In the waters of the Ryukyus, a Dutch merchant fleet is passing through the area, and they are on their way to Japan. The merchant ships of this merchant fleet were all armed merchant ships, and there were two warships to protect them.

In this sunny sea, some Dutch people are in a good mood and are fishing on the deck.

"Look, there's a ship ahead, oh! Oh, my God! It's a fleet. "Suddenly, a Dutch sailor spotted what was ahead, and saw a fleet appear in the sea ahead of their merchant fleet.

The fleet was hoisted with the Yellow Dragon Flag, and when the Dutch saw them, a sense of foreboding rose over them. Sure enough, the fleet came straight for them.

These are all warships of the Ming Royal Fleet, although they are not gunboats, they are equipped with guns in the bow and stern, and the tonnage is larger than that of Dutch warships, and the largest warship is about 1,300 tons.

There were fifteen of these large warships, and there were more than 30 small and medium-sized warships of various types, and there were many naval officers and sailors on them.

This Dutch merchant fleet, which consisted of more than a dozen merchant ships, exploded in an instant.

In the face of the rushing Ming warships, the two Dutch warships had no choice but to flee in embarrassment. Once they stopped shelling, they were likely to be surrounded by Ming warships and had to enter the broadside battle. That is bound to be the end, the Dutch can be regarded as having seen the Ming Navy's ability to engage in broadside warfare at sea, and they are no worse than them in the Netherlands.

The remaining dozen or so Dutch armed merchant ships could only flee separately. However, these Dutch merchant ships were relatively slow, and the warships of the Ming royal fleet successfully intercepted most of the merchant ships after some pursuit. Only a few merchant ships took advantage of the chaos.

Many of these armed merchant ships of the Dutch tried to resist, but they were severely beaten up. These armed merchant ships are mainly capable of broadside warfare, but the warships of the Ming Royal Navy are mainly engaged in broadside warfare. It's just about looking for death.

The Royal Navy's military port in the Ryukyus began to be fully operational, and the Royal Navy dispatched a part of its forces to intercept Dutch merchant ships bound for Japan and Chinese smuggling merchant ships in the Ryukyu waters.

The Dutch really fell into blood mold this time, and if the Ming wanted to deal with them, it would definitely be easy for them to deal with them in this Asian sea. It's just that the previous Ming court did not have the consciousness to invest its strength on the sea. In other words, it has been since ancient times, that is, since the beginning of the Ming Dynasty. China has a big maritime disaster, but the Japanese have already been suppressed.

The Ryukyu Military Port had just opened, and the 'business' was obviously very good. In just three months. The Dutch merchant fleet was intercepted in two batches, and twenty-one merchant ships were intercepted. The Chinese smuggled merchant ships and intercepted more than 30 of them.

The Royal Navy was able to intercept these merchant ships so smoothly in the Ryukyus, mainly because the merchant ships were slower. And these merchant fleets. It is impossible to have too many escort forces.

It was useless for the Dutch to send a few warships. Several warships ran away in the face of the large number of warships of the Royal Fleet.

The great pirate Li Dan did not have gunboats in his hands, let alone compete with the royal fleet in armament, and the combat method adopted by these pirates was mainly to engage in broadside battles, but these pirates obviously could not have so many warships.

It was not only the shipping routes in the Ryukyu Sea that caused the Dutch and Li Dan huge losses, but also the Ming Royal Fleet also set up a military port in the Penghu Sea to intercept the Dutch merchant ships, and at the same time search for civilian ships, once Japanese goods were found on these ships. The vessel was immediately seized.

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Robbery!

This is the consistent way of getting rich in the West, and it is too slow to get rich through labor. Robbery is the fastest way to get rich. Therefore, Westerners are robbing all over the world, and they are completely a bandit group.

At this time, the Ming Dynasty, a country of civilization and etiquette, also began to plunder on the sea. But this silver came in in an uproar.

In just about three months, more than 60 large and small merchant ships were plundered. Basically, there were a large number of goods on each ship, all of which were handed over to the Royal Trading Company for disposal, with a value of more than 5 million taels. At the same time, a large number of merchant ships were obtained, most of which could be directly put into transportation, and a few needed to be repaired and repaired.

By the third year of the Apocalypse, the Royal Marine Transport Company had more than 150 maritime transport vessels, which can be described as developing rapidly.

And the shipping company in which Qian Wanyuan and Royal Capital are joint ventures also owns hundreds of merchant ships.

Most of these merchant ships are engaged in the coastal transportation of the Ming Dynasty, among which the Yangtze River waterline and the coastal route from Zhejiang to Beizhili are the busiest.

After the reclamation of Taiwan, more merchant ships sailed to Taiwan and Fujian.

Of course, in addition to the merchant ships of the royal capital, there are also many civilian merchant ships that are also involved in the transportation of these routes, and the civilian merchant ships on these routes are legal, and after the formation of the Royal Navy, a part of the forces have been divided to patrol these voyages.

Tianjin Port, in the three years of the Apocalypse, has been a thousand sails racing, extremely busy.

At the same time, the official routes to North Korea have gradually become busy, and a large number of civilian merchant ships have also begun to engage in trade with North Korea. Although there are tariffs in North Korea now, many goods are still sold to North Korea at a certain profit.

It's just that the trade with North Korea, under the existence of tariffs, does not have much profiteering, but it doesn't take much time to run down, and you can always earn some silver.

The route to Taiwan is also gradually getting busy.

In the third year of the Apocalypse, the Ming Dynasty's reclamation activities in Taiwan were expanding rapidly, and a large number of workers recruited from the northern provinces and Fujian were put into Taiwan's reclamation activities.

The reclamation of Dayuangang in Taiwan has been on the right track, and a large area of sugar cane orchards and rice fields has been opened up outside the city, because there is no frost, and after the sugar cane is planted and harvested, it will grow on its own in the next year. Generally, the sugarcane in the field does not need to be replanted for two or three years. If it will degrade for a few years, it will have to be replaced. But compared to those areas with frosty winters, it is much less labor-saving.

In the third year of the Apocalypse, Royal Capital transferred tens of millions of yuan to invest in Taiwan's reclamation. Personnel and materials are being mobilized to Taiwan in large quantities. Among them, private merchant ships have undertaken a lot of transportation business.

The Taiwanese garrison brigade has been put into Taiwan, and soon a new expansion will be launched in Taiwan. Along the western coastline of Taiwan, Taipei, Taichung and Tainan, four new castles have been added. The development of Taiwan entered a stage of acceleration in the third year of the Apocalypse.

The benefits of the opening stage are obviously amazingly high.

Every acre of land is developed, the annual income is at least 1 yuan or more, and it also provides a lot of jobs for the people of Daming.

If the Royal Agricultural Company can reclaim tens of millions of acres of land in Taiwan, the annual income will be at least tens of millions of yuan. In addition, after Taiwan opened up, the commodity market, tax revenue, and income from minerals, forestry, and fishery were definitely a cash cow.

Taiwan's natives are obviously one of the obstacles to the opening of Taiwan, while Taiwan's pirates are another resistance.

After Zhang Yan became the governor of the Royal Navy, the main task of the Marine Corps became to exterminate Taiwanese pirates. These pirates were entrenched in Taiwan's coastal ports, waiting for opportunities to rob civilian ships and plunder coastal villages and towns, which did great harm to the Ming Dynasty.

The actual way to exterminate these pirates is to raid their lair. After all, the ships of these pirates are often not very large, and as long as the pirates entrenched in Taiwan's ports close to China's coast are eliminated, China's own pirates will not be rampant along the coast.

At the same time, Chinese pirates have a very significant characteristic, that is, in terms of personnel recruitment, they like to go to Japan to recruit Japanese pirates. At this time, the Ryukyu military port was put into operation, and the Royal Navy inspected passing ships in the Ryukyus, and banned civilian merchant ships from going to Japan, which obviously dealt a great blow to pirates.

The Marines had a large number of troops, and it was relatively easy to deal with these pirates entrenched in various ports along the coast of Taiwan. All of these pirates were sent to serve in the quarries and construction sites in Taiwan, and all of them were free labor.

Li Dan's pirate alliance obviously suffered a big blow in this ploughing court sweep. However, Li Dan's pirate group naturally did not collapse so easily.

They soon hooked up with the Dutch and offered them all sorts of goods. and also hooked up with the Spaniards, because Spain was also included in the trade blacklist of the Ming Dynasty, and the Spaniards had no way to trade through official channels, so they could only rely on these pirate compradors.

Although Li Dan's business in Japan was hit hard, it turned out that because of the trade of the Spaniards, they once again gave them wings.

The Spaniards had a frightening amount of silver.

At this time, the Royal Navy had only the strength to patrol the Taiwan Strait and cut off the sea route to Japan. For the time being, there is no force to intervene in the South Seas, and smuggling is obviously not something that can be prevented by the coastal martial law, and the collusion between the local government and maritime merchants is also very serious.

Li Dan also made a big detour from Japan, avoiding the Ryukyu Sea and returning to Fujian, where he began to preside over trade with the South Seas. The business scope of these pirates has also been mainly transferred to the South Seas.

The expansion of royal capital's maritime interests is basically step-by-step, first bringing Northeast Asia and Taiwan into its control, and then expanding to the South Seas.

At present, the Royal Fleet can equip a large number of warships with the advantage of domestic supply. However, gunboats are relatively lacking, so the ability to control the sea is limited to Northeast Asia and the Taiwan Strait. Further south, there are some more than enough to do.

After the failure of the Dutch's business expansion to the north, they were naturally extremely unwilling. As a newly rising gang of sea bandits, they still want to compete with Daming at sea. It's just that after the last naval battle, the Dutch felt that they had to mobilize more warships from the mainland to defeat the Ming navy, so for the time being, because of the loss of warships, the activities along the coast of Daming were somewhat stopped.

Next year, warships from the Netherlands will come to the rescue, and Song Ke plans to launch a full-scale raid on the merchant ships of the Ming Dynasty next year in order to force the Ming to agree to trade with the Netherlands. (To be continued......)