, and the city of Batavia is low-lying, surrounded by large swamps, and the geographical conditions are not good, and the Dutch have been building infrastructure in the city consistently, which has led to its current size.