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Saturday, March 12, 1622.

The Azores, today welcomed a very different group of guests. Four long, beautiful and strangely shaped ships appeared outside Angra de Sangra de Heroísmo on the island of T'Sayra at a jaw-dropping speed. Two of them were battleships with blue lines on their snow-white hulls and four strange guns on each deck, and the other two were larger, gray-covered merchant ships.

They all have sharp bows and long, streamlined hulls, and their bulging sails have allowed them to reach speeds of at least 10 knots, and they are now lowering their sails to adjust their formation for the port.

While the Portuguese garrison at Angra de Marsísmo was nervously watching from the battery, an officer rushed to announce that it was all right. It turned out that someone recognized the battleship in it, which was exactly the same as the light cruiser Enterprise that had escorted American merchant ships a few months earlier.

As the four clippers got closer, the Portuguese officers and men finally breathed a sigh of relief, because they could see clearly the flags of the fleet, which were the national and naval flags of the Chinese American Republic.

The light cruiser Enterprise is currently undergoing annual maintenance, and it is the Liberty and Vostok light cruisers that are involved in the European trade escort and ocean-going training in the Azores. Under their protection were the Short Shirt and Hussar Flying Clippers merchant ships that had just been built for operation in the Atlantic.

This time, the acting captain of the Liberty was Captain Sun Yang, who was transferred from the Enterprise after it was docked for maintenance, and the first mate was replaced by Lieutenant Zhou Kemin, who had participated in the European trip and had a very good relationship with European sailors.

The acting captain of the light cruiser Dongfang, which carried out the first ocean-going combat training, was 32-year-old Captain Bai Jun, a former retired non-commissioned officer of the Navy. The first mate was Interim Lieutenant Andrew, who had been transferred from the Enterprise.

Compared with Sun Yang, a former political officer of the naval aviation base, Bai Jun is an authentic veteran sailor, a real navy who has mixed with naval ships on water. Therefore, from the perspective of military intelligence alone, Bai Jun, the captain of the navy, seems to be more reliable. But Bai Jun was also the most hardcore Imperial Han nationalist in the navy, and sometimes even the commander of the navy, Wang Tiezhu, had to warn him several times in private about some outrageous remarks.

Zhou Kemin's interaction with the Indian girl Dama caused a lot of criticism in the navy, in order to complete this ocean training. The Navy Command deliberately switched Zhou Kemin and Andrew to prevent Bai Jun and Zhou Kemin from quarreling over certain topics.

"Look scare them, haha! Lieutenant Andrew. Order the release of the salute and pay tribute to these Portuguese hillbillies! ”

It was the first time that Bai Jun had observed an authentic European city so closely, and he was enthusiastic for a while.

"It's a good idea. But Captain, the commander-in-chief of the ocean-going training formation this time is Captain Sun Yang of the Liberty! We have not yet received an order to release the salute. ”

After a close look through the binoculars at the flagship, a few hundred yards away, and finding no flag-instructed instructions ordering the release of the salute, Lieutenant Andrew cautioned the captain.

Turning his head and quietly looking at the European first mate in front of him, who was 5 years older than himself, Bai Jun's lips moved several times, but he didn't say the abuse that was swallowed deep in his throat.

For Sun Yang's European comedy girl who often hangs in the Phantom Bar, Bai Jun is the most unaccustomed naval officer, and Zhou Kemin's relationship with the Indian girl makes Bai Jun think that the other party has lost the Han national position. In Bai Jun's eyes. On board the light cruiser USS Liberty, there was almost nothing of national honor or moral decay.

When he heard the first mate remind him who was the commander-in-chief of this ocean-going training formation, Bai Jun quickly left the bridge with a strange expression after a period of silence, leaving only the first mate, Lieutenant Andrew, who awkwardly took over the command and began to arrange the entry of the battleship.

Led by the Short Shirt and the Hussar Flying Clipper Merchant Ships. It was Huo Qian, the former warehouse manager of the "Huamei Chamber of Commerce" who had followed Su Zining and others on a voyage to Europe for several months and had learned everyday Spanish, and he had become the commercial director of the state-owned import and export group.

At the end of last year, all the sails were hung in the shipyard for repairs, but fortunately, the construction of flying scissors merchant ships had been started in advance, otherwise the first trade between Europe and the United States this year would probably face the embarrassing situation of having no ships available.

The entire formation of four clippers crossed the Atlantic Ocean at an average speed of more than 10 knots. So far, it has taken less than 8 days, which is almost three times as efficient as before!

As soon as the four large ships flying the American flag docked, a group of local Portuguese officials surrounded Governor Garcia and greeted them, accompanied by Consul General Swenbo.

"Haha, it's Huo Qian! Why didn't Ren Changle come this time? There will be a flying scissor merchant ship so soon, it looks like I haven't been back for a few months, you guys are developing quite fast! Svenbo secretly watched several teams of his own sailors walk up to the dock as he grabbed the young man who had come down from the short shirt.

"Ren Changle? He set off a day earlier than us on his Wenwen and Changle, and it is estimated that he has only covered less than half of the way now. Huo Qian spread his hands, and smiled with a hint of worry, "He is now doing European and American trade alone, and the purchase has nothing to do with the state-owned import and export group, I kindly asked him to come with me, but he is unwilling." ”

This time, the two state-owned ocean-going merchant ships carried more than 500 tons of export goods, including 5,500 Type 21B flintlock rifles. After gradually consuming the valuable exquisite glass wine utensils brought by the light crossing, the current trade between Europe and the United States has really fallen on the products of local enterprises.

Matches, soap, nails, iron farm implements, munitions, refined sugar, cement, tiles, assembled furniture, ordinary glassware, and bottled North American liquor have become the fist exports of American companies at present, and they are also the unrivaled stocks of the whole of Europe, while the weight of native furs of North American Indians has dropped significantly.

The total value of these exports reached more than $1 million. Gone are the days when one or two luxury goods could generate huge profits, and the only way to achieve a trade volume higher than last year's was to use orders of magnitude of modern industrial dumping of goods to support it.

Take matches as an example: the ex-factory price of a pack of ten boxes of matches in Huamei Wood is 10 cents, but the cost of a pack is only 1 cent, and the wholesale price of each pack reaches 50 cents when exported to the Azores.

This extremely convenient and convenient ignition product was immediately sought after by various European chambers of commerce, whose retail price for European households was almost as crazy as one rial per box (8 riyals equals 1 Spanish silver dollar), and on the surface it seemed to be more cost-effective, because a box of matches was enough to last at least half a month.

500 packs of matches, the purchase price is only 50 US dollars, exported to the Azores, deducting taxes and transportation costs, but also bring nearly 200 US dollars of export profits, only from the profit margin, can be called the second only high-end glass wine products to the profiteering.

A three-person packing group of Indian hired workers can pack at least 2,000 boxes a day, and Huamei Wood has 20 such packing groups that can produce 8 boxes of matches a day. This time, there were 500 boxes of matches on the ship, which could bring a profit of $100,000 to the state-owned import and export group!

Having a stable and vast European market has become a unanimous consensus in the Congress and the government under the circumstance that its own domestic demand market is almost negligible, and on this basis, any military and foreign policy must be carried out around this purpose.

"Oh! It turned out to be the respected Mr. Huo, and I haven't seen him for a few months! I was dreaming of meeting you yesterday! ”

The governor of Garcia on one side came over with a pretended cordiality, and opened his arms exaggeratedly, and a group of Portuguese officials also laughed in response.

Needless to say, the Governor of the Azores, who has been tied to a pillar of interests, usually likes to see foreign businessmen the most, that is, these American Orientals, and a ** extravagant dinner seems inevitable.

On the other side, the two naval warships, except for the officers and men on duty who remained behind, were declared to have a temporary holiday, and a hundred sailors rushed ashore in laughter, and then walked towards the center of the town under the guidance of their companions who were familiar with Angra Sansísími.

Due to the interruption of ocean transportation for three months, there was not much stock left in the warehouses and warehouses of the US Concession, and the European businessmen who had been hungry and thirsty for more than a month and had been waiting in Angra Herosímli for a long time immediately surrounded the "Huamei Business Club" where the state-owned import and export group was located the next day.

After some haggling, the businessmen, who were barely able to get a share of the goods order, rushed to the U.S. Consulate General in Europe to complete the final trade import and export visas, and then go to the warehouse or dock to pick up the goods.

This is an import and export trade visa approval model agreed upon by Svenbo and Governor Garcia. After several adjustments and modifications, the trade import and export visa is set in quadruplicate. One to the Consulate General, one to the Governor's Palace, one to the exporter and one to the importer.

In this way, Svenbo can not only clearly grasp the purchase of goods by European merchants, but also prevent smuggling that is not under the control of the Consulate General, and Garcia can also collect trade taxes and give permission to leave the port, and can obtain gray income by modifying the name of the goods.

On the other hand, the industrial raw materials or commodities such as sulfur, saltpeter, brass, linen, cotton, woollen, woollen wool, and olive oil that European merchants had already shipped to the Azores were also purchased in large quantities by the Chinese American Chamber of Commerce, but compared with the export of goods, the Chinese American Chamber of Commerce spent much less money on the import of materials.

There were two US ** ships anchored outside the port, which made some unscrupulous European captains quickly rein in, and they could only look in the direction of the American concession with a drunken and greedy gaze in the tavern.

The first large-scale trade between Europe and the United States in 1622 was finally opened. (To be continued......)

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