Although great results were achieved, the casualties were also huge. Forty-two crew members of the Yuefei were killed, thirty-five, and eleven crew members of the Qi Jiguang were killed, nine injured. In addition, the hull of the Yuefei was severely damaged and was almost dragged back.

The captive Braswick was paralyzed by Qi Jiguang and did not participate in the main artillery battle, so the hull was best preserved, and the mast could be put into use directly as long as it was repaired.

The most severely damaged hull was the Batavia, which was scarred and the Pedmos was in better condition, but both ships had to be repaired in the dock for a period of time before they could be used.

Zhao Yan immediately asked the fleet to take the captive ships back to the dock at Longkou Port for repairs, and sent people to speed up the construction of the dock in Qingdao. After all, it would take two days to go from Qingdao to Longkou, and it would take three days for a slower ship.

On the eighth day of June, Su Buheng also drove the Wei Qing back to Qingdao and brought back a 600-ton merchant ship. The merchant ship was kept intact and seemed to have been forced to land.

"The Xiaguan chased him at sea for most of the day before he chased him. Because our warship was too slow, the other three were all run away." Su Buheng thought to Zhao Yan to report the pursuit process.

"Well! It doesn't matter if you run away. Anyway, it's a long time." Zhao Yan smiled. The main way for the Dutch to start from scratch is to grab someone else's ship and turn it into his own ship. So far, the Batavia company has more than 10,000 merchant ships, more than 40 warships, and 150 armed merchant ships. The Dutch can do it, why can't he do it?

"Sir, what should we do if those red barbarians?" Su Buheng asked for instructions. There were more than 1,000 Dutch captured this time.

"Leave one to teach the crew to drive the boat, and the rest will be taken to build the road first." Zhao Yan adopted the usual policy, and the free labor force is not in vain.

Then the staff of the business bank and Wen Bangliang, who was proficient in maritime trade, conducted a value assessment of the captured goods again. Wen Bangliang counted the goods from top to bottom and finally came up with a shocking number. The goods were shipped to Japan and then shipped back to Japan for sale, which could be at least six or seven million taels.

Zhao Yan did not expect that he intercepted three Dutch warships and six merchant ships just by trying to dispatch his surname. This time, with ships, the navy had to expand again.

However, the direction of expansion was to be armed or trade, which made Zhao Yan hesitate. In the end, he decided to take the trade route. Now he is short of transport ships.

First of all, there must be enough ships for so many cotton in Songjiang Prefecture. At present, it is mainly to hire those ship gangs and dozens of his own offshore ships to transport them, but it is still a bit insufficient. However, the captured merchant ships used to transport cotton this time were obviously useless, and Zhao Yan felt it was time to intervene in the trade.

Then Zhao Yan came to the shipyard, where the workers in the shipyard were busy building ships, and the civil servants in charge of shipbuilding rushed out to greet them.

The Batavia was still parked outside, and Zhao Yan asked, "Why don't you drag it to repair it?"

"That ship is too big, and our dock cannot be accessed." The clerk explained.

"Well! The dock needs to be built in a step-by-step manner. How long will it take for these ships to be repaired?" Zhao Yan nodded and asked.

"The Yuefei can be repaired in three or five days, and the Braswick can be repaired in about eight days. Pedmos will have to be repaired in half a month, and the largest one will have the least one that can be repaired in half a month, and it will take about three months to complete it all." said the boatman next to him.

"How is the shipbuilding speed at the shipyard now?" Zhao Yan asked.

"After coming to hundreds of shipwrecks last month, the speed of shipbuilding has doubled compared to last year. The 20 500-ton clippers should be able to complete the 20 500-ton clippers within this year."

Last month, Zhao Yan inspected Denglai's military affairs and plundered all the shipmakers. The construction technology of the fly-shear ship is not complicated or even very simple, so the construction speed is about to be overwhelmed.

"I will allocate another two million taels to the shipyard to build a 1,000-ton fly-scissor ship?" Zhao Yan asked.

Wen Bangliang estimated that the captured goods could be converted to at least three million taels when sold to Japan. If the goods were transported back from Japan, they could be converted to at least six or seven million taels.

This also stimulated Zhao Yan's enthusiasm for sea trade. It would be fine to spend 2 million taels to build a ship, but the premise was that the captured goods could be cashed in as silver, otherwise the finances would still be very tight.

As long as the scale of transport ships is expanded, Zhao Yan will be given more money, and there is no need to worry about military expenses. Clippers are undoubtedly the most practical among transport ships. Although they cannot be used as combat ships, Clippers are high-speed sailing ships. Even if they are full of cargo, it is difficult for pirates to catch up. However, the speed can reduce the time of trade after they are fast.

"The cost of a 1,000-ton fly-scissor ship is estimated to cost 50,000 taels. With the cost of expansion, it should be fine to build thirty ships, but it will take more than a year to complete the construction." The civil servant estimated.

"Sir, our Shandong is not suitable for building sea ships. The wood for building ships has to be transported from the south. The freight is too high. In the humble opinion of the villain, it is better to set up a shipyard in Songjiang and transport wood from Zhejiang to reduce the cost by at least 30%. "The ship craftsman next to him said.

"Well, this suggestion is very good. Let's go back and receive a 100 tael of silver reward." Zhao Yan smiled and patted the boatman on the shoulder.

"Sir Xie." The ship craftsman said happily. He had a future in his work under the general and never stingy with the rewards of these craftsmen.

Zhao Yan then named Batavia as Shanghai, Pedmos as Qingdao, and Braswick as Dragon Slogan.

Su Buheng was also asked to set up a sailing camp, which is a department similar to the Army's new recruits battalion, which is mainly used to train soldiers and strip the training away.

The first phase of the Navigation Camp will recruit 3,000 people, and these 3,000 people will be trained to become sailors. At the same time, a 5,000-person marine battalion was formed, with a total of 8,000 people. The navigator was the instructor of those who were proficient in navigation, and grassroots officers were all drawn from the army. The principle was that loyal ministers were the first, and soldiers from the Navigation Camp were directly drawn from the recruits.

Then Zhao Yan asked someone to let a Dutch go back and gave their Taiwan Governor Putman, asking them to pay a ransom to redeem the prisoners, a crew of 500 taels and an officer of 1,000 taels. Anyway, it was a huge price to ask for redemption, and it was good to stay in Shandong to build roads.

At the same time, it proposed sovereignty over Taiwan and demanded that the Dutch withdraw from Taiwan immediately.

Naturally, the Dutch would not do what Zhao Yan said. Zhao Yan just declared war on them in disguise. Anyway, I will be welcome when I meet you in the future. The ship that should be robbed will never be ruthless.

The important thing at the moment is to dispose of the stolen goods. Zhao Yan immediately wrote another letter, which was given to Tokugawa Iemitsu, the Tokugawa Shogunate, Japan.

In the letter, he greeted Tokugawa Ie-kwang first, and at the same time expressed his intention to trade with Japan, and hoped that it would be a large-scale trade, with the main goods being saltpeter, sulfur, and copper. He also recognized the dominance of the Shimotokawa shogunate and could provide them with arms trade.

Japan has now entered a state of being closed to the country, which is the policy implemented not long ago. It is mainly that in order to consolidate its rule, the Tokugawa shogunate prohibits other daimyos from engaging in profitable maritime trade, and also imposes various taxes on the daimyos to consume their strength.

Japan's policy of closing the country to a certain extent protects the rural natural economy from being impacted by the commodity economy and has a certain effect on social stability.

However, the Tokugawa Shogunate may not be considering protecting the rural natural economy. Otherwise, they would not have opened a trading port in Nagasaki during the period of closing the country and traded in the form of the Tokugawa Shogunate monopoly. Their main purpose should be to consolidate their dominance.

So Zhao Yan also started from this point of view and proposed to sell weapons to them. It would be no big deal for the young Japanese to sell some plate armor, muskets, and backward artillery. It would be completely impossible to pose a threat to Zhao Yan, and it would be even more impossible to make them technological progress.

After the letter was written, Fun Bangliang was immediately asked to take a flying scissor boat and go to Nagasaki under the protection of one hundred soldiers. Fun Bangliang was very familiar with the environment in Japan. During his time following Yan Siqi, he stayed in Japan for a while. It doesn’t matter if he is not familiar with it. There are so many Ming people in Nagasaki, and the "Tang City" was formed in Nagasaki, with more than 20,000 people.

After Wen Bangliang set out, Zhao Yan immediately asked the First Fleet to prepare for escort, and at the same time began to let Zhao Quan form a fleet to Japan.

If you want to trade in Japan, in addition to the goods you grab, glass mirrors are naturally indispensable, and cotton cloth is also indispensable.

Cotton cloth will serve as a pioneer in impacting Japan's rural natural economy.

...After processing these, Zhao Yan returned to Zhaojiabao from Longkou Port. This year's winter wheat has matured. Half of the three million acres of farmland that was cultivated last year was planted with wheat.

The settled people were harvesting wheat from the farmland happily, and the land rent for wheat was only 30%. For most poor people, it was undoubtedly a great blessing.

After paying the land rent, each household had more than ten stones left, which was enough for the family’s food. After autumn, they could still collect sweet potatoes, which made the income of the same.

Of course, you can’t be rich by farming alone, because everyone doesn’t have much farmland, only thirty acres. If you want to live a good life, you have to work hard to participate in training and get a ranking in the village hero competition.

Or concentrate on learning horse raising techniques and raise a qualified war horse, and give you two taels of silver after deducting the cost. Women at home can also work in yarn mills and weaving factories, and can also get one tael of silver every month.

For those young and strong, if they can join the army, they can get two taels of silver per month! Food, clothing and other things are provided by the army, which is much higher than the income from farming.

As long as you study calligraphy seriously and fight the enemy bravely, you will be promoted. At present, a large number of people have been promoted, and the salary after promotion is naturally much higher.

Every summer harvest, the soldiers in the camp went to the ground to help the people harvest wheat. The civil servants of the Propaganda Department took the opportunity to promote the slogan of the military and civilians' family. The soldiers shouted trumpets and rushed to harvest in the ground.

Tang Zhengze quickly presented Zhao Yan with the results of this summer harvest. This year's winter wheat yield reached nearly two million stones, and an average harvest of nearly two stones per mu. Generally speaking, the northern winter wheat harvest is only one stone per mu, which is definitely a bumper harvest.

Last year, various water conservancy projects were excavated, and the Ministry of Agriculture established an agricultural team to summarize wheat planting techniques, and humbly ask many old farmers for advice, summarizing many technologies with very significant effects.

"The wheat harvested reached 600,000 stones. In addition, during the autumn harvest, we estimate that we can harvest 4 billion jin of sweet potatoes and 900 million jin of corn. These excess grains may not be easy to deal with. It is easy to store corn, but the sweet potatoes..." Tang Zhengze said worriedly.

"4 billion jin of sweet potatoes..." Zhao Yan was also shocked after hearing this. He only thought about ordering more food, but unexpectedly it caused a difficult problem.

In later generations, things like potatoes and sweet potatoes were generally planted in large quantities in one or two counties. The yield of these or two counties plus sporadic plantings in various places is enough to supply the whole country.

How to deal with so many sweet potatoes? After thinking for a while, Zhao Yan asked: "How many sweet potatoes can the refugees we recruit now eat?"

"Shandong has recruited another 350,000 refugees, and is in the settlement of Laizhou. These people cannot eat all sweet potatoes. Otherwise, their young and strong physique will not meet the standards, and at most they will consume 100 million jin. There are 430,000 refugees in Yingzhou, 530,000, and 200 million jin are at the top of the sky." Tang Zhengze said.

"There should be no problem for the 1 billion jin of the business." Zhao Quan came up with a solution at this time. "The main reason why sweet potatoes cannot be processed is that transportation is not easy, but we can recruit more labor and transport these sweet potatoes to various places for sale. Just follow the shipping price. In this way, we will not lose money. Our small-scale porridge is OK. If it is a large-scale porridge, it may cause criticism and say that we will win people's hearts."

The original intention of Zhao Yan was not to win people's hearts, but to preserve more national vitality. He did not want to fight against the Qing Dynasty and saw a depressed and turbulent world.

"Well! If you have it, you can use these sweet potatoes to make wine, and sell them to various places by making dried sweet potatoes. In addition, you can also make sweet potato powder. If you really can't handle it, just throw it to the emperor for treatment!" Zhao Yan suddenly had an idea and thought of a solution in his mind. It's hard to deal with it if you send it for free, so it's better to make it into a commodity.

The next day, Zhao Yan immediately summoned people to start experimenting with making sweet potatoes and making dried sweet potatoes.

Sweet potatoes are undoubtedly good things for making wine. Making wine consumes food very much. Using sweet potatoes with high yields and low prices to make wine can avoid causing food waste.

At the same time, the production of dried sweet potatoes is also very good. For example, the dried sweet potatoes made directly in the countryside are hard and sticky, and are really not very delicious.

But if you add sugar to dried sweet potatoes, it will become very delicious. For example, the dried sweet potatoes in later generations will taste very good.

As for sweet potato flour, the market is generally not too big. After all, the natural economy in rural areas is prevalent, and people do not have to use sweet potatoes. They can be made of fern roots and kudzu vines. Those things are all over the mountains and fields, but making sweet potato flour is also a way to deal with it.

(To be continued)
Chapter completed!