Wind Rises in North America 1625

Chapter 149: Pi Island (I)

With the arrival of the new immigration season, Meng Shengxin, the person in charge of the Guangzhou station of the Time Travelers, became increasingly anxious. Whenever he saw the increasing number of refugees in the warehouse, he would frown and sigh from time to time.

Of course, he was not worried about not being able to recruit enough immigrants, nor was he anxious about the lack of sufficient transportation.

He is worried about money.

The nearly one thousand refugees taken in cost more than twenty taels of silver per day for rice alone. Add to that the cost of replacing their tattered clothes and treating some of the sick refugees, and the cost was doubled.

Moreover, in order to prepare various supplies for the immigrant fleet to bring back, as well as the many expenses of the immigrants on the way, this huge amount of silver was spent quickly like water, causing the silver reserves in the entire warehouse to decrease sharply at a speed visible to the naked eye.

In the past ten days, the Portuguese in Haojing have been asking him how many merchant ships they need to send to help transport immigrants.

It was obvious that they were somewhat anxious to confirm the cooperation between the two parties regarding immigration business.

Due to the temporary interruption of Portuguese trade with Japan and the suppression of their trade privileges by the Spanish colonial authorities in the Philippines, the lives of the wealthy Portuguese seemed to have suddenly become difficult since last year.

In addition, the Dutch harassment and attacks at sea from time to time made the Portuguese's situation even worse.

Without the large influx of silver, the trade between the Portuguese and the Ming Dynasty gradually shrank, causing many merchant ships to be stranded in the Atlantic Ocean and delay their return to India or Europe because they were unable to purchase enough Ming Dynasty goods.

We can't let the ship return empty, right?
If this were really the case, although one would not lose everything, but who would be willing to cross thousands of miles of sea, spend several months, and only earn a few copper coins, and then return to India in despair?

If you can’t make a huge profit, it’s equivalent to losing a lot of money!
Therefore, in order to make some money during this unexpected trade "window period", many Portuguese traders found Chavez, who had helped the Chinese in New World transport immigrants last year, hoping that he could help to make use of several temporarily idle merchant ships to do an immigration business, so as to subsidize their empty wallets.

Meng Shengxin naturally would not refuse such a good opportunity that came to him, and he had an in-depth and friendly exchange with the Portuguese with great joy.

When he heard that the other party could provide at least three merchant ships to help Qiming Island transport immigrants, he was surprised and happy, and almost agreed without hesitation.

However, the Portuguese were stubborn about the immigration fees, insisting on paying 130 taels of silver per immigrant last year, and also requiring a deposit of taels of silver per ship before they agreed to sign the cooperation agreement.

Meng Shengxin immediately expressed his objection, saying that several Ming Dynasty businessmen who were currently in talks were also willing to participate in this immigration business, and the per capita fee offered was much lower, and would not require 130 taels of silver at all.

Besides, you are directly dispatching more than three merchant ships this time. Even if each ship carries fewer people, the total number of people will be close to one thousand, and the total cost will reach a staggering 130,000 taels of silver.

For such a big deal, you Portuguese people won’t give a discount?

130 taels of silver for each immigrant is definitely not possible!

After a period of extreme tug-of-war, both sides made concessions and reduced the transportation fee for each immigrant to 115 taels of silver.

However, the Portuguese demanded a commitment to use at least three of their ships for the transport.

Of course, if Meng Shengxin nodded in agreement, they wouldn't mind sending two or three more ships to make a lot of money.

Meng Shengxin was very conflicted about the Portuguese people's "enthusiasm".

This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity!

It is a rare opportunity that the Portuguese are caught in a trade dilemma in East Asia, causing a large number of their merchant ships to be temporarily idle, which can provide a large-scale immigration transportation operation for Qiming Island.

Five merchant ships can carry at least 1,500 people. If the carrying capacity of the two ships "Polang" and "Zhengtu" is added, it may be possible to transport more than 2,200 immigrants at a time, directly more than doubling the population size of Qiming Island.

In this way, the dilemma of extreme shortage of manpower among the traversers will be greatly alleviated, and then these immigrants will be slightly integrated, which will surely unleash huge energy.

I heard that Qiming Island has already begun refining steel, producing various production and living tools, and even a number of primitive agricultural machinery. If they had more manpower, they might be able to completely fill the gaps in their industrial base in the shortest possible time.

If they could already make steel, how long would it take to manufacture cannons, muskets, ocean-going ships, and steam engines? Therefore, this explosive immigration opportunity was truly rare, and we should accept the Portuguese's request without hesitation.

We want as many ships as you have!
But the question is, do we have so much silver?

Even if the amount of furs brought by the immigrant fleet doubled, it would only earn more than 60,000 taels of silver, which was not enough to cover the freight for two Portuguese ships.

As for the smuggling trade in America, according to the news brought by the immigrant fleet last year, the profits obtained exceeded 80,000 taels of silver.

However, after deducting the expenses of purchasing ships, replenishing cattle and horses, and recruiting craftsmen, there seems to be not much left from these profits.

I don’t know how much silver is left in the Qiming Island base, and whether it can squeeze out additional budget to pay the Portuguese shipping fees.

By next year, the first batch of immigrants will have completed their four-year service period, at which time they will be transformed into self-employed farmers or workers in factories and mines.

Then, the management agency of the time travelers will have to pay them the necessary salaries, or purchase the agricultural products they produce in the form of currency, which requires Qiming Island to reserve and issue (borrow) its own currency.

Therefore, the base really cannot empty its coffers all at once and use all of its limited gold and silver reserves to pay for the Portuguese immigration transportation costs.

Oh, so confusing!
Meng Shengxin was a little hesitant because he wanted to hire a few more Portuguese ships but was worried that his family would not have enough money to pay the bills.

I don’t know whether the Portuguese can accept installment payments.

If possible, we will give a down payment, and the remaining money, plus a little interest, can be paid slowly over the years.

Once we have gained a certain amount of strength, we will organize people to go to the Fraser River Basin or California to dig for gold, and pay off the debt with interest.

However, on May 5, when the "Zhengtu", "Kaituo (purchased from the Spanish smuggler Pedro)" and "Kaiyuan (formerly the Spanish Santo Domingo)" slowly sailed into the Guangzhou Port terminal and presented boxes of white peso silver coins to Meng Shengxin, all his worries disappeared immediately.

"You robbed a Spanish treasure ship again?... And you teamed up with the Portuguese?" Meng Shengxin threw a handful of silver coins in his hand back into the cash box and looked at She Zhiliang and others in surprise.

"That's right, we robbed the Spanish again!" She Zhiliang said with a smile. "You could say our luck was incredible! We wandered around the waters near Guam and waited patiently for eight or nine days. Just when everyone thought the Spanish treasure ship wouldn't pass by, we were about to leave."

"But unexpectedly, that Spanish treasure ship miraculously appeared before us. Tell me, if we don't rob it, we'd be doing a disservice to the great fortune bestowed upon us by Heaven! ... Haha, even Heaven knew that your warehouse in Guangzhou was short of silver, so he eagerly sent the Spanish to deliver it to us."

"Haha..." Meng Shengxin couldn't help but burst out laughing. "Think back then, Drake robbed Spain of nearly 600,000 pounds of treasure, becoming an indelible legend in the pirate world. And we've robbed Spanish treasure ships twice in three years. Compared to him, we're not much behind!"

"However, this kind of thing really can't be brought to the table, let alone publicized to the world." She Zhiliang said seriously: "After all, we are people from the civilized world, we can't be proud of this..."

"Hahaha..." Everyone burst into laughter when they heard this.

"Now that we have money, we might as well increase the scale of immigration this year," Meng Shengxin said confidently. "We plan to hire five Portuguese ships, plus four of our own, and transport over 3,000 people back to Qiming Island at once."

"Can we get 3,000 people here in Guangzhou?"

"If there's nothing here in Guangzhou, then we can go north," Meng Shengxin said. "We can go to Liaodong, where there are tens of thousands of immigrants waiting for us to recruit."

"Liaodong?" Everyone was shocked when they heard this: "Are they going to the Tartars... to kidnap people?"

"Uh... With our current strength, how can we dare to land in Liaodong and snatch people from the Tartars?" Meng Shengxin said with a smile, "The place we're going to is, to be precise, a small island."

“…Pidao!”

(End of this chapter)