June 12, 1631, Port of Batavia, Java Island, South Sea.

Since Cohen became the third governor of the Dutch East India Company 12 years ago, Batavia City has been a major target for the Dutch in Asia. After Cohen drove out the Banten army that had occupied the area, the East India Company moved its headquarters here and invested huge resources in running the city of Batavia, which gradually became the political and economic center of the Dutch in Southeast Asia.

The Dutch brought boulders from the Coromandel coast in India, teak wood from Zabala in East Java, and a large number of hard-working Chinese laborers from the Ming Dynasty to build the city on the northwest coastline of Java. The excavation of canals and drains, the construction of houses and harbors, and the construction of walls and fortifications were mostly completed by Chinese craftsmen from the Ming Dynasty. The Dutch also attach great importance to the Chinese who are good at engineering and commercial trade, and the resources invested in the introduction of Chinese immigrants every year are very huge.

Governor Cohen also developed a model of operation whereby the Chinese chieftain of the retail business, including coastal trade, was given the responsibility of the Chinese chieftain Kapitan, while the Dutch appointed the Chinese Kapitan to exercise indirect rule over the local Chinese community. In 1619, Cohen appointed his close friend Su Minggang as the first Kapitan, a position that was democratically elected by the Chinese elder Tong Guò, but which had to be approved by the Dutch in order to take office, because the position was by its nature as a representative and intermediary of Chinese interests in the Dutch Governor's Palace.

Each overseas Chinese was required to pay a monthly poll tax to Kapitan, which accounted for more than half of the East India Company's tax collection in Batavia, demonstrating the importance of the Chinese in the local society. In addition to the East India Company's own fleet, more than ninety percent of the maritime trade objects in the port of Batavia came from the Ming Dynasty. It is no exaggeration to say that the Chinese are definitely one of the necessary conditions for the rise of Batavia.

However, the situation in recent months of the year has been somewhat awry, and since April, the number of ships returning to Batavia from the north has been reduced for no reason. The three merchant ships, which were supposed to return from Dayuan Port during this time, had not appeared for a month after the scheduled time, a situation that had not occurred in the past few years, and had attracted the attention of the governor's palace and the East India Company's higher-ups. Of course, they didn't know that among the merchant ships that set off from Batavia to head north to Dayuan Port, there were also unlucky ghosts who had quietly disappeared from the voyage.

According to the usual weather conditions, there are indeed typhoons in the South China Sea at this time of year, and it is not uncommon for ships to be destroyed and people killed. However, the Dutch have been running this route for many years, and the Dutch captains on each ship have mastered the skills of how to choose a relatively safe route during the typhoon season and avoid dangerous sea conditions. It is very unlikely that three sailboats departing every half a month will go missing in extreme sea conditions at sea.

After a meeting, the top management of the East India Company decided that there were several possibilities. The first is shipwrecked, in which case it is of course impossible to find the missing merchant ships, and the second possibility is that the sailing ships were intercepted at sea, and in the latter case, the situation is more complicated.

The Netherlands has two strong rivals in the Far East that have been fighting for many years, one is Portugal and the other is Spain. Portugal has weakened so much in recent years, not only has it become a vassal state of Spain, but it has also been repeatedly defeated in the struggle with the Netherlands in the Far East, and has been robbed of many colonies in the Indian Peninsula and Southeast Asia by the Dutch.

In order to intercept the share of the Ming export trade from Spain, the Netherlands has also sent many armed merchant ships to cruise on the route between the southeast coast of the Ming Dynasty and Manila in recent years, intercepting Spanish sailing ships, intercepting Ming merchant ships and coercing them to change their destination to Batavia in the south. Such an approach naturally aroused the dissatisfaction of Spain, but so far the two sides have not been distinguished, and interception and counter-interception at sea are still being staged day after day.

With the strength of the two opponents, Portugal and Spain, it was not impossible to intercept Dutch merchant ships in the South China Sea, and their motives were very sufficient, so it can be said that they were very suspicious objects, and they were the most suspicious targets of the Dutch at present.

In addition to these two forces, other possibilities have also been proposed, such as the South China Sea pirates and the Haihan people who have become popular on Qiongzhou Island in Daming in recent years. There are many factions of the pirates of the South China Sea, but none of them are too strong, and it would be more powerful to intercept Dutch merchant ships, because it is difficult for their old sailing ships to intercept Dutch sailing ships at sea that are much faster.

However, the Haihan people on Qiongzhou Island are somewhat suspicious, because their rumors have been known in the streets in recent years, and even the East India Company, which has not established direct trade relations with them, has received a lot of relevant information.

These Chinese descendants, who are said to have come from overseas, have a completely different path from the Ming Dynasty, they are skilled in engineering and maritime trade, have a large number of skilled craftsmen, and also have a very high level of military standards. In the eyes of the Dutch, the Haihan gang behaved completely differently from the traditional Chinese in their minds, except for their appearance. This group is high-profile and aggressive, and they are also quite quick to expand outward.

Only a year or two after settling in the southern part of Qiongzhou Island, the Haihan had already trained an army to cross the sea to expedition to Annam to assist the northern court in the civil war against its southern opponents. Although the rumored size of this army was not large, only a thousand, its combat effectiveness and achievements impressed the Dutch onlookers. Originally, some people in the East India Company thought that they should launch a military attack on Haihan, a potential competitor, and eliminate this potential opponent at an early stage to prevent future troubles, but after learning about Haihan's combat methods and achievements, the original main battle faction gave up the idea of taking the initiative to attack, and chose to wait and see what happened before making plans.

It's not that the top management of the East India Company thinks that their military strength can't defeat the Haihan, but it is true that they are afraid of the Haihan and dare not take it lightly. Because there are two other strong opponents in the South China Sea, if they concentrate their firepower to deal with the Haihan people on Qiongzhou Island, on the one hand, it is easy to cause a backlash from the Ming Dynasty, and on the other hand, they may also be taken advantage of by Portugal and Spain, the two old opponents. Once Haihan can't be resolved quickly, it is likely that there will be extraneous branches, and the situation of the war will develop in a direction that it cannot control.

However, the abandonment of the use of war against Haihan did not mean that the East India Company gave up its attention to Haihan. In fact, since Haihan assisted the Annam court in ending its civil war two years earlier, the East India Company has set up a special department to collect and organize all kinds of information about Haihan. Although the Dutch were unable to enter Qiongzhou Island on their own to obtain first-hand information, they were still able to obtain a lot of information about the Haihan from the Ming maritime merchants who had trade relations.

According to the information gathered from various sources, the East India Company believed that the naval forces of the Haihan had even surpassed the Portuguese in recent times. The reason is that after conquering Hoi An Castle in the south of Annam, Haihan expelled the local Portuguese and confiscated some of their property. Later, instead of fighting with the Haihan people, the Portuguese secretly sent people to Qiongzhou Island to negotiate peace, and also signed a cooperation agreement on commerce and trade.

In the last year, the Dutch have discovered that the Portuguese are buying weapons from the Haihan and equipping them with their strongholds in Southeast Asia and the Indian Peninsula. This discovery really shocked the Dutch, because they also knew that the Portuguese used to act as second-hand weapons dealers, refurbishing and selling those obsolete weapons on the battlefields of Europe to the Ming at a high price. In order to be able to make a high profit from the arms trade, those damned Portuguese second-hand dealers are even salvaging the sunken ship, so that they can sell the weapons on the sunken ship to the Ming military department with a lot of stupid money.

Originally, this business was also very coveted by the Dutch, but after the battle in Penghu a few years ago, the way for the Netherlands to carry out in-depth cooperation with the Ming Dynasty has basically been blocked - at least during the term of office of the current governor Cohen, because the Dutch general Gao Wenlu, who was killed by the Ming in Penghu, was personally appointed by Cohen, and it is impossible for him to swallow this knocked out tooth into his stomach so silently.

But judging from the current situation, it is clear that the Portuguese have given up the business of selling second-hand weapons to the Ming Dynasty, because they cannot sell them to the Ming at a lower price than the Haihan, and they are no longer competitive in this business. There is no doubt that the Haihan have taken the place of the Portuguese as an arms dealer, and this can be seen from the almost unlimited expansion of their territory on the island of Qiongzhou, and the connivance of the Ming Cantonese government at their existence.

Behind this seemingly uneventful business change, there is a fact that makes the Dutch very uneasy - since the Haihan people dare to sell weapons to the powerful Ming Empire, then at least they are not worried that the Ming will coerce them to hand over the methods of manufacturing these weapons. In other words, their assessment of their own strength should be higher than that of the Ming army.

Although the Haihan never contacted the Dutch after their appearance, and did not show goodwill or hostile behavior, the Haihan was definitely a potential competitor to be watched out for by the East India Company. Their territory is expanding outward from Hainan Island at an astonishing rate, reaching the border south of Annam, and reaching Fujian across the sea from Dayuangang to the north. In time, whether this force will continue to move south and compete with the East India Company for the ownership of Southeast Asia, no one dares to play this package. Therefore, regardless of whether the disappearance of Dutch merchant ships in the South China Sea was related to the Han Dynasty, the East India Company had already made it one of the objects of suspicion with a strong attack.

Although the real reason for this is not clear, three ships have disappeared now, and it is impossible for the East India Company top brass to sit idly by and watch the situation continue to deteriorate, and something must be done. At the command of Governor Cohen, the Dutch armed forces stationed in the port of Batavia began to move, and it took twenty days to prepare a maritime search and rescue fleet, ready to set off for the north, along the usual route of Dutch merchant ships to find the truth.

Although it is a search and rescue fleet, in fact, no one in the fleet regards "rescue" as the task of this trip. Finding three ships off course in the vast South China Sea is almost like looking for a needle in a haystack, and it would be good luck to be able to find the slightest hint of a missing ship.

The commander appointed by Governor Cohen for this fleet was Van Longen, a citizen of the United Republic of the Netherlands of pure blood, who was also an experienced seafaring captain.

The reason why this captain Van Longen is described as pure blood is because in the 60s of the last century, when the northern provinces of the Netherlands launched an anti-Spanish struggle, Van Longen's ancestors were one of the founders of the "Utrecht League" that was the first to break away from the rule of the Spanish Habsburgs. In 1581, when the "Republic of the United Provinces of the Netherlands" was established, his ancestors had the honor of becoming one of the rulers of the republic.

However, after two generations, there were no more benefits to be enjoyed in Van Longen's ancestral shade, and his position in the family was not the preferred heir, so he, like other young Dutchmen who could not find a way out, chose to join the fleet and go to the far east to seek a future in the far east.

The few blessings left to him by his ancestors played a role at this time, so that he did not have to start from the most basic sailors, but was directly recommended by political bigwigs to join the East India Company, which had flourished in the Far East in recent years, and also used the family's financial resources to order a three-masted armed merchant ship for him. Of course, the ownership of this merchant ship does not belong to Van Longen personally, but is owned by his family, and the East Indies account for 30%.

Thanks to his family's help, Van Longen came to the Far East as Cohen's right-hand man, and soon became the right-hand man of the new governor. This has been in the Far East for 12 years, and Van Longen has changed from a fledgling handsome young man to a middle-aged uncle with a scruffy beard. His fleet has grown from one to a fleet of seven sailing ships, covering the vast expanse from Japan and Korea to the Java Islands in the South China Sea. Although he still had to pay most of his income to his family and the East India Company as dividends each year, the increase in his overall income had allowed him to live a very decent life in Batavia.