Ha Lugong stood on the top of the dock and looked at the subordinates who were boarding the ship, and found that he was still a chess opponent, and the conditions of the troop transport ship boarded by the special operations battalion were obviously higher than those of the cavalry battalion.

If there was enough time, Harugong would probably take the initiative to complain about this "unfair" treatment, and by the way, help his subordinates fight for the same conditions, but now that the army is about to set off, it is impossible to talk about this kind of thing again. Although Harugong is extremely protective of his shortcomings, he still has this overall view, even if he is still a little dissatisfied in his heart, he will not bring it up at this point in time.

Of course, even if the cavalry could only board ordinary mixed passenger and cargo sailing ships, the horses of the cavalry battalion still had the treatment of riding special horse transport boats, and no other troops would compete with the cavalry battalion on this arrangement, because even the mounts of several high-ranking military officials would be handed over to the cavalry battalion to take care of along the way.

"Shi Diwen, this stall in Zhejiang will be handed over to you!" Before parting, Qian Tiandun held Shi Diwen's hand and explained very seriously. The two of them began to partner during the Penghu garrison, and later led the coalition army north to attack the Zhoushan Islands together, which has also given birth to a lot of tacit understanding in the past year and a half, but now according to the deployment of the Ministry of National Defense, Shi Diwen will stay in Zhoushan, and Qian Tiandun will lead the special operations battalion to act as the vanguard arrow of the northbound troops.

"It's like we're not going to see each other again...... When you gain a firm foothold in Shandong, and the coastal thaw will thaw tomorrow in spring and summer, I can come to your side to hang out, and I will take a boat for a few days. Shi Diwen was very optimistic and did not show too much sadness. As for the work on the Zhejiang side, it will probably be based on trade and immigration in the next two or three years, and it is unlikely that a large-scale conflict will break out with the Ming Dynasty or other armed forces, and the military's deployment here is more to appease the people's hearts and facilitate the future transfer of troops in the East China Sea and the Yellow Sea.

Although there will be a large combat fleet going north this time, considering the freezing period in the coastal waters in the local winter, it will be difficult for these warships to anchor in the local area at that time, and most of the ships will still return to Jiangsu and Zhejiang to station here this winter. On the north coastline of the Jiaodong Peninsula, there are only two theoretically ice-free ports of Dengzhou Shuicheng and Weihaiwei, but these two places were abandoned by the Ministry of Defense because they were too close to the Ming army station, and the coast of Zhifu Island chosen by the Ministry of Defense, that is, the Yantai Port area in later generations, has a high probability of being frozen by the sea in winter in this era. So even if the northbound troops gain a firm foothold in the second half of the year, Shi Diwen will probably have to wait until next year to find an opportunity to visit his comrades-in-arms in the local area.

"I've been preparing for this for a whole year, and now I can finally leave!" Wang Tom, who had already boarded the ship and stood at the bow of the flagship ship and looked at the sea in the distance, was not much reluctant. The Ministry of National Defense has been planning and preparing for a long time in order to be able to make this move in a steady manner. To be precise, from the beginning of 1633, when the Haihan army went north to attack Zhoushan, the Ministry of Defense was already planning a follow-up plan to go north.

In order to be able to safely maintain the 3,000-kilometer-long supply line from Sanya to Shandong through the Fujian Strait and the Zhoushan Islands, Haihan did several other things after successfully taking control of the Zhoushan Islands.

First of all, in September last year, Wang Tom led a joint fleet with the Fujian Navy Division to the Pacific Ocean and went to Miyako Island to eliminate the remnants of the Eighteen Zhi, and solved the only armed force near the Fujian Strait that could actually threaten the Haihan sea supply line.

Later, Defense Minister Yan Chujie also personally led a fleet in September to carry out a nearly three-month patrol and military exercise in the South China Sea with Annam, Champa and other countries, forcing the Dutch in Batavia City on Java Island to compromise in the negotiations on the formation of a transnational trade alliance, and set up military bases on Bangka Island and Belitung Island south of Ambuna Island, as well as Sing Dao at the eastern exit of the Strait of Malacca, to further advance Haihan's maritime control zone to the south.

This move does not seem to have any direct connection with Zhoushan, which is thousands of miles away, but all the measures taken by the Ministry of Defense in the South China Sea are aimed at maintaining peace and tranquility in the area south of Sanya, so that the military can safely transfer part of the navy and land forces originally stationed on Hainan Island to the north to participate in the operation of northward march into Shandong.

This plan is not complicated, but in practice, the negotiations on the formation of a South China Sea trade alliance on Ambuna Island were completed at the end of December last year, and the preparation and transfer of materials and personnel could only be completed in the first few months of this year.

In the original plan, the Ministry of National Defense believed that it would be extremely difficult to resolve the hostile forces in the officialdom in Zhejiang, and perhaps the time required for the operation would drag on for a long time, so in fact, it also made a plan to postpone it for a year and then go north. However, the decapitation operation carried out by the Ministry of Security in Hangzhou was really lucky, and it only took more than ten days before and after to achieve the predetermined action goal, and the attack was extremely clean, leaving not too many sequelae for the Zhejiang government to grasp.

At present, it has reached the end of July, and the time left for the Haihan army to take root and settle in the local area is probably until the beginning of November, before the Bohai Bay freezes, and it will only be about three months to be full. Therefore, the Ministry of National Defense did not want to delay any longer, and ordered the Zhoushan side to leave for the north as soon as they were ready to go.

On 26 July, the fully manned northbound fleet held a simple opening ceremony at the military wharf of Dinghai Port, where several high-ranking military generals presided over the offering of incense, and then the fleet of more than 100 sailing ships began to slowly leave the port in batches.

The vanguard is composed of six exploration-class warships, two expedition-class warships, two troop carriers, two supply ships, and a reconnaissance speedboat, and after they set off first, they will be about 10 to 15 nautical miles away from the main fleet, and will maintain contact with the main fleet through radio and fireworks signals, and will be commanded by the commander of the special operations battalion, Minami Takahashi.

The route of the northbound fleet was also the plan of the Navy and the Shipping Department after careful consideration of various conditions, and instead of adopting the shortest route of crossing the Yellow Sea in a straight line from south to north, they chose to go north along the coastline of Jiangsu. This is mainly due to the safety of navigation, so that in the event of poor sea conditions, a large number of civilian vessels in the fleet can quickly dock to avoid danger.

If it is in the south, perhaps the military will choose the shortest route to save travel time, but the northern sea is relatively unfamiliar to the Navy and the Maritime Division, and although choosing the near-shore route will increase the northbound voyage by nearly half, it will greatly improve the safety. This is undoubtedly a better choice for the military, which has always pursued stability.

After the more than 10 sailing ships of the vanguard team sailed out of Dinghai Port, they turned north, passed through the channel between Jintang Island and Zhoushan Island, and sailed in the direction of Songjiang Mansion on the north shore of Hangzhou Bay. At present, Haihan's direct control area is on the line of Qushan Island north of Zhoushan, and after the fleet sails out of here, it will be regarded as entering the sea area controlled by the Ming Dynasty.

The Haihan fleet passed through Songjiang, Suzhou, Yangzhou and Huai'an along the coast of Jiangsu, but according to the Ministry of Security, only a small number of naval divisions were stationed near the mouth of the Yangtze River, and there were few other places that could threaten the existence of the Haihan fleet. The navigators equipped by the vanguard have many experiences in sailing back and forth between Zhoushan and Huai'an, and are also familiar with the sea conditions of the coastal routes, and there is almost no need to use positioning equipment such as the ship's sextant, and they can judge the correct course based on experience alone.

About two hours after the departure of the vanguard fleet, the main fleet also began to sail out of the harbor docks, which was far more conspicuous than the vanguard because it included the two majestic flagships. Most of the merchant ships and fishing boats that often operate in this sea area know that when large ships like Haihan enter and leave the port, they often make relatively large moves, so almost all the civilian ships on the nearby sea surface stopped and watched this fleet slowly sail out of Dinghai Port and then head north.

In the evening of the same day, the main fleet successfully arrived at the mouth of the Yangtze River. During this period, the sandbanks at the mouth of the Yangtze River had not yet been formed, and the Hengsha Island and Changxing Island marked on the map had not yet appeared, and Chongming Island was only a few scattered sandbanks at present, and the outline of later generations had not yet appeared as a whole.

The fleet did not choose to stay here, but continued its journey north overnight, because there were several thousand houses in the area of Haiwei, the town of Suzhou, and even on Chongming Island, which had not yet taken shape, there was a Chongming sand station.

After entering the coastal area of Suzhou Prefecture, it is not difficult to find that the coastline here is quite different from the map information in the hands of the navy, because the sediment accumulation and reclamation of land in the sea have not yet shown their real power in this era, so the coastline of this area is basically in a primitive state, compared with the situation depicted on the map, the actual coast should be indented inland for several miles to dozens of miles. For this purpose, the fleet has sent two reconnaissance boats to observe and record the coastline so that the existing military maps can be revised in the future.

At dawn the next day, the fleet had sailed into the boundary of Yangzhou Prefecture, and some fishing boats that went out to sea to fish saw the appearance of this huge fleet and avoided the coastline, although the people in these coastal areas had more or less heard of the reputation of the Haihan people in the south, but there were not many people who really recognized the red and blue flag of the Haihan, and some people even thought that this was another group of Japanese invaders, and hurriedly fled to the coast, planning to take their families to the nearby county town as soon as possible to avoid trouble.

The Haihan fleet ignored the feelings of these people, continued to march north at full speed, and arrived at Yancheng at the junction of Huai'an and Yangzhou at noon on the third day. Yancheng is adjacent to the Yellow Sea in the east, the terrain is flat, the rivers and canals are vertical and horizontal, and the products are abundant. Because of the long sunshine hours and the large area of coastal plains and tidal flats, this place has been the location of the government salt works since ancient times.

From 119 B.C., Yandu County was set up here, which means "the river of transporting salt", and it was renamed Yancheng County during the Eastern Jin Dynasty, meaning "all salt fields around the city". There is also a record in the "Historical Records" that "there is a petrel in the East China Sea". In the Tang Dynasty, the Yancheng area was known as "the wealth of the southeast of Jia, and half of the border salary came from Zi", and more than 100,000 stones of salt were produced every year. Even the place names here are mostly named after the preparation units such as "group", "stove", "general" and "warehouse" related to the production organization of the salt-producing area.

The amount of salt produced in this place is so large that the small salt farms built by Haihan in the Zhoushan Islands do not have much advantage in terms of production costs. In the first two years of the Shandong turmoil, a large number of refugees fled south to Jiangsu, and many people were included in the salt households for their livelihoods, and these cheap labor further lowered the production cost of Haiyan in Jiangsu. If you want to take advantage of the low price to bring Haihan salt into this area, at least after the Sanmenwan salt farm near Shipu is completed and put into production.

Less than 100 nautical miles north of Yancheng is Haizhou, the main place where Haihan recruited Shandong refugees through other maritime merchants, which is the location of Lianyungang in later generations. However, in view of the large scale of the fleet heading north this time, in order to avoid causing local panic, the fleet did not sail directly into the port of Haizhou, but only sent two ships to purchase a batch of fresh vegetables and fruits locally.

"Haizhou, this place, in the future, we must find a way to occupy it, even if it is obviously difficult to do it, we must let the Ministry of Commerce intervene here. Sun Changmi looked at the chart and suddenly burst out.

But Wang Tom knew that he was definitely not without purpose, so he asked, "There is a mine in this place?"

Sun Changmi nodded and explained: "I have read the mineral data of the coastal areas compiled by Tian Yeyou before, and there is phosphate ore in Haizhou, which has a large reserve, just in Jinping Mountain, which is close enough to the coastline, suitable for large-scale mining. ”

Phosphorus has many uses in the military, industry and agriculture and other fields, and there is a phosphate mine that has been mined for several years in the Haihan control area, which is located in the Damao area of Sanya's interior. However, in the area north of Hainan Island, there is no stable supply of phosphate rock for the time being.

Phosphate rock had no suitable use for the Ming Dynasty in this era, so no one went to large-scale mining of this ore with a very low ignition point. But for Haihan, this is a treasure to be discovered. However, how to get capital into the region to operate mines at that time is a headache for the Ministry of Commerce.

By the time they arrived in Haizhou, the fleet had been sailing day and night for four days, and on the fifth day it was ready to enter the territory of Shandong. Compared to the previous voyage plan, the actual travel speed shortened the voyage by at least half a day.

In accordance with Zhu Yuanzhang's original concept of "setting up guards across prefectures and even counties", there are garrison strongholds such as Andong Wei, Lingshanwei, Turtle Mountain Guard, Da Song Wei, Jinghaiwei and Chengshanwei from south to north, and the guards are relatively tight.

(End of chapter)