Chapter 97: The Chief Helmsman Arrives (Please Favorite, Please Recommend)

Tianjin Garrison, the twenty-seventh day of the third month in the seventeenth year of Chongzhen of the Great Ming.

A southeast wind had suddenly sprung up, bringing a torrential downpour to the Tianjin Garrison that drenched everything in an impenetrable haze. The Wei River, which gathered many tributaries before flowing to the sea, had lost its usual calm, its turbid waves churning and rolling in the wind and rain, as if to wash away all the heroes of this year of sudden upheaval under Heaven.

This sudden storm had come on with extraordinary ferocity, as though striving with all its might to scour clean the smoke of battle and the stench of blood hanging over the three garrisons of Tianjin.

Twenty or thirty li east of the Tianjin Garrison, on the heaving waters of the Wei River, more than a hundred sand ships were sailing before the wind. In the lead was a great centipede war vessel, ten zhang long and two zhang wide, with forty long oars plying the water along either side. On its prow stood a middle-aged man dressed as a scholar. He held an umbrella, but it could not keep off the rain driven sideways by the gale. His silk scholar's robe was soaked through, yet he himself seemed unaware of it.

This scholar was named Shen Tingyang, a civil official of the Great Ming, holding the post of Vice Chancellor of the Imperial Academy, managing maritime transport and the supply of military funds to Liaodong. But he was no ordinary civil official, for beyond his official rank he held a special identity: he was the Chief Helmsman of the Northern Ocean Sand Ship Gang!

And the Shen family of the Sand Ship Gang was a name of great renown in the markets and the jianghu of South Zhili. In later parlance, he would be called a red-hatted merchant. In the Ming there were no "red hat-tops," so there was no such term as red-hatted merchant. But the nature was much the same: official, merchant, and jianghu all in one.

If there was any difference between Ming official-merchants like the Shen family of the Sand Ship Gang and the official-merchants of the Qing, it was that they possessed a rather high degree of independence, and could not be pushed around at will by the court or its officials.

For the stage on which the Shen family of the Sand Ship Gang operated was the northern seas; they were great merchants who roamed the ocean. Like the Eighteen Zhi group based in Fujian (Zheng Zhilong and his lot), they were armed merchants with guns and cannon, merchants, pirates, and officials all at once.

No household-ruining Prefect or clan-exterminating County Magistrate could do anything against the Eighteen Zhi or the Sand Ship Gang. Even if the regular Ming navy were sent out (not counting a recruited navy like Zheng Zhilong's), it certainly could not defeat the Sand Ship Gang as it now stood.

In a sense, sea-merchant groups like the Sand Ship Gang and the Eighteen Zhi were, like the Manchu military group rising in the northeast, all newly risen powers in the great contest of the late Ming.

But they did not oppose Ming rule, nor did they contend with the Ming ruling group for land, population, or wealth. On the contrary, they supported Ming rule and were new powers that supplied wealth to the Ming ruling group.

Their present aim was to use the maritime strength in their hands as capital, to serve the Ming, and to become members of the Ming ruling group. Both the Eighteen Zhi and the Sand Ship Gang had achieved their wish, becoming a breed apart in the official world of the Great Ming.

The Sand Ship Gang had become official merchants even earlier than the Eighteen Zhi. As far back as the Wanli war in Joseon, they had been transporting grain for the Ming army. Because of this, the Sand Ship Gang had become a great merchant group ranging across the northern seas, plying between the Great Ming and Joseon.

Later, when Mao Wenlong established his command at Dongjiang, the Sand Ship Gang also contributed greatly. Otherwise Mao Wenlong, stranded overseas with little pay or provisions, would have collapsed on his own without Yuan Chonghuan having to kill him. According to the records: Mao Wenlong's force was called an army, with a yearly pay of eight hundred thousand, all of it reaching Pi Island from Dengzhou, while all the ginseng, sable, and such goods of Liaodong that were smuggled into the interior also passed through Dengzhou.

The Joseon Yi dynasty records likewise state: Commissioner-in-Chief Mao received traveling merchants on the island, and his tax revenue in a single year amounted to no less than a vast sum.

After Mao Wenlong's Dongjiang command collapsed, Shen Tingyang continued to dominate the northern seas by taking on the transport of Liaodong military supplies and the sea shipment of tribute grain. He became a maritime power able to stand toe-to-toe with the Eighteen Zhi merchant group of the southern seas.

Of course, the Sand Ship Gang's strength could not compare with the Eighteen Zhi. The reason they could divide the northern and southern seas with the Zheng family of Fujian was, first, that the northern seas were shallow, with many rolling sandbar waves, suited to sand ships; and second, that the Sand Ship Gang did more service for the court and enjoyed the support of the Ming authorities.

Therefore the Eighteen Zhi merchant group did not touch the territory of the northern seas and Joseon. Zheng Zhilong's earlier refusal to go north also had this reason behind it.

And now, with Beijing fallen and the Great Ming in dire peril, the Sand Ship Gang, which had always relied on Ming support to range the northern seas, had also reached a moment of crisis.

With danger, there was also opportunity!

A man with bare feet and a straw rain cape walked quickly up to Shen Tingyang, who had sunk into deep thought. "Chief Helmsman, look there!"

Only then did Shen Tingyang rouse himself from his reverie and look up in the direction the man pointed. On the riverbank of the Wei River's southern shore, a column of soldiers was marching through the rain, dragging two small wooden boats behind them. The soldiers all wore straw rain capes, so their uniforms could not be made out, but they carried a red banner with black characters reading "Roving."

"Roving bandits!" Shen Tingyang laughed coldly, turned, and strode toward the cabin. His sand ship was no ordinary cargo vessel, but a warship! On the deck stood a cabin enclosed by thick wooden bulwarks. The bulwarks had no ordinary windows, but were pierced with many dark firing ports. Even with the torrential rain outside, the musketeers concealed within the cabin could still open fire!

……

"Battalion Commander, ships! So many ships!"

When the shout rang out, a Shun army Battalion Commander named Tang Laosi was trudging along with his head down, leaning on a stick. He was a subordinate of Tang Tong, and a kinsman as well. But Tang Tong had good fortune, with a hereditary post to inherit, while Tang Laosi had a hard lot, able only to follow Tang Tong and scrape by. First he had served as a household retainer, and now he had become a Battalion Commander. And after Tang Tong abandoned the Ming and surrendered, Li Zicheng had kept assigning him bitter duties. His troops were also herded along by the Shun army's old camp as cannon fodder, with not a scrap of profit to be had, and complaints filled the ranks from top to bottom.

Even the words of Regional Commander Tang no longer carried the weight they once had. Many officers who were not of Tang Tong's own trusted circle were unwilling to exert themselves, so the great Regional Commander Tang could only order his own loyal men to suffer and toil.

Thus Tang Laosi, the Battalion Commander, now had to go out in the rain with three or four hundred subordinates, seething with resentment at having received no reward money for so long, to search for boats along the Wei River.

The boat-hunting errand had been assigned to Tang Tong by Li Guo, its purpose being to build a pontoon bridge so as to completely trap Tianjin Garrison.

The ten thousand and more troops of Li Guo and Tang Tong had arrived outside Tianjin Garrison on the twenty-sixth day of the third month. Because of the torrential rain from heaven, they had not engaged the defenders. And the Ming troops, whether to avoid the rain or out of fear of the Shun heavenly soldiers, had all shrunk back inside Tianjin Garrison.

So Li Guo decided to lay siege while waiting for reinforcements — first they had to close the ring, and not let Chongzhen, Zhu Cilang, and Wu Sangui escape!

But he and Tang Tong soon discovered that Tianjin Garrison was not easy to besiege. The city had been built along the water, on both banks of the main channel of the Wei River where it flowed to the sea. There were two walled towns, north and south, the southern one primary and the northern one auxiliary. They stood facing each other across the river, linked by a pontoon bridge.

The channel of the Wei River was also rather broad, rushing to the sea, and seagoing ships could sail up against the current to reach it. If troops were posted on both banks of the Wei, bows, matchlock muskets, and crouching-tiger cannon could not possibly stop sturdy seagoing ships from entering and leaving Tianjin Garrison by the Wei River.

To besiege Tianjin Garrison completely, they naturally had to find a way to block the Wei River. Otherwise, as soon as the Ming's Tianjin fleet came up against the current, it could carry off Chongzhen, Zhu Cilang, Wu Sangui, and the rest.

So Li Guo ordered Tang Tong to find wooden boats and build a pontoon bridge downstream of Tianjin Garrison to seal off the water route.

Tang Laosi's unit was now carrying out this thankless, profitless errand... After searching for a long time, they had only managed to fish out two small fishing boats. Because Tang Laosi's men were all landlubbers and none knew how to handle a boat, they were dragging the wooden boats along with ropes.

"Merchant ships, are they?"

"Sitting heavy in the water — must be carrying grain from Dagu into Tianjin Garrison."

"Now we've struck it rich..."

"Company Commander, stop them!"

Tang Laosi burst out laughing too. This really was getting something without any effort at all!

He waved a hand and shouted, "Can the matchlocks fire?"

"They can."

"Damn it all, fire one shot first, scare them a bit..."

"Bang bang bang..."

Tang Laosi had just given the order to fire when a dense volley of shots rang out! Of course, it was not his own soldiers firing — his unit had only a single matchlock musket; how could it produce such rapid fire?

The ones firing were of course Chief Helmsman Shen's gang members. Forty Guangdong turtle-dove-foot matchlock muskets fired as one, and a single volley knocked down seven or eight of Tang Laosi's men.

"Roving bandits!" Tang Laosi cried out in alarm, then felt it was wrong — the roving bandits had now gone straight and become the court. He hastily corrected himself: "Damn it, sea pirates! They've got muskets on board! Brothers, get down..."

(End of Chapter)