Chapter 7: What Makes a Sea Bandit of the Great Ming

"Is that really so?" Lin Qian found it hard to believe.

In the thirty-first year of Wanli, the Battle of Sarhu had not yet been fought, and the Great Ming's national strength was at its peak.

Was the coastal defense already this weak back then?

They didn't even dare fight back against a mere few hundred Spaniards?

Master Lu nodded dejectedly: "If you ask me, even the sea bandits in the court's eyes have more spine than that old emperor in Beijing."

He was past forty, had lived overseas for years, and knew he would never return to the Great Ming in this lifetime; in his speech, his wariness of the Wanli Emperor was far less than his wariness of the Spaniards.

Hearing the words "sea bandits," Lin Qian pricked up his ears and asked with an unchanged expression: "What do you mean by that?"

"Brother Lin, have you heard of Lin Feng?"

Of the late-Ming sea bandits, the only one Lin Qian could claim to know well was Zheng Zhilong.

Of the others, he knew the names of Li Dan, Yan Siqi, Liu Xiang, and such, but as for Lin Feng, he had never heard of him.

This was not Lin Qian's fault for being shallow in knowledge — Chinese history had always favored grand narratives and paid no attention to minor details; many brilliant talents of the realm were given only a passing mention, let alone a mere sea bandit.

"In the second year of Wanli, Lin Feng led an army of over four thousand men to attack Manila, and once even broke into the Governor-General's residence. Unfortunately, he was jointly attacked by the Franks and the Great Ming court in the end, and his efforts came to naught..."

Master Lu's tone seemed to carry considerable regret.

The Han Chinese of Luzon both feared and hated the Franks, and were utterly disillusioned with the Great Ming court — no wonder they regarded the sea bandit Lin Feng as a savior.

In contrast, the Great Ming court was willing to send troops against a sea bandit, yet turned a deaf ear to the slaughter of thirty thousand of its own subjects. It was truly ironic.

Lin Qian sighed along with Master Lu for a while, and then the conversation was steered back to sea bandits by Lin Qian.

Speaking of which, the sea bandits of the Great Ming were completely different from the pirates of the West.

The most famous pirates of the West, the Caribbean pirates, usually operated as single-ship crews; the captain was elected by the crew, and plundered treasure was divided equally among all crew members according to a fixed ratio.

Chinese sea bandits, by contrast, were closer to armed merchant syndicates — they had large numbers of ships and subordinates, and their distribution system was more complex, more reasonable, and more sustainable.

This was why a single sea bandit could gather a force of over four thousand men and nearly topple a Spanish colonial government.

Zheng Zhilong, the king of sea bandits in history, commanded tens of thousands of men and controlled an entire sea region, no different from a feudal warlord.

In terms of fame, the Caribbean pirates had the louder reputation.

But in terms of organization and combat effectiveness, the Caribbean pirates weren't fit to carry the shoes of the Great Ming's sea bandits.

After Master Lu finished telling Lin Qian about Lin Feng's deeds, he went on to introduce the customs and local conditions of Luzon and the South Seas.

Lin Qian kept feeding Master Lu prompts, always asking at the crucial points, and Master Lu felt the conversation growing more and more congenial.

They chatted nonstop for an hour and a half, had their tea refilled three times, and even called for the waiter to brew fresh tea.

As noon approached, Master Lu insisted on keeping Lin Qian for lunch.

Lin Qian could not decline, so he had no choice but to comply.

The lunch Master Lu arranged had quite a local flavor.

The staple was rice cooked in coconut milk, with side dishes including tamarind sour fish soup, shrimp-and-corn lumpia, and charcoal-grilled pork with chili-vinegar sauce — the flavors were mainly sweet and sour, with a hint of spiciness.

Besides local ingredients, there were also many crops from the Americas such as corn and chili peppers, and precious spices produced in the South Seas like pepper and nutmeg were used liberally as well.

This meal, which would have seemed ordinary to later generations, was a veritable feast in this era.

Bailangzai had never seen most of the food on the table, and ate like a whirlwind sweeping through clouds.

After the meal, Master Lu kept Lin Qian for tea again, and they did not part until the afternoon.

"Rest assured, Brother Lin — all the payment for the goods will arrive at the docks tomorrow." As he was leaving, Master Lu clasped his hands and promised.

Lin Qian smiled and took his leave of Master Lu, then headed toward the walled city.

Bailangzai said: "This isn't the way back to the docks."

"I want to take a stroll around the city and buy some things while I'm at it."

"Why not make your purchases at Master Lu's place?"

"The things I want to buy are a bit sensitive."

Though Lin Qian and Master Lu called each other brothers, merchants were naturally quick to speak deeply with new acquaintances — better to wait and see how things played out over time.

Bailangzai said no more, and Lin Qian led him straight into the walled city.

The walled city sat within a ring of European-style walls, forming the inner city of Manila, where the Spanish mostly conducted their activities.

The moment they passed through the city gate, there was a clear difference — everyone coming and going was a Spaniard in a ruffled-collar shirt, and hardly any Han Chinese faces could be seen.

On both sides of the streets were mostly Baroque-style stone buildings, which were either residences or various taverns.

It was as if they had suddenly arrived on the streets of Madrid.

The Spanish loved drinking and socializing, and people of all sorts would gather in the taverns — a good place to pick up information, indeed.

But the daylight was still bright now, and few pedestrians passed the tavern doors; only when night fell would these places come alive.

Lin Qian headed straight for the tallest Catholic church in the city.

Shops were usually set up beside churches, selling religious items such as Bibles.

"Do you have paper and pens?" Lin Qian stepped forward and asked. The greatest difference between the churches of Western Europe and ordinary people was that they possessed a certain amount of knowledge, so paper and pens were generally sold by the church.

The old priest in the shop glanced at Lin Qian, somewhat surprised.

Presumably, the common folk of the Great Ming all used brush pens and rice paper, and very few ever came here to buy quill pens and linen paper.

"Paper and pens are sold only to the children of God," the old priest said firmly.

Lin Qian smiled: "I was baptized three years ago, and my baptismal name is Raphael. Oh, and please give me a cross as well, reverend father."

The Chinese had always worshipped every kind of deity, believing in whichever one showed its power.

To achieve his goal, Lin Qian did not mind temporarily taking refuge in the embrace of the Lord.

Upon learning that Lin Qian was a Catholic, the old priest was overjoyed and brought out the items Lin Qian wanted: "Quill pens are one peso each, linen paper is one real per sheet, and the cross is half a real."

Lin Qian took out silver coins and placed them on the table — these were what he had exchanged that morning.

Compared with brush pens and rice paper, quill pens and linen paper were far more expensive.

It was just that he couldn't use a brush pen, and writing with one on a rocking ship was inconvenient, not to mention that rinsing the brush consumed precious fresh water, and rice paper couldn't withstand moisture either.

So all things considered, the Spanish writing implements were better suited for voyaging at sea.

Lin Qian spent eleven pesos in total, buying five pens, a bottle of ink, and over forty sheets of paper.

With paper and pen that were easy to write with, keeping the ship's log became much more convenient.

In this era without marine chronometers, the only way to record the voyage was through the ship's log, from which one could then roughly calculate longitude.

Seafaring was, after all, an activity combining both courage and wisdom, involving a vast amount of knowledge in mathematics, geography, and astronomy. Without skills such as keeping a ship's log, using a sextant, using a compass, the lunar distance method, and basic geometry, blindly charging across the sea on guts and experience alone would sooner or later end in a watery grave.

Lin Qian left the church, wearing the cross on his chest.

On Spanish turf, wearing a cross would make things go more smoothly.

What he still lacked now was a sextant.

In later ages, this thing would be nothing more than a teaching aid, but in this era, it was absolutely cutting-edge.

So cutting-edge that Lin Qian wasn't even sure whether the sextant had been invented yet.

The navigational instruments at Manila's local shipyards weren't sold to outsiders, so he could only try his luck at general stores and pawnshops.

He browsed all the way until near dusk.

He didn't find a sextant, but he did buy two monocular telescopes, four nautical charts of the area around Manila, and several ship's logs written in Spanish.

It could be considered a fairly fruitful haul.

The silver pesos on him were also mostly spent, and just as he was heading for the docks, he suddenly heard the sound of bells tolling the hour.

Dong dong dong... seventeen strikes in all, carried from afar in the direction of the church.

Lin Qian paused slightly and looked toward the sound of the bells, only to see a clock tower standing tall, its hour hand pointing at the Roman numeral five.

Lin Qian's eyes suddenly lit up. In principle, a marine chronometer measured longitude by the time difference between local time and Greenwich Mean Time.

Since this era already had pendulum clocks, perhaps with a bit of modification, one could design a dual-pendulum symmetrical movement and thereby build the earliest marine chronometer.

Though the accuracy might be somewhat lacking, compared to the Westerners who navigated by astrolabe and the Great Ming people who sailed by rhumb-line songs, it would already be as precise as GPS positioning.

Yahei

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