When Marin sent two newly built 250-class merchant ships to the south of Spain with 660,000 pounds of rye, they encountered a shortage of captains.
Before, when he was on Texel Island, Marin relied on the old Portuguese sailors hired with high salaries to run an informal sailor school to train young people selected from fishermen's families.
However, a sailor is just a sailor after all, and cannot replace the captain's position at all. The main task of a sailor is to control the sails and fight on the sea.
This kind of work is also very easy for ordinary uneducated young fishermen to get started. 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 nautical talents who are responsible for leading the team are extremely scarce under Marin's command. Because the captain is not only a senior sailor, he must also be educated and able to record the logbook and hydrological conditions.
Moreover, every qualified oceangoing captain is a good astronomer and mathematical talent. Because, the captain often needs to determine the navigation 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 body angles, which requires certain geometric knowledge.
Therefore, in the age of great voyages, the captain is the real high-level technical job, which is difficult for ordinary people to do. There are quite a few captains under Marin, but none of them are qualified oceangoing 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, moon and stars are suitable to lead 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 has only two people under his command, Columbus and Amerigo, who can be called navigators. Others can only be regarded as offshore captains. At most, some first mates and second mates who hang out with Columbus and Amerigo have learned some advanced navigation knowledge from these two people, and they can barely run to explore good routes based on the logbook.
However, Marin obviously didn't want this. He is a man who wants to become the overlord of the sea in the age of great voyages. Therefore, it is Marin's pursuit to have a group of captains who can adapt to ocean voyages.
Therefore, Marin intends to select young people with bright minds among sailors and teenagers who are suitable to be sailors, and teach them to read and write, as well as astronomical and mathematical knowledge for sailing.
At the same time, among a group of crew members who followed Columbus to explore India, one of the first officers was rested at home by Marin. Therefore, Marin selected 50 smart young sailors and handed them over to the first mate named Knight to teach the children astronomical knowledge and mathematical calculation methods for sailing.
In fact, Knight himself is only at the level of a second knife. However, it is still possible to let him teach children the basics of sailing. Moreover, Knight is also literate anyway, otherwise he would not be the first mate. Therefore, Marin asked Knight to teach those young sailors literacy, recite the basics of astronomical knowledge for navigation, and a simple method of calculating the angle between the sun and the horizontal plane.
Marin didn't expect Knight to teach these young sailors well. Anyway, when Columbus returned from India this time, Marin was not going to let him go to sea again.
Rather than letting the young Columbus go to sea, it is better to let Columbus stay in the captain's school in East Frisia and teach these clever young sailors more advanced knowledge of astronomy and mathematics.
When these teenagers have learned the geometric calculation of celestial body angles, they can easily calculate the latitude and longitude of their location based on the sextant and the nautical clock.
In this way, as long as there is a well-documented latitude and longitude of the route, these people can easily complete the navigation of the old route based on the data and compare the measurement results.
Among them, the more outstanding ones can also be trained as exploratory navigators, allowing them to explore new routes in the future—such as the Ming Dynasty route...
You must know that 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 in India.
If the Ming Dynasty route is really opened up, the profit will be much higher than that of the India route. These medieval Europeans may not know how to deal with the closed and conservative country of the Ming Dynasty, but Marin, who is familiar with Chinese history, can't know
The European royal family is too good-faced, and always wants to get along with the Ming Dynasty on an equal footing. But as everyone knows, the people of the Ming Dynasty actually looked down on any other country. Therefore, it was impossible for the Europeans to have normal diplomatic exchanges with the Ming Dynasty in advance. Moreover, the Ming Dynasty was rich in materials and did not 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 bow three times and nine times. As long as the emperors and ministers of the Ming Dynasty feel that they have face, then everything is easy to talk about. Otherwise, I will definitely not bird you. I would rather fight to the end than take a step back.
The Spaniards suffered from this. As a great empire dominating Europe and America, the Spaniards were too reserved, so they were unable to open the Ming Dynasty market. The Portuguese, on the other hand, 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 destroyed by Spain later, allowing the Dutch to take the opportunity to seize the Strait of Malacca, the Portuguese would continue 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 opened, a lot of plans to please the Ming Dynasty have been booked. For example, directly currying favor with the emperor, bribing cabinet ministers, and even bribing popular eunuchs...
In short, as long as you can win the trading rights of the Ming Dynasty, it is completely worthwhile to spend some money in bribes. Moreover, Marin knew that the Ming Dynasty was ruled by Ming Xiaozong for the past two years, so it might be more difficult to bribe. But after 1505, when the bear boy Zhu Houzhao came to power, there were so many flaws. Not to mention that Zhu Houzhao himself is easier to handle, but just bribe Liu Jin, the chief eunuch under Zhu Houzhao's command, to solve the trade problem simply.
Of course, those are methods that can only be used later. Right now, the top priority is for Marin to have multiple high-level, young and strong captains to open up the Ming Dynasty route first.
In addition to selecting 50 smart young sailors for training, in the civilian school established by Marin-the craftsman school, Marin also planned to let the children of the Frisian fishermen learn the basics of navigation and mathematics from an early age. When they are a little older, the students who have learned well will be selected from among them, and they will be handed over to Columbus and Amerigo for further training, so as to train them into excellent ocean-going sailing captains who can succeed them.
There are now as many as 30,000 to 40,000 fishermen in the East Frisian County, and there are many children in the fishermen's families. There are as many as 5,000 children who are sent to school. These children, Marin does not need them all to grow up to be captains, as long as 500 of them grow up to be qualified ocean-going captains, Marin will be extremely happy. As for the rest, they can act as sailors and serve Marin's voyage.
However, whether it is the 50 smart young sailors or the 5,000 fishermen who have just entered elementary school, if they want to grow up to be captains, it will not be possible to succeed in three to five years. Therefore, Marin still needs to wait. Right now, he can only continue to reuse the two great navigators Columbus and Amerigo. Only when the new generation of navigators grow up can Marin truly realize his dream of dominating the ocean...