King of German Mercenaries

When Marin sent two newly built Class 250 merchant ships to Spain with 660,000 pounds of rye, they encountered a shortage of captains.

Before, when he was on Texel Island, Marin relied on old Portuguese sailors hired at high salaries to set up an informal sailor school to train young people selected from fishermen's families.

However, a sailor is just a sailor after all, and cannot take the place of a captain at all. The main task of the sailor is to control the sails and fight on the sea.

This kind of work is easy for ordinary young fishermen to get started with. After all, their ancestors have lived on the sea for generations, and they are born with the instinct of sailing.

However, the captain, chief mate and other technical sailing talents who are responsible for leading the team are extremely lacking under Malin's command. Because, the captain is not only a high-level sailor, but also must be literate, able to record logbooks and hydrological conditions.

Moreover, every qualified ocean voyage captain is a good astronomer and mathematician. Because the captain often needs to determine the nautical position by observing the sun, moon and stars.

After Marin instructed Da Vinci to come up with a sextant, the captain must understand the calculation of celestial angles, which requires a certain knowledge of geometry.

Therefore, in the era of great sailing, the captain is the real high-level technical work, and it is difficult for ordinary people to do it. There are quite a few captains under Marin, but none of them are actually qualified ocean-going captains.

These captains are only suitable for offshore navigation, relying on land as a reference coordinate for shore navigation. And this kind of offshore captain is actually the most in Europe at present. Only a small number of excellent captains who know how to calculate the angles of the sun, the moon and the stars are suitable for leading a team on ocean voyages. Generally speaking, such a captain is also called a navigator. Columbus and Amerigo are both outstanding representatives.

Sadly, Marin currently only has two men, Columbus and Amerigo, who can be called navigators. Others can only be regarded as offshore captains. At most, some of the first and second mates who were with Columbus and Amerigo, learned some advanced navigation knowledge from these two people, and was barely able to run a well-explored route according to the logbook.

However, Marin clearly didn't want that. He is a man who wants to be the overlord of the sea in the era of great sailing. Therefore, it is Marin's pursuit to have a group of captains who can adapt to ocean voyages.

Therefore, Marin intends to select bright young men among sailors and teenagers who are suitable for sailors, and teach them to read and write, as well as astronomical and mathematical knowledge for sailing.

At the same time, one of the crew members who followed Columbus to explore India, one of the first mates was rested at home by Marin. So Marin selected 50 bright sailor boys and handed them over to the first officer named Knight, who taught them astronomical knowledge and mathematical calculation methods for sailing.

In fact, Knight himself is only at the level of two knives. However, it is still possible for him to teach children the basics of sailing. Besides, Knight was literate anyway, otherwise he wouldn't be able to be first mate. So Marlin asked Knight to teach the young sailors to read, to recite the basics of astronomy for sailing, and to simply calculate the angle between the sun and the horizon.

Marin didn't expect Knight to teach these sailor boys well. Anyway, when Columbus returned from India this time, Marin was not going to let him go to sea again.

Instead of letting a young Columbus go to sea, it is better to let Columbus stay in the captain's school in East Frisland and teach this group of smart sailor teenagers more advanced knowledge of astronomy and mathematics.

When these teenagers have learned the geometric calculation of the angles of celestial bodies, they can easily calculate the latitude and longitude of the location based on the sextant and the nautical clock.

In this way, as long as the latitude and longitude of the route is completely recorded, these people can easily complete the voyage of the old route by comparing the measurement results based on the data.

Among them, the more excellent ones can also be cultivated as exploratory navigators.

Let it explore new routes in the future - such as the Ming Dynasty route...

You know, the porcelain and silk produced in the Ming Dynasty can definitely sell well in Europe, and they are very profitable. Not only that, the price of saltpeter in the Ming Dynasty was even cheaper than that in India.

If the Ming Dynasty route is really opened, the profit is much higher than that of the Indian route. These medieval Europeans may not know how to deal with the closed and conservative country of the Ming Dynasty, but can Marin, who is familiar with the history of China, know?

The European royal family is just too good-faced, and always wants to live on an equal footing with the Ming Dynasty. But as everyone knows, the people of the Ming Dynasty actually looked down on any other country. Therefore, it is impossible for the Europeans to have normal diplomatic relations with the Ming Dynasty in advance. Moreover, the Ming Dynasty was rich in materials, and there was no need to trade with Europeans.

Therefore, the best way to deal with the Ming Dynasty is to pay tribute and send a representative to the capital to pay tribute three times. As long as the Ming Dynasty monarchs and ministers feel good, then everything is easy to say. Otherwise, it will never kill you. I would rather fight to the death than take a step back.

The Spaniards suffered from this loss. As a great empire that dominated Europe and the Americas, the Spaniards were too reserved, so they have been unable to open the Ming Dynasty market. The Portuguese were much more cunning. Although they did not pay tribute to the Ming Dynasty, they also obtained the trade point of Macau by bribing local officials in Guangdong and Guangxi. If Portugal hadn't happened to be wiped out by Spain and the Dutch took the opportunity to seize the Strait of Malacca, the Portuguese would have continued to enjoy huge trade benefits.

As a Chinese traveler, Marin should not be too familiar with the Ming Dynasty. Although the Ming Dynasty route has not yet been opened, there are a lot of plans to please the Ming Dynasty. For example, directly curry favor with the emperor, bribe cabinet ministers, and even bribe popular eunuchs...

In short, as long as you can win the trade rights of the Ming Dynasty, it is completely worthwhile to spend some money and bribes. Moreover, Malin knew that in the past two years, Ming Xiaozong was in power in the Ming Dynasty, so it might be a little harder to bribe. But after 1505, when the bear boy Zhu Houzhao came to power, there were too many flaws. Not to mention that Zhu Houzhao himself is easier to handle, just bribing Liu Jin, the eunuch under Zhu Houzhao's command, can simply solve the trade problem.

Of course, those are the methods that can be used later. Right now, the top priority is to have many high-level, young and strong captains, and to open up the Ming Dynasty route first.

In addition to selecting 50 bright sailor teenagers for training, in the civilian school established by Marin, the artisan school, Marin also intends to let the children of the Frisian fishermen learn the basics of sailing and mathematics from an early age. . When they are a little older, they will select the students who have learned well, and hand them over to Columbus and Amerigo to continue training, so as to train them to become excellent ocean-going sailing captains who can succeed them.

There are now as many as 30,000 or 40,000 fishermen in East Frisian counties, and there are many children in the fishermen's families, and as many as 5,000 children have been sent to schools. These children, Marin does not need them all to grow into captains, as long as 500 of them grow into qualified ocean captains, Marin will be extremely happy. As for the rest, they can act as sailors and serve Marin's great seafaring career.

It's just that, whether it's the 50 smart sailor boys or the 5,000 fishermen's children who have just started elementary school, if they want to grow into captains, it will not be possible for them to succeed in three or five years. So, Marlin still needs to wait. For now, he can only continue to reuse the two great navigators Columbus and Amerigo. Only when a new generation of navigators grow up can Marin truly realize his dream of dominating the ocean...