The azure sky is cloudless and birdless, and the dark green South Indian Ocean is boundless.

The depths of the South Indian Ocean have been like this for the past ten years, a hundred years, a thousand years, or even ten thousand years. There are no flying birds or sails, and the emptiness is so despairing.

Suddenly, two white sailboats broke the eternal silence of the sea and sky, cutting through the waves and sailing rapidly from the depths of the ocean towards the northeast.

The shapes of these two sailboats are very eye-catching. Not only are the hulls painted the same pure white as the canvas, but the ship design is also extremely bold. The slender hull has a length-to-width ratio of more than six to one, with a length of more than 60 meters and a width of less than 10 meters. Compared with it, all types of sailboats of this era have become bloated fat guys.

The ship also adopts the minimum resistance design underwater, but maintains a certain lateral resistance profile, resulting in a particularly beautiful waterline. There is even a concave, long and sharp curved scissor-shaped bow on the bow waterline, which can cut the waves when moving forward to reduce wave resistance, so it is called a clipper ship.

This clipper ship has a shallow draft and low sides, but the mast has been increased to five layers, and there are outboard spars on both sides of the side to hang wing sails, which doubles the sail area of ​​a galleon of the same tonnage.

All the designs are for one purpose only - faster. Its maximum speed can reach 30 kilometers per hour, and its cruising speed is more than 20 kilometers per hour, which is four times faster than traditional sailboats. It can travel a thousand miles a day!

However, the great increase in speed also put greater pressure on the hull, and the safety factor was reduced. In the early tests, it took only 51 days to sail from Ceylon to Luzon and only 30 days to return, which caused a sensation. However, only four of the ten ships reached their destination, and the remaining six were all destroyed on the way.

Later, an iron-framed wooden hull was adopted, and welded steel was used instead of the wooden keel, making the clipper strong enough to support such a long hull, such a fast speed and so many sails.

Of course, this type of ship also has its disadvantages. First, it has a shallow draft, low side and narrow hull. Secondly, although it has a very fast longitudinal speed, it is very difficult to turn. In this era, naval battles were won by the number of artillery. This requires the main battleship to have a wide and stable hull as a gun platform, tall side to accommodate more layers of gun decks, and a strong hull to resist shells. In addition, the flexibility of turning in naval battles is more important than speed.

Of course, it is fast, and it can seize the wind direction accurately, and it has the upper hand whether it wants to fight or run. But it is definitely not a capital ship. At most, it can be used for patrol, harassment, and communication. However, its original design intention was to be a high-speed cargo sailing ship, not a warship.

Since the ship was officially put into production in the 12th year of the Wanli reign, the Luzon Shipyard has built 30 such clippers in three years, and Mr. Zhao named them "North American Class". The original intention of this ship design can be seen.

However, Mr. Zhao's North American dream will have to wait for a while. Currently, all 30 clippers belong to the Western Shipping Company and are used to transport valuable goods and personnel across the ocean.

For example, the two ships, 'White Rainbow' and 'White Horse', set sail from Cape City at the southern tip of Africa on the first day of May a month ago, bound for Southeast Asia as the 'South African Express'.

~~

Cape City was originally the Portuguese stronghold at the Cape of Good Hope, named Castle of Good Hope. More than a decade ago, when Lin Feng and Zhang Xiaojing led the "Eternal Sinner Liu Daxia" on a circumnavigation, they repaired the ship here.

In addition to forts, docks and shipyards, the Portuguese at that time also hired local natives to grow fruits and vegetables, garden vegetables, and raise livestock nearby to provide supplies for their own fleet passing by.

In fact, this is the famous Cape Town in later generations, but there are too few Portuguese people and there is a serious lack of building materials here, so it had to wait until several decades later that the Dutch transported building materials from the Netherlands to build a city and open a port here.

But this time, we won't bother the Dutch. In June 1581, the 9th year of the Wanli reign, the Coast Guard Fleet took over the Castle of Good Hope from the Portuguese. After a field survey, Ma Yinglong and Haierdi found that this place was indeed a natural military fortress that was easy to defend and difficult to attack, as described in the intelligence.

It is surrounded by a cliff that is more than 1,000 meters above sea level, which is as difficult to conquer as a prison in heaven. There are no islands on the sea where the enemy can establish a stronghold to fight.

Moreover, the Cape of Good Hope is located in the Roaring Westerlies. This sea area has strong winds and waves almost all year round, and there are often "killer waves" more than ten meters high. It is one of the most dangerous sailing areas in the world, and no captain dares to sail far from the coast.

Therefore, as long as a bastion dock is built here and a powerful fleet is stationed in the safe harbor under the Cape of Good Hope, a Wall of Sighs can be erected that the European powers cannot cross.

What's more valuable is that although it is surrounded by desert Gobi, within the cliffs is a fertile basin plain, half the size of Taiwan Island. It also has a rare Mediterranean climate in Africa, with plenty of rainfall, so it has all the potential to become a big city - except for the population.

There are indeed quite a few native Africans, but if the Africans were willing to farm, the Portuguese would not have to sit idly by and watch this God-given kingdom.

Fortunately, Daming has no shortage of people...

After sighing at the young master's foresight again, the two of them set up the Atlantic Theater Command here. At the same time, Tang Baolu, the chief executive of the West African region, also established Cape City here according to Zhao Hao's name.

After six years of joint military and civilian construction, Cape City has built a complete city and dock, with a population of nearly 30,000, mainly composed of marine police officers and soldiers in the war zone, military workers in arsenals and shipyards, and civilians serving the war zone, providing favorable backing for the war zone to move northward to control the entire west coast of Africa.

It must be highly praised that these 30,000 soldiers and civilians, in addition to their heavy work, also reclaimed more than 100,000 acres of wasteland and did not waste the innate skills of their nation.

Today, Cape City is basically self-sufficient in food and vegetables, and can even provide certain support to other bases in the war zone, greatly alleviating the group's logistical pressure.

Moreover, according to the Brunei Treaty, the Portuguese could still enjoy non-discriminatory rights of navigation, trade and settlement in Africa, but the war zone still insisted on convincing people with the truth, so that Portuguese merchant ships only sailed and traded in West Africa and no longer entered the Indian Ocean.

Tianya City became a commercial hub for the Ming and Portugal countries. In addition, tribes from various African countries also came here to exchange all kinds of rare treasures for the cloth, sugar, salt, ironware, glass beads and other things they needed... So a fairly large commercial market has been formed here.

The Baihong and Baiju were loaded with cargo from the South African company of the Western Trading Group, which exchanged daily necessities for precious goods such as diamonds, rubies, sapphires, corals, ivory, rhinoceros horns, etc. They left Tianya Port and sailed eastward along the coast.

Where there is a cape, there is naturally an end of the world!

Three days later, the two clippers arrived at Tianya City, 1,300 kilometers away. South Africa Express is indeed worthy of its reputation!

The End of the Earth is the famous South African city of Durban. In 1497 AD, Vasco da Gama discovered this excellent natural harbor during his voyage back to India.

The Portuguese then set up a base here and built a dock, which became an important part of the 'Portuguese Chain'.

Before the arrival of the Coast Guard fleet, this place was much more prosperous than the Castle of Good Hope. Slave traders, whaling ships, pirates and merchants often visited here, and a town of considerable size had been formed.

Because the natives here have a lot of gold sand...

As long as there is gold, no matter how remote and desolate it is, it will quickly prosper. Moreover, the natural conditions here are not bad at all.

It was precisely because there was gold here that Zhao Hao issued a strict cleanup order to Durban, requiring that no Europeans be allowed to remain in the future Tianya City.

How could he not know that South Africa is also called the Land of Gold? It has more than 60% of the world's gold reserves!

Because Durban is closest to the gold producing areas, it has become the main port for exporting gold.

The Atlantic theater required the Portuguese not to cross the Cape of Good Hope, and also did not want them to get involved in South African gold.

However, the group is currently too busy to send people to mine gold in South Africa... The gold in Japan, Luzon and Java Island is already keeping them busy, and they don't even have the spare capacity to open an alchemy plant in Tianya City.

At present, the only way to obtain gold sand of a certain purity from the indigenous tribes is through barter. After preliminary washing and selection, it is shipped back to Java for purification and refining.

The two clipper ships stayed at Tianya Port for a day, and after the armed escorts carried the iron gold boxes with the doors welded shut with iron bars onto the ship one by one, they set sail again.

They would then cross the southern Indian Ocean, delivering the South African express to Java, filled with precious cargo.

Although the journey was tiring, it was much more comfortable than the long voyage across the Pacific Ocean.

First, the voyage was short. From the Cape of Good Hope, the entire journey was only 10,000 kilometers. The clipper ship was fast and could reach the destination in less than a month.

Second, although there are few islands in the Indian Ocean, on this route, there is basically an island or archipelago every one or two thousand kilometers, where the crew can replenish supplies and rest.

In another time and space, when the Dutch, who were on a "desperate voyage" because they could not break the Portuguese chains, discovered this secret, it is no wonder that they firmly believed that God was blessing the Netherlands... When the news spread back to Europe, it even inspired the Dutch Revolution, which had been hit hard by Spain and fell into a low ebb!

The 'South African Express' followed the route later discovered by the Dutch and arrived at the southern tip of Madagascar three days later.

However, the two clippers, which had not consumed much energy, did not stop and continued to sail into the depths of the ocean. Three days later, they arrived at Mauritius Island.

Of course, Mauritius was named after the Dutch prince in 1595. This time, Zhao Hao took the lead in naming it Dodo Island.

There was a base set up by Western Shipping, where they raised pigs, grew vegetables and farmed the land, and purchased game and fruit from the locals to provide supplies for passing fleets.

In fact, there is no need for South African express to stop here, but the local flightless bird has very delicious meat and is deeply loved by sailors. For the sake of the dodo, they will stop at Dodo Island to have a bite and improve their food.

And the girls on Dodo Island are quite beautiful.

P.S. Sorry, I am always tired and can't update properly. But I am relieved that after the initial radiotherapy and chemotherapy, my mother's condition has improved a lot, and I feel it is worth it. I am sorry for everyone, and everything is difficult at the beginning. I have only finished one chapter until now...