After sending off the Portuguese mission, Zhou Zhong immediately urged the shipyards under the governor's palace to speed up the construction of warships, especially the new Warren battleship, which has passed the test of the naval division and has been well received by the naval division, and even those captured Portuguese are full of praise for this kind of battleship, so Zhou Zhong has begun to move the sailing division, and the Valen battleship will become the standard battleship of the Daming Naval Division in the future.

In addition to the warships, the Four Seas Governor's Office immediately began to expand the naval division after obtaining the consent of Emperor Zhengde, after all, the sea area under the rule of the Governor's Mansion is getting bigger and bigger, and the original naval division alone is not enough, so after careful investigation, Zhou Zhong decided to expand the naval division into three fleets.

The first fleet is called the East China Sea Fleet, which mainly cruises in the Daming sea area north of Shuangyu Port, which is relatively calm, especially under the premise of annexing Korea and civil strife in Japan, there is not much to do, at most it is to rescue the merchant ships shipwrecked at sea, and by the way to assist the coastal state capital to maintain law and order, and it is not a fleet used for foreign wars.

The second fleet is called the South China Sea Fleet, the role of this fleet is the same as that of the East China Sea Fleet, but the management of the sea area has become the south of Shuangyu Port, Hainan Island and the vast sea area north of Luzon Island, both fleets are the Ming Dynasty's inland sea fleet, and do not need too well-equipped warships and weapons, using the old warships that have retired from the former Four Sea Divisions.

In addition to the above two inland sea fleets, the remaining fleet is Zhou Chong's real killer weapon, this fleet is the Nanyang Fleet that he spent a lot of effort on and also concentrated all the elite sailors.

Now Zhou Chong occupies Malacca and the Old Port though. Blocked the passage of the Portuguese into the South Seas. However, most of the South Seas are still under the rule of the local natives. The small countries are fighting with each other, and the natives of these small countries are almost like the natives of the old port, all of them are lazy and stupid, if it were not for the abundance of products here in Nanyang, I am afraid they would have starved to death because of their laziness.

Natural disasters in the Ming Dynasty continued, and every year, the combination of large and small natural disasters alone was enough for the ministers in the court to have a headache, after all, as long as there were natural disasters. It is necessary to mobilize all kinds of materials for disaster relief, which not only include food, but also sometimes clothing, farm tools, seeds, etc., these expenses together have already overwhelmed the finances of the Ming Dynasty.

But now it is very different, since the previous flood in Luoyang, Henan Province used the immigration method, and those immigrants are still living well in Taiwan, Malacca and other places, which makes the Ming officials deal with various natural disasters, the first thing that comes to mind is to relocate the victims, after all, as long as there are fewer victims. Naturally, there are fewer relief supplies needed, and there is no need to worry about the victims rebelling because of hunger. It can be said that it can be counted in one fell swoop, and most of the relocation costs of the victims are also paid by the Governor's Office of the Four Seas, and the local government only needs to send officials to organize the migration, so now as long as there is a disaster in various parts of the Ming Dynasty, there will be a long migration team on the land immediately.

At least hundreds of thousands of disaster victims migrate out every year, Zhou Zhong naturally has to find a place for these disaster victims to resettle, although the place in Taiwan is large, but with the migration of the past two years, the best plain in Taiwan has been exhausted by the first disaster victims, and most of the rest are mountains or dense forests, it is not easy to open up a place to live, and Zhou Zhong feels that instead of spending a lot of effort to open up the mountains and cut down trees, it is better to find other better places, such as the various islands in the South Seas, Although the weather there is hotter, it is rich in products and the land is very fertile, which is most suitable for growing rice or sugar cane.

However, now those islands in the South Seas are still in the hands of those lazy and stupid natives, in order to convince them to give up the land to those poor victims of the Ming Dynasty, so Zhou Zhong felt that it was necessary to "persuade" those natives, so he established the Nanyang Fleet, the whole fleet not only has the best warships, but also has a large number of marines, they are the main force to "persuade" the natives of the South Seas.

For this Nanyang fleet, Zhou Zhong can be said to have worked hard, the entire fleet has a total of 120 main warships, countless auxiliary warships, and a total strength of more than 40,000 people, divided into four sub-fleets, led by four admirals, and the four of them are directly responsible to Zhou Chong, the governor, after all, such a powerful force, Zhou Zhong is not at ease to hand it over to anyone.

The formation of the three major fleets, especially the formation of the Nanyang Fleet, is not something that can be completed overnight, and the formation of a fleet is not only a force that can be formed after the personnel and warships are in place, but also needs to consume a lot of time and energy for training, and after the training, it is also necessary to conduct actual combat exercises, so that the entire fleet will enter the run-in period, and only after the run-in period will the entire fleet form its own combat mode and spirit, and then it can be called a fleet.

Zhou Zhong had already made a lot of preparations for the formation of the fleet before, for example, the required warships had already started construction in shipyards around the country, and it was estimated that at the latest, the last batch of warships could be built, but the naval soldiers of the three fleets were far from being recruited.

Its East China Sea and South China Sea fleets are mainly used to defend the coastal areas of the Ming Dynasty, and they also assist the city shipping department to collect taxes on ships in peacetime, and when merchant ships encounter danger, they will also participate in rescue, as for combat training, they will also participate, but this is not their main task, so the requirements for personnel are not particularly high, such as some of the old and weak and disabled who were eliminated by the previous sailors, as long as they can still get on the ship, they are arranged in these two fleets, and Zhou Zhong also selected a group of young and strong people from the coastal fishermen, after preliminary training, Also added to the two fleets.

In contrast, the requirements of the Nanyang Fleet for personnel are much higher, after all, this fleet is mainly used for combat, and in the careful planning, the attack on the Nanyang is only the preliminary combat training of the Nanyang Fleet, and after the Nanyang is pacified, he will take the Nanyang Fleet as an even, and then divide two or three fleets, these fleets or to the east or west, to help the Ming Dynasty expand its territory overseas, to meet all the competitors who dare to challenge the Ming Dynasty.

The Nanyang Fleet needs a total of 40,000 people, this number is a bit incredible for those small countries in Europe, after all, this is only one fleet, you must know that the fleet sent by the Portuguese to India is only two or three thousand people together, which has consumed nearly half of the strength of the Kingdom of Portugal, so the 40,000 fleet is unimaginable for them.

But for a country like Daming with a population of nearly 200 million, 40,000 people is simply not worth mentioning, and even Zhou Zhong doesn't have to bother at all, he only needs to post a list in various coastal places, and then indicate the monthly salary of a soldier, and just enlist in the army can receive a large amount of settling-in allowance, naturally there will be countless poor young people flocking in, vying to join the Nanyang Fleet, although they know that they will die if they fight, but in the face of poverty and hunger, These people themselves feel that their lives are not very valuable.

However, the Nanyang Fleet will be the main combat power of the Ming Dynasty at sea in the future, so the requirements for personnel are not generally high, such as the most basic requirement is to be physically strong and understand the nature of the water, the best is those who grew up on the seashore The children of the fishermen, after all, these people have long been accustomed to life at sea, and they also know some skills in handling ships, and they are the best candidates for naval soldiers.

The above are just requirements for ordinary soldiers, in addition to these ordinary soldiers, Zhou Zhong also requires the recruitment of a group of literate soldiers, preferably soldiers who know arithmetic or astronomy, after all, the navy is a technical service, not only need ordinary soldiers who can fight, but also need to record routes, draw charts, identify directions, etc., these are not ordinary soldiers can be competent, so Zhou Chongji plans to recruit some literate soldiers, and then conduct unified training for them, These people have mastered the knowledge that must be mastered when navigating the navy, and have become important auxiliary personnel in the navy.

Of course, it is not easy to recruit literate people to join the navy, after all, people in this era have a little contempt for the army, and there is even a proverb that "good men are not soldiers, good iron does not hit nails", if it were not for the heavy naval salary, there would not be so many people who signed up, but in the era of the Ming Dynasty, literate people were originally a minority, and generally literate people were not very poor, so there was no need to risk their lives to join the army.

It is precisely because of this that after the recruitment notice was posted, people from all over the coast to participate in the ordinary navy were quickly recruited, and as long as they could persist in training, they could become an official Nanyang navy. According to the recruiters, although occasionally people came to ask about this skill class, when they explained it, those who asked turned around and left, and were not willing to sign up at all.

For this situation, Zhou Chong thought that the military salary he gave was not enough at first, although the military salary of the technical arms was already twice that of ordinary soldiers, but he gritted his teeth and raised the military salary of the technical arms to three times that of ordinary soldiers again.

But what Zhou Chong didn't expect was that even if he raised his military salary, there were still very few people who were the most conscripted, and just when he was puzzled, Jiao Fang found him with a smile and pointed out a big mistake he made during the conscription. (To be continued......)