Chapter 949: Aboard Ship, Off to the Americas! (Please Subscribe)

Outside Uraga Town in Japan.

This port town was the gateway to Edo Bay, situated on the eastern shore of the Miura Peninsula and bordering the Uraga Strait; since ancient times it had been an important harbor of Japan.

Seen from high above, the eastern tip of the Miura Peninsula stretching out toward Edo Bay looked as if the giant Pangu, who split heaven and earth, had struck it with a single axe-blow, leaving a rift across the land that opened onto the sea and formed an excellent sheltered anchorage — that was Uraga Harbor.

East of Uraga port town there was also a hill called Kannonzaki, and on its slope facing Edo Bay stood a very conspicuous battery. Standing on the forecastle of the Feixiang, Wei Zaode held up a telescope and studied from afar this battery, which was probably meant to seal off the entrance to Edo Bay. After watching for a while, he finally lowered the telescope and asked an officer behind him — a man in a red military uniform, about thirty, his face burned black by the sun: "First Mate Hao, did the Japanese build batteries on only one side of the bay entrance?"

"Right, they built a battery on only one side of the bay entrance. Its fire can't cover the whole entrance, so it's just for show. Its purpose is to fire a warning shot at any ship that forces its way into Edo Bay — it can't actually hit anything. The Japanese have poor cannon; they rarely cast large-caliber guns in one piece. Most of them are just oversized matchlocks made by forging, and they're useless against warships.

That's why they built the battery so conspicuously — just for show!"

Wei Zaode knew that Great Ming warships often barged into Japanese coastal waters to fight. If they got angry enough, who cared whether it was Japanese coastal waters or not — barge in first, talk later!

But he did not understand why the Japanese would build such a showpiece battery.

"If it's useless, why build it?"

"Your Grace may not know, but although these guns can't hit our warships or the Spaniards', they can be heard, and they look lively enough. They let the samurai and commoners of Japan know that the shogunate is working hard to defend the country. The muzzles point outward, but what they're really firing at is the morale of the people at home."

Wei Zaode nodded slightly and said with a smile: "The rebel traitors of the Tokugawa shogunate have it rather hard. If they would sincerely submit to the Celestial Court, why would they have to work so hard?"

"That's not likely to be easy."

Wei Zaode smiled. "First Mate Hao, just watch. This duke has his own way of making the Tokugawa shogunate bow its head and submit!"

First Mate Hao did not believe that His Lordship Wei could talk the House of Tokugawa into submission with a silver tongue, but he still smiled and flattered him: "Of course. With Chancellor Wei taking the field, how could little Japan not come over to our Celestial Court?"

This First Mate Hao had the single given name Feng. He was from a military household in Shandong, and his family held a hereditary post in the Dengzhou Guard military household. But he had not yet inherited the hereditary office when the Jiashen Catastrophe struck. Later, when Zhu Cilang followed the Chongzhen Emperor in fleeing to Dengzhou and used the grand promise of "Go south of the Yangtze and get rich" to stir the military households of the Seven Guards of Denglai into enlisting, Hao Feng went south with them.

Because his family had been sailors for generations, he joined up when the Yangtze Fleet was established. Later, when the Shanghai Naval Academy opened, he was young, had some schooling, and was no fool, so he entered the academy to study navigation and gunnery.

After graduating he served continuously in the Eastern Ocean Fleet, rising step by step from a junior officer. He had taken part in seventeen naval battles, all told, and performed outstandingly, so he had now become first mate of the Feixiang — a post that was a necessary step before promotion to captain of a first-rate warship.

The so-called first-rate warships were galleons of eight hundred tons burden built in imitation of the Feixiang. One had already been completed — the Henan — and six more eight-hundred-ton warships were under construction: the Fujian, the Jiangnan, the Jiangbei, the Zhejiang, the Jiangxi, and the Shandong.

In addition, the Great Ming navy had second-rate warships of six hundred tons burden, third-rate warships of four hundred tons, fourth-rate warships of two hundred tons, and first-rate armed ships converted from ten-thousand-bushel great bird ships — four grades of naval vessels in all.

Because for many years Great Ming had concentrated on developing the army, the Eastern Ocean Fleet directly under the Naval Command did not have very many vessels. Each grade had only eight ships, and the five grades together totaled forty ships — of which six first-rate warships had not yet been completed.

So the total number of combat vessels in the Great Ming navy's Eastern Ocean Fleet was only forty-four.

Besides the Eastern Ocean Fleet, Great Ming now had three other major fleets: the Northern Ocean Fleet, the Yangtze Fleet, and the Southern Ocean Fleet. Of these, the Northern Ocean and Yangtze fleets were more or less "shell fleets." The Northern Ocean Fleet had only a few dozen sand ships of two or three hundred tons burden, and the Yangtze Fleet was just some "turtle ships" — never mind putting to sea, they no longer even went east of Jiangyin.

The Southern Ocean Fleet, however, was not under the Naval Command but under the jurisdiction of the Dongning Military Commissioner's Office, and it was enormous in scale!

It did not have many Western-style galleon-rigged soft-sail ships — only eight soft-sail ships of five or six hundred tons — but it had a great many ten-thousand-bushel bird ships, several hundred of them!

These ten-thousand-bushel great bird ships were not proper warships but armed merchantmen. Besides lending the Dongning army face, they also ran transport between Guangzhou, Quanzhou, Ningbo, Shanghai, and other ports on one side and Annam, Siam, the Jin'ou Army, and the Jinghai Army on the other. Every year they brought several million bushels of rice into Great Ming, and they also carried in large quantities of Siamese teak and Annamese teak — teak that was a vital raw material for Great Ming naval shipbuilding!

Besides doubling as traders, the Southern Ocean Fleet's way of fighting was also unorthodox. Most of its officers had never attended a naval academy, so they could not handle Western soft-sail ships and only knew how to work the great bird ships.

And because their great bird ships had to carry more cargo, they had removed the lower gun deck and usually mounted only four gun positions on the top deck. Perhaps to frighten people, Zheng Sen had ordered many twenty-catty short-barreled guns from the Anping Ironworks.

Such ships, with such firepower, were in the eyes of the Spanish fleet commander De Velasco and the ambassador to Great Ming, Caballero, just like the Japanese batteries — things that existed only for show.

In all of Great Ming, the only truly serviceable navy was the Eastern Ocean Fleet's thirty-odd Western-style sailing ships, which alone were fit for battle!

And the most threatening of those thirty-odd Western-style soft-sail ships was the eight-hundred-ton Feixiang!

Just as the Feixiang was slowly entering Uraga Harbor, De Velasco and Caballero were standing on the sterncastle of a five-hundred-ton galleon flying the Spanish red-cross flag, already anchored in Uraga Harbor, watching intently.

"Damned Dutch beggars!" cursed De Velasco, who had just returned from his "sightseeing tour" of the Mongol steppe.

This ship Feixiang was nothing short of a nightmare for Spanish naval officers and men in the Far East!

Not only was she stout of hull and sharp of gun, but her captain and crew were also formidable — her backbone was made up of veteran Dutch seamen!

Caballero asked: "Is there a ship keeping watch on her?"

"Yes!" said De Velasco. "Outside Edo Bay there are two unflagged one-hundred-fifty-ton Chinese bird ships, both of the fast type, commanded by our own men and crewed by hired Joseon and Manchu sailors."

Spain's Pacific Trading Company had purchased many small bird ships and scattered them like a net around Japan, keeping close watch on the main ports.

"Then keep a tight watch!" said Caballero. "If that ship turns east into the Kuroshio, we must immediately send a fast ship to notify the Viceroyalty of New Spain!"

"I know, I know what to do!" said De Velasco. "When will the New Spain arrive?"

The New Spain was a thousand-ton galleon warship, formerly the flagship of the New Spain Fleet, and had been stationed in the Caribbean.

Because of De Velasco's repeated requests, the Viceroyalty of New Spain had agreed to transfer this thousand-ton ace warship, together with several other eight-hundred-ton and six-hundred-ton warships, to the Far East specifically to hunt the Feixiang!

Caballero laughed: "Soon — three months at most and they'll reach the Far East. Commander García de Toledo y Mendoza will lead the fleet here in person!"