After sending off the Portuguese mission, Zhou Chong immediately urged the shipyard under the Governor's Office to speed up the construction of warships, especially the new type of Valen warship. This warship has passed the test of the navy and obtained water.

The divisions were unanimously praised, and even the captured Portuguese praised this kind of warship. Therefore, Zhou Chong had already begun to carry out the navy, and the Valen warship would become the standard warship of the Ming Navy in the future.

In addition to the warships, after obtaining the consent of Emperor Zhengde, the Governor General of the Four Seas immediately began to expand the navy. After all, the sea area under the Governor General's Office is getting bigger and bigger, and relying solely on the original navy is not enough, so Zhou

After careful investigation, he decided to expand the navy into three fleets.

The first fleet is called the East China Sea Fleet, which mainly cruiss in the Daming Sea north of Shuangyu Port. This sea area is relatively calm, especially under the premise of the insurrection of North Korea and the civil unrest in Japan, there is not much to do.

At most, it is to rescue merchant ships killed at sea and assist the coastal prefectures to maintain public order, not fleets used to fight against foreign countries.

The second fleet is called the South China Sea Fleet. This fleet has the same function as the East China Sea Fleet, but the management area has become the vast sea areas south of Shuangyu Port, Hainan Island and Luzon Island. Both fleets are

The Ming Dynasty's inland sea fleet did not require too well-equipped warships and weapons, and used old warships that had retreated from the Sihai Navy.

In addition to the two inland sea fleets above, the remaining fleet is Zhou Chong's real killer weapon. This fleet has spent a lot of effort and also concentrated all the elite Nanyang fleets of the navy.

Although Zhou Chong now occupied Malacca and the old port and blocked the Portuguese's passage into the South China Sea, most of the areas in the South China Sea are still under the rule of local natives. Small countries are fighting endlessly, and the natives of these small countries are almost always in the process of being in the midst of the rule of the local natives.

They are all like the natives in Old Port, each of them is lazy and stupid. If it weren't for the abundant resources in Nanyang, they would have starved to death because of their laziness.

Natural disasters in the Ming Dynasty are constantly occurring. Every year, the generalization of natural disasters is enough for the ministers in the court to have a headache. After all, as long as natural disasters are encountered, various materials need to be mobilized to provide disaster relief. These materials not only include food, but sometimes

It also includes clothing, farm tools, seeds, etc. These expenses combined have already overwhelmed the Ming Dynasty's finances.

But now it’s very different. Since the floods in Luoyang, Henan used immigration methods, and those immigrants still lived well in Taiwan, Malacca and other places, which made Ming officials deal with various natural disasters first.

The one who comes to mind is to relocate the victims. After all, as long as there are fewer disaster victims, there will naturally be fewer relief supplies, and there is no need to worry about the victims rebelling due to hunger. It can be said that they kill many deaths. Moreover, most of the migration costs of the victims are also governed by the governor of the Four Seas.

The government paid, and the local government only needed to send officials to organize the relocation. Therefore, there was a disaster in various parts of the Ming Dynasty. A long migration team would immediately appear on the land.

At least hundreds of thousands of disaster victims are moved out every year, so Zhou Chong naturally needs to find a place for these victims to settle down. Although the place in Taiwan is large, with the migration in the past two years, the best plains in Taiwan have been

The first victims were used up, and most of the remaining ones were mountains or dense forests. It was not easy to open them as a place to live. Zhou Chong felt that instead of spending a lot of effort to open mountains and cut trees, it was better to look for other things.

Good places, such as the various islands in Nanyang. Although the weather is a little hot, it has rich resources and very fertile land. It is most suitable for growing rice or sugarcane. If you have such a good place, you don’t take it. Zhou Chong himself thinks

Sorry for those victims.

However, the islands in Nanyang are still in the hands of those lazy and stupid natives. In order to make them convincedly, Zhou Chong felt that it was necessary to "persuade" those natives.

So he established the Nanyang Fleet. The entire fleet not only had the best warships, but also had a large number of marines. They were the main force to "persuade" the natives of the South.

Zhou Chong has tried his best to do this Nanyang fleet. The entire fleet has a total of 120 main warships, countless auxiliary warships, and a total force of more than 40,000 people. It is divided into four squadrons, each of which is divided into four squadrons.

The commander of a naval general, and the four of them were directly responsible to the governor Zhou Chong, after all, such a powerful force, Zhou Chong was worried about handing it over to anyone.

The formation of three major fleets, especially the Nanyang Fleet, cannot be completed overnight. Moreover, the formation of a fleet is not just a force that can be formed after the personnel and warships are in place, but it also requires a lot of time and energy to be consumed.

After training, practical exercises are required to make the entire fleet enter the running-in period. Only after the running-in period can the entire fleet form its own combat mode and spirit, and it can be called a fleet at this time.

Zhou Chong had made a lot of preparations for forming a fleet. For example, the warships needed had already started construction in shipyards in various places. It is estimated that the last batch of warships can be completed in three months at the latest, but the three major fleets of

But the navy soldiers are still far from being recruited.

Among them, the East China Sea and South China Sea Fleets are mainly used to defend the Ming coast. They also assist the Maritime Bureau in tax collection of ships. When merchant ships encounter danger, they will also participate in rescue. As for combat training, they will also participate, but this is not them.

The main task is that the requirements for personnel are not particularly high. For example, some of the elderly, weak and disabled people eliminated by the navy in the past, as long as they can still board the ship, they are all arranged in these two fleets. In addition, Zhou Chong is still in

A group of young and strong people were selected from the coastal fishermen, and after preliminary training, they also joined the two fleets.

In contrast, the Nanyang Fleet has much higher requirements for personnel. After all, this fleet is mainly used for combat. In Zhou Zhong's plan, the strategy of the Nanyang Fleet is only for preliminary practical training for the Nanyang Fleet, and the Nanyang Fleet will be settled.

Afterwards, he would use the South China Fleet as even, and then divide two or three fleets, either east or west, to help the Ming Dynasty expand its territory overseas and face all competitors who dared to challenge the Ming Dynasty.

The Nanyang Fleet requires a total of 40,000 people. This number is simply incredible to those small European countries. After all, this is just a fleet. You should know that the fleet sent by the Portuguese to India only has only two or three thousand people together.

This has consumed nearly half of the power of the Kingdom of Portugal, so the fleet of 40,000 people is simply unimaginable for them.

However, for a country like the Ming Dynasty with a population of nearly 200 million, 40,000 people are simply not worth mentioning. Zhou Chong didn’t even have to worry about it. He just needed to post a list document in various coastal areas and then indicate the monthly military pay of a soldier.

, and when they first joined the army, they could receive a considerable settlement fee, so naturally countless poor young people would flock to join the Nanyang Fleet. Although they knew that war would kill people, they were poor and

In the face of hunger, these people themselves feel that their lives are not very valuable.

However, the Nanyang Fleet will be the main combat force at the Ming Dynasty's future seas, so the requirements for personnel are not ordinary high. For example, the most basic requirement is to be strong and understand the nature of water. It is best to be the children of fishermen who grew up on the beach.

These people have long been accustomed to life at sea and know some skills in boat driving. They are the best candidates for naval soldiers.

The above are just requirements for ordinary soldiers. In addition to these ordinary soldiers, Zhou Chong also requires recruiting a group of literacy, preferably soldiers who know mathematics or astronomy. After all, the navy is a technical branch, not only ordinary people who know how to fight

Soldiers also need to record routes, draw nautical charts, identify directions, etc. These are not competent for ordinary soldiers, so Zhou Chong plans to recruit some literate soldiers and then provide them with unified training so that these people can master naval navigation.

The knowledge that must be mastered at the time will become an important auxiliary talent in the navy.

Of course, it is not easy to recruit literate people to join the navy. After all, people in this era have a little contempt for the army, and there is even a proverb that "a good man does not serve in the army, a good iron does not make nails".

If the heavy navy pay is generous, there will not be so many people who sign up. However, in the Ming Dynasty, people who read literate were originally a minority, and most people who read literate were not very poor, so there was no need to risk their lives to join the army.

It is precisely because of this that after Zhou Chong's recruitment notice was posted, people from all over the coast who participated in ordinary naval forces were recruited quickly. As long as they could persevere in training, they could become a formal Nanyang Navy.

However, no one has signed up for the technical army that recruits literate people for a long time. According to the recruiter, although someone occasionally comes to ask about this technical army, when they explain, those who ask

I just turned and left, and I was unwilling to sign up at all.

In this case, Zhou Chong initially thought that the military pay he gave was not enough. Although the military pay for technical troops was twice that of ordinary soldiers, he finally gritted his teeth and increased the military pay for technical troops to three more ordinary soldiers.

Twice, you should know that the military salary of the Nanyang Fleet was originally high, but now it has increased to three times, which is higher than the salary of the seventh-rank magistrate of the Ming Dynasty. This is definitely quite attractive to ordinary people.

But what Zhou Chong didn't expect was that even though he raised his military pay, there were still very few people who applied for the final levy. Just when he was puzzled, Jiao Fang smiled and pointed out that he was
Chapter completed!