In the next few days, Deng Haonan secretly sent people to Macau to trade with Xu Long.

Because of the relationship between Xu Long and Chen Yaoming, the Chao Gang did not cheat, and the transaction was completed smoothly.

Subsequently, Deng Haonan ordered five 400-material three-masted ships to drive directly back to the Xiaonanshan Naval Base, escorted by the Pallas along the way, and the journey was safe.

During this period, Deng Haonan allowed John to lead all the sailors of the Pallas to go to sea to hunt. These three hundred British pirates really gave the turtle a whole month, and after receiving Deng Haonan's order, they quickly used Xiaonanshan as a supply base and began to loot everywhere.

According to Deng Haonan's instructions, they will mainly loot the merchant ships of the Japanese State and North Korea, or they can attack the Ming official ships, but it is strictly forbidden to rob the ordinary people in coastal villages and towns, which Deng Haonan has a strict principle.

Deng Haonan was very satisfied with John and other pirates, they were able to obey their orders and honestly stay in Macao for more than a month, which shows that they attach great importance to the pirate code and are loyal to Deng Haonan as the master, so Deng Haonan can also control them with confidence.

Huang Zupei presided over the installation of artillery on the five warships.

According to the displacement of 400 warships, Huang Zupei allocated a total of 200 personnel including officers, doctors, cooks, sailors, gunners, marines, etc., to each warship. It is equipped with 30 cannons, 20 guns on the first deck, and 10 guns on the second deck, and the left and right sides are evenly and symmetrically arranged. A 5,000-pound Longwei cannon at the head and tail each, the captain is commanded by a captain, and the officer corps is five lieutenants, ten second lieutenants, and twenty non-commissioned officers.

All five battleships were painted with black ink, and the broadboards were painted in white, which was very conspicuous. They are 103~107, Pallas is 102, and Deng Haonan's ship is 101, so everyone has now learned the reading and usage of Arabic numerals.

As for the flag, Deng Haonan chose to choose and choose, and finally chose the dragon flag. The dragon is an animal that can go up to the heavens and into the earth, swallow clouds and mist, and represent auspiciousness and nobility in the east, and evil and ruin in the west. It just so happened that Deng Haonan didn't like to bully his comrades and fight in the same room, so the muzzle of the cannon was external, and the dragon flag could just bring endless destruction to the West.

There were still too few warships, and only five warships were equipped with 1,000 people, while Deng Haonan had 5,000 men at this time, and after removing the marines, the navy had 3,000 personnel. As a result, these five warships could only be used as training ships first, and 3,000 people took turns to board the ships and go to sea for training, which was enough for the time being.

In this way, Deng Haonan finally has a fleet that belongs to him in this world.

No, for the time being it cannot be called a fleet, at best it can be "called" a naval army.

At the same time, Deng Haonan commanded the recruited 5,000 craftsmen to complete the first batch of casting artillery, a total of 40 1,000-jin Huwei cannons and 6,000-jin Longwei cannons. Among them, twenty Huwei cannons were left to Yan Siqi, and the rest were sold to the leaders of the brotherly alliance who were friendly with Yan Siqi. The four 5,000-pound Longwei cannons were secretly sent to the Shannan Naval Base, and two were sent to Macao, ready to trade ship cannons with the Chao Gang.

Deng Haonan was very cautious in trading with the Chao Gang, and only transported two 5,000-pound Longwei cannons each time until the other party traded the five-masted and thousand-pound sea ship safely, and then arranged the next transaction time.

In this way, although the speed and scale of the transaction are very small, it can prevent the interest of the Chaogang gang from eating the black because of the large transaction. The Tides, like other pirates, are in dire need of powerful artillery. The cost of building it themselves is high and impractical, and the cost of buying it from the imperial court is also very high, but they can only buy imitation Furlong machines, which are much less powerful than the red-coated cannons. Deng Haonan was in dire need of a sea ship to form his first fleet, so the two sides hit it off, and the transaction became safer and smoother.

At the same time, Deng Haonan continued to expand the recruitment of craftsmen. However, there are always only 2,000 people on Kinmen Island, and Deng Haonan adopts an elimination system, and every ten days and half a month, a large number of skilled craftsmen will be eliminated. Then Deng Haonan sent people to send them out of Kinmen Island in the name of dismissal, and in fact sent them directly to the Xiaonanshan Naval Base.

In order to build Shannan Island into a self-sufficient military base, Deng Haonan took the time to go there.

Huang Zupei and Sigou led 4,000 Wutang disciples and tens of thousands of craftsmen and people, after several months of intense construction, now the Xiaonanshan Naval Base has been basically completed, which makes Deng Haonan feel the great labor spirit of the ancients.

No wonder Qin Shi Huang dared to build the Great Wall, and in a few months he was able to build a quasi-modern small fortress base, this ancient working people are simply too cute!

After Deng Haonan admired his nest, he immediately took the craftsmen to Nanshan Island.

Shangqi is on the west side of Shannan Island, close to the side of Xiaonan Mountain, and has set aside an area of dozens of miles for Deng Haonan to establish a trading station.

In fact, Huang Zupei has already built a commercial station, and Deng Haonan is preparing to establish a primary military industrial base to make iron and steel by himself, produce gunpowder, and finally achieve self-sufficiency in munitions, without the need to secretly transport materials from Kinmen Island.

First of all, it is a small iron-making and steel-making plant. Deng Haonan didn't need to build a big iron factory, he only needed to meet his own military consumption. Therefore, Deng Haonan's iron plant was designed to produce 20 tons of iron per month. The iron-making technology of the Ming folk is quite mature, and Deng Haonan only needs to turn the small folk stove into a large furnace to do it.

It's a bit more difficult to make steel! In the past, craftsmen used to refine refined iron by hand, and the main difficulty was the problem of high-temperature refractory bricks for molten iron and steelmaking. But these are very simple questions in Deng Haonan's eyes. The folk clay refractory bricks combined with the natural volcanic ash on Shannan Island are the best refractory bricks used to build stoves.

After solving the refractory brick problem, every qiē became simple. Craftsmen can build blast furnaces out of refractory bricks, and the problem of small steel mills is solved. The work of the steelworks is to melt the wrought iron from the iron mill again, refine it repeatedly, and finally smelt it into two tons of steel according to the ratio of 20 tons of iron.

Such a low conversion rate made Deng Haonan a little unhappy. However, in the era of backward steelmaking technology, this is already very good. Iron ore and coal were bought directly from merchants in Nanzhili, and under the banner of Ryukyu merchants, the Celestial Empire naturally had to give "policy care". In this way, the cost of raw materials is not high, which offsets the huge waste caused by steel melting, making the overall cost of steelmaking not high, which can support the military consumption of Xiaonanshan Naval Base.

With steel, Deng Haonan naturally has to prepare a cannon foundry. Because Deng Haonan's way of casting cannons is different from the traditional way, in the past, five or six craftsmen were responsible for the tempering and building of a cannon from beginning to end.

In this way, craftsmen are no longer limited to traditional generations of craftsmen, as long as the person who has strength and is not too stupid, he can do the job. About two tons of steel per month can cast 20 thousand catties of Longwei cannons, or four 5,000 catties of Longwei cannons, and the military capacity is considerable.

In comparison, the gunpowder factory is much simpler. However, most of the raw materials for refining gunpowder need to be transported from the mainland, and the cost is not very ideal, but it is acceptable.

The base is on the right track, and Deng Haonan is happy in his heart.

It's just that Deng Haonan's happy days are not long, and Zhang Shicheng has something to ask Deng Haonan again.