Zhenhaibao Naval Base.

Just the day after the two ships of the South African pioneer team led by Mo Ming left the port, the Zhenhaibao Naval Base ushered in the most glorious day in history. All the warships of the First Navy Fleet and the Second Fleet gathered together, filling up several berths near the shores of the No. 1 Pier Bridge on both sides of the Zhenhaibao No. 1 Pier.

Julian Pasquiel looked at the tall hulls of the two battleships on the dock, and his worries were slightly relieved when he first arrived. There was no way, recently British ships began to appear frequently in the Bay of Biscay, and many of them were close to military standards in terms of firearms and personnel configuration.

The British's abnormal movement attracted the attention of the French Navy stationed in La Rochelle. Given the current friendly relations between the two countries, the British informed the local French Navy of their purpose through private channels in exchange for the French's ignorance of their privateer behavior. Of course, the news naturally became difficult to keep secret. The news of some British privateer ships appearing in the Bay of Biscay was transmitted to the east coast through the Pasquiel family's "Nightingale".

The Executive Committee and the Joint Staff attached great importance to the information sent by Julian's adventure. Although they were not sure whether the British would openly attack French ships loaded with cotton, it was better to be careful in everything. Therefore, the Executive Committee decided to stop the naval privateer activities that had lasted for three years and instead began to escort the merchant ships traveling to and from Bordeaux and the east coast.

To this end, the Navy Department took a look at its existing strength, with a total of eight ships of all sizes.

The main battleships are two battleships, "August 10" and "Common Market", each equipped with 66 naval guns; the guard gunships are the "Red Trout" equipped with 28 naval guns, the "Beagle" equipped with 24 naval guns, the "Maritime Literati" equipped with 22 naval guns, and the "East Shore Eagle" equipped with 20 naval guns; in addition, there are the armed merchant ship "Galicia Flying Fish" equipped with 16 artillery and the newly-engaged armed merchant ship "Businessman" (captured from the sea outside the Chesapeake Bay, former Virginia Company immigration ship).

The two ships heading to South Africa were deducted. The remaining ships could theoretically be used for escort. However, considering the strong maritime strength of the British, it would definitely not work if there were no main battleships in the escort formation. Therefore, the Executive Committee decided to reorganize two major fleets. The battleship of the "Common Market" was about to be placed into the first fleet, and the armed merchant ship of the "Businessman" was placed into the second fleet. In this way, all six professional warships were placed into the first fleet, greatly increasing the strength of the first fleet, and the second fleet became an optional supporting role.

After the staffing adjustment is completed, the personnel coordination is achieved. The 150 students who graduated from the first class of the Navigation School (32nd class) and the second class have long been assigned to each warship as non-commissioned officers and alternate officers. Of course, before exercising their officer powers, they first need to have a full year of internship sailor career and pass the assessment of the internship chief officer of the warship.

The graduates of these nautical schools are the "owners" that the Executive Committee and the Navy Department have assured. When they grow up and become the backbone of the navy, the navy on the east coast will surely become a formidable maritime force.

With the presence of non-commissioned officers and officers, the recruitment of sailors is a bit troublesome. No, the population base on the east coast is too small, and the sailors trained over the years are really limited. With the successive entry of two battleships and two large transport ships, the number of sailors on the east coast is currently seriously insufficient.

Helplessly, the spring for the hundreds of former pirate members who were currently playing hide-and-seek with the Chalua savages, as well as the valleys of Changshan Fort, has finally arrived. The Executive Committee ordered the pirates who had at least been subjected to the surface and were immediately put on naval uniforms. Most of them had already married and had children in the local area, which was also relatively reliable for the Executive Committee.

The addition of hundreds of former pirates finally barely met the standard. As for gunners, there is still no shortage of East Coast.

Due to a series of wars and a strong sense of crisis from the Executive Committee since the founding of the People's Republic of China, the East Coast currently implements a compulsory conscript system, that is, every adult man between the ages of 18 and 50 must receive regular military training regularly to ensure that when the war breaks out, the Joint Staff can directly incorporate them into active service.

The East Coast attaches great importance to artillery, which is currently the best in the world, so a large number of gunners have been trained. These gunners only need to be on board and adapt, run in for a period of time, and after a large amount of sea shelling training, they can become qualified ship gunners.

In this way, when all the personnel of the two major fleets were filled, the navy's organization officially exceeded 1,100 people, which is not counted as the sailors of the two newly entered South China Sea Transportation Company's merchant ships. Compared with the current population of more than 17,000 in the lower east coast, the army of such a large scale has to be said to be a military force.

There is almost no idle person in the entire country. Everyone has been inspired to have the greatest value, and the per capita GDP created is even more than dozens of streets away in all countries on this planet.

Now, in order to safeguard the overseas commercial interests of the Republic and to maintain the continued survival of this country, the Navy will come to the forefront and fight to the death with the old naval power in Europe, Britain.

The integrated first fleet was divided into two escort squadrons, each with a battleship as its flagship. Today, the mission of escorting the Zhenhai Castle-Bordeaux route was handed over to Wang Tiechong, who served as the captain commander of the Second Squadron.

Wang Tiechhui will lead the seat ship "Common Market", frigates "Red Trout" and "Maritime Literati", escorting the South China Sea Transportation Company flute-shaped transport ship "Penglai" full of various materials, and the "Yingzhou" to Bordeaux, and the Pasquire family's merchant ship "Nightinging" will also travel with it.

In view of the huge role played by the army musketeers in the previous Battle of Chesapeake Bay, the Joint Staff Headquarters temporarily recruited a large number of militias to fight with ships as usual. Among them, the "Common Market" battleship was equipped with five platoons of 80 musketeers, one platoon of 16 grenades, two platoons of 32 breastplate spearmen, and two platoons of commanders and two 130 commanders. As for the army on the "Red Trout" and "Maritime Literati", the equipment was reduced by half in the organization of the "Common Market" mixed company; and the two merchant ships were also equipped with half in the army soldiers.

In order to make up for the nearly 400 army soldiers needed for this voyage, the Joint Staff Headquarters mobilized a large number of veterans to join the army nationwide, especially the fifteen production teams in Dingyuan Township, where veterans were concentrated, contributed the vast majority of them.

Because of this, the number of people engaged in agricultural production has dropped sharply. November is the soybean sowing period, and the farm work in the fields is heavy. Such a large-scale transfer of strong labor will inevitably affect domestic grain production. After several consecutive years of large-scale grain exports, domestic grain stocks have dropped to less than a year. If the grain harvest is poor this year, it is likely to cause turmoil among the people in China.

In order to get rid of this predicament, the Executive Committee, who was tortured by the shortage of manpower, mobilized the army to start a large-scale cross-border search of Chalua, Guarani and other indigenous peoples, while hiring a large number of Italians from the La Plata region who crossed the border into the eastern coast towns.

Most of these Italians have been immigrated to the La Plata area by the Spanish government in recent years to enrich their local strength. However, the living conditions of these new Italians now seem to be really worrying. The native white people in La Plata responded to these outsiders with a cold attitude, and the unruly Goucho people were extremely hostile to them.

Few Italians find jobs. The land around Buenos Aires has long been divided up, and due to trade restrictions, white ranchers in Buenos Aires were unwilling to recruit more people to grazle cattle. Because they had enough cattle, the New World could not digest so many beef cattle before the invention of the refrigerated ship.

Some Italians who could not find a job and Southern Europeans began to go deep into the interior of La Plata to open up land and farm. However, not everyone had this courage. The epidemic prevailing in wild places and the barbaric and cruel indigenous people were daunting. Therefore, under the intentional or unintentional publicity of some people, groups of Italians crossed the West Ridge and flocked to the East Coast to find work.

The State Council was extremely happy with the arrival of these "cheap labor" and instructed the Census Office of the Ministry of Civil Affairs to send people to register and register for each Italian and Southern European who entered the country, and then allocate them to various places as needed. The Ministry of Civil Affairs promised them that as long as they serve the East Coast Republic for three years, they would be given free civil status and allowed them to redeem land.

This policy inspired these pitiful Southern Europeans to work great enthusiasm. After the news reached La Plata, more Southern Europeans flocked to it. According to statistics, more Southern European immigrants have entered this way this year. It is precisely the influx of these labor forces that slightly alleviated the shortage of manpower in the East Coast. In this matter, the Spanish king acted as the leader of the transportation brigade.

On November 11, the first fleet, the second escort squadron, with a total number of nearly 1,000 people, sailed out of Zhenhaibao Pier in sequence in the drizzle. After six ships formed an escort formation on the sea, they turned to the northeast and headed towards Recife, which would be their first stop.
Chapter completed!