Chapter 8: Treasure Ship
Just as Lin Qian was pondering where to get a clock, the sound of hoofbeats came from afar, interrupting his thoughts.
Lin Qian looked toward the sound and saw three riders entering through the city gate.
The person in the middle was the governor’s daughter he had seen that morning, Miss Catherine.
The surrounding Spaniards all retreated to the roadside, doffing their hats in salute.
Having suffered that morning’s loss, Lin Qian also imitated the Spaniards, retreating to the roadside and bowing his head in salute.
The hoofbeats continued nonstop, heading straight to the Governor’s Mansion.
Lin Qian raised his head, maintaining a friendly smile, watching Catherine’s figure disappear at the end of the street.
On the way back to the dock, Lin Qian asked: “Bai Langzai, what do you think of that woman?”
“That official’s daughter surnamed Catherine? Her temperament is a bit overbearing, but she’s good for bearing children…”
Lin Qian: “That’s not what I’m asking. I mean, since she’s the daughter of the Spanish governor, why only bring two guards? It might be fine in the Royal City, but isn’t going to Balien Market too dangerous?”
“Spain?”
“That’s what you call the Franks.” Lin Qian explained.
From the Imperial Court to the common people of Great Ming, knowledge of Western European countries was extremely limited, unable to distinguish between Spain and Portugal, uniformly calling them Franks.
Bai Langzai pondered for a moment, then shook his head: “Just a foreign woman, why take it so seriously?”
“If we were to kidnap this woman, would it be easy to do?” Lin Qian asked casually.
Bai Langzai’s expression changed slightly, analyzing: “Kidnapping on the road, with three more good hands, I could deal with the guards. But things at sea are tricky. Fran… Spaniards’ ships are fast; even if we could leave port, we couldn’t escape.”
“You’re not asking why kidnap her?”
“Sixth Brother thinks carefully and wouldn’t do something suicidal for no reason, so no need to ask.” Bai Langzai replied.
Lin Qian glanced at him.
Bai Langzai’s face was calm; he was only sixteen, always with an icy expression, spoke little, but had excellent skills, having killed three guards during the ship robbery.
Now it seemed his mind was not simple either.
“Don’t worry, it was just a joke.” Lin Qian said.
The two said nothing along the way and returned to the cabin before the port closed at dusk.
Staying in inns in Manila is not cheap, so the ship workers all live on the ship.
Seeing Lin Qian and the other board the ship, the ship workers all gathered around, looking at him eagerly.
Lei Sanxiang asked on behalf of everyone: “Lin Laodi, have you found a buyer for the goods on the ship?”
“Yes, tomorrow someone will come to unload the goods, and then at the third quarter of the You hour, we’ll distribute silver to everyone.”
As soon as these words were out, the ship workers erupted in cheers.
Lin Qian smiled in response, walked back to the cabin amid the ship workers’ cheers, placed the things bought during the day on the table, lit a candle, spread linen paper on the table, and began writing the sea log with a quill pen.
Starting from the day he robbed the ship, he detailed the daily voyage, route, wind direction, weather, hydrography, and so on.
This was not formalism like keeping a diary; the sea log could calculate approximate positions through recording daily voyages, preventing getting lost at sea.
After arriving at port, the records in the sea log could also serve as a route chart.
It could be said that every additional sentence in the sea log meant one more guarantee for future voyages.
Lin Qian wrote in the sea log mixing simplified Chinese, English, and Spanish, and for some sensitive terms, combined Latin roots with English suffixes, so even if the sea log was seized by others, it would be hard to understand.
However, the quill pen was much harder to use than later fountain pens, and the linen paper was very rough.
Writing Latin letters was fine, but writing Chinese characters was very inconvenient.
He lit three white worm wax candles in succession, writing until late at night, finally completing the sea log for the past half month.
Lin Qian yawned and stretched lazily, habitually reaching for his coffee cup, touching nothing, and couldn’t help but smile bitterly.
In his previous life, he was a coffee fanatic, with coffee machines everywhere at home, in the company, and on the ship; his daily coffee intake hovered around dangerous levels.
Unexpectedly, coming to Great Ming meant forcibly quitting coffee.
Today he had wanted to buy some coffee, but upon inquiring, he found that coffee hadn’t yet reached Spain, and the beverage Spaniards were most enthusiastic about was still hot cocoa from America.
Lin Qian helplessly paced to the ship window, opened it, and gazed at the Manila scenery.
Tonight there was no moon; the port was pitch black, with only a few sporadic moving torches visible.
The closer to the Manila galleon, the denser the surrounding torches.
During the over 100 years Spain dominated the world’s oceans, the Manila galleon perhaps wasn’t prominent.
But change the name, and it was absolutely world-famous—that was the Spanish treasure ship.
It could be said that the Manila galleon was the Spanish treasure ship cruising the Pacific Ocean.
This type of ship had enormous cargo capacity; just the silver in each voyage’s cargo was around thirty tons, nearly a million taels of silver, comparable to 10% of Great Ming’s national tax revenue.
Every ship carried the fruits of the Spaniards’ utmost plunder; if anything went wrong en route, it would have a huge impact on the Spanish royal family’s finances, so they had to guard them cautiously.
Lin Qian gazed at the Manila galleon in a daze; not only did this ship have extremely high economic value, its firepower and defensiveness were also at the pinnacle.
In the age of sail, the larger the ship’s tonnage, the more sailors, thicker hull, higher ship’s rail, more cannons, and larger calibers.
Whether in long-range cannon duels or boarding actions, it had absolute superiority.
In the current world, the Western mainstream warship was the galleon, the same type as the Black Pearl in the Caribbean Sea pirates.
And the Manila galleon’s tonnage was even larger than the galleon; in terms of tonnage, it was the largest in the world, with an advantage over any galleon warship.
Against Great Ming’s antique-level navy warships, it was utter domination.
This was still under the premise that the Manila galleon sacrificed some cannon space for cargo capacity.
Lin Qian’s main profession was architectural structural design; he didn’t know much about ship design, but basic analyses of resisting external loads, material stress, and space utilization were all interconnected.
If Lin Qian were to modify it, pursuing ultimate firepower as the design concept, he could at least add ten more cannons to the ship.
At the same time, lowering the stern cabin height, increasing the number of triangular sails, and increasing the rear main sail area would greatly improve speed and seaworthiness.
If investing more costs, wrapping the ship’s bottom with copper and lead; applying cruiser stern, optimizing hull lines to reduce navigation resistance, could greatly increase speed.
At the same time, adding forged iron armor belts at key waterline areas, applying watertight compartments in cabins below the waterline, could substantially reduce the risk of sinking.
Under cost-unlimited modifications, perhaps with just one ship, he could rampage along Great Ming’s southeast coast…
For Lin Qian, researching different design schemes was both his old profession and a way to relax his mind.
Given that it was now about 3 AM, he allowed himself to relax for ten minutes this way.
……
Ten minutes later.
Lin Qian took several deep breaths of fresh sea breeze to dispel his sleepiness, closed the window, sat back at the desk, and resumed work.
He took out the sea chart and sea log he had found during the day to study.
These materials seemed extremely crude; the positional relationships between Dongfan Island, Luzon Island, and Zhangzhou Yuegang on the sea chart were completely wrong.
But they weren’t without value.
After all, there were many islands in the Nanyang area; Lin Qian could use these sea charts and sea logs to understand the surrounding islands.
Once he started looking, he continued right until dawn.
