In the early spring of the third year of Yongle in the Ming Dynasty, thousands of boatmen cheered to welcome the arrival of the prefect Tang Xunzhong at Taiping Port, Changle County, Fuzhou Prefecture.
In a hundred days or so, the Sanbao eunuchs will set sail from Liujiagang in Taicang, sail to the Western Seas, and declare the country's prestige, while the treasure ships built in Taiping Port will also leave the dock and go to Liujiagang.
Therefore, the purpose of Tang Xunzhong's trip was to personally inspect the treasure ship.
In fact, treasure ships are a general term. According to the purpose of the ships, the ships in Taiping Port mainly include grain ships, horse ships, war ships, battle seats, water ships, etc. Among them, war seats are large war ships. Tang Xunzhong He was most interested in and attached great importance to this, so he sent Cui Mai, the governor of Fuzhou Prefecture, to personally board the largest battleship and go to sea.
Cui Mai was accompanied by a total of 255 people including boatmen, sergeants, and handymen. Set off as soon as Chen hour passes and prepare to return at noon.
Before noon, pigs and sheep are being slaughtered here, and everyone is looking forward to it, but the treasure ship on the sea does not come no matter how hard it waits.
Tang Xunzhong was anxious, not because he was hungry, but because he was worried that the treasure ship would fail on its maiden voyage.
Of course, at that time, he was only worried that the ship would veer off course, get lost, or leak. How could he have imagined that the two hundred and fifty-five people on the battleship would be wiped out?
It was only after three quarters of noon that Tang Xunzhong fully believed in the fact that the treasure ship had happened. Otherwise, he would still be lucky and hope that huge sails and shouting people would appear at the end of the sea and sky. But no, the warship was promised to return to the dock before noon, but it never returned.
At four quarters of noon, Tang Xunzhong discussed with Fuzhou Guards Commander Yang Hui about going to sea for search and rescue.
Yang Hui then drove a warship with 2,000 materials and led an army of 300 men to sea. Finally, something strange was discovered in the sea about a hundred miles away from the coast.
It was a large expanse of bright red water with a pungent smell of blood. There was no trace of the treasure ship on the sea, but there were many pieces of bloody clothes and hats floating on the sea.
Yang Hui looked around and saw no suspicious ships. He ordered again to sail thirty or forty miles east. When he looked again, there was still vast sea water and nothing else. Yang Hui had no choice but to return home temporarily.
Here, Tang Xunzhong had been waiting anxiously. When he saw Yang Hui returning alone, he knew that something was wrong. Yang Hui also told Tang Xunzhong what he saw one by one. Tang Xunzhong found it even more incredible. He thought that the treasure ship must not have sunk naturally, otherwise It was difficult to explain what Yang Hui saw, the large piece of blood and the bloody pieces of clothing of the crew members.
If they were attacked by big fish, such as whales and sharks, it would not mean that all 255 people were killed and no one survived. Besides, I have never heard of such a big incident in this area of the sea. Fish disaster.
After talking and talking, the final opinion gradually became unified, that is, the treasure ship probably encountered pirates, because Yang Hui pointed out that there is an island six hundred miles away from here, to the southeast, called Black Sand. There is a fierce man named Zhou Shida on Heisha Island, who gathers thousands of people and specializes in killing people and stealing goods at sea. He is a criminal thief who has been wanted by the court for a long time.
After listening to Yang Hui's introduction about Zhou Shida, Tang Xunzhong was already 70-80% sure. He believed that the treasure ship must have encountered Zhou Shida's group. Zhou Shida was eager for the treasure ship, so he killed the sergeants who dared to resist, and took the treasure ship and the surrendered crew members. They were all taken prisoner and taken away.
Yang Hui also believed that Tang Xunzhong's analysis was correct. On the other hand, he really couldn't think of any other reasons. As a result, the two of them began to prepare for the naval battle while reporting the matter to the superiors.
After receiving the report from Tang and Yang, the imperial court was deeply shocked. It specially allocated ten large fortune ships and a thousand elite soldiers from Yingtian Mansion, and appointed the eunuch Wang Jinghong as the imperial envoy to coordinate with Tang Xunzhong and Yang Hui to deal with Fuzhou. The case of the missing treasure ship.
There are also five Dafu ships in Fuzhou. They are all three-story warships with a draft of more than ten feet. They can carry more than a hundred people and are equipped with firearms, stone tools, crossbows, rockets, gunpowder crossbows and other combat equipment.
In this way, the imperial court had all the advantages in combat ships, personnel, weapons and other matters. They just waited for the wind to blow up and sailed towards Heisha Island in a mighty manner.
God opened his eyes. When the imperial fleet landed on Black Sand Island, Zhou Shida was sending his second-in-command Zhang Chuang to lead an ambush in the Sulu waters with five to six hundred people. In other words, there were only three to four hundred pirates on Black Sand Island. People stick to it.
Zhou Shida saw the Dafu ship approaching and knew he was outnumbered, so he wanted to escape on a stern from the southeast corner of the island. How could he have expected that Wang Jinghong and Yang Hui had already anticipated that Zhou Shida might flee from the east or southeast, so they allocated part of their troops early on. , just waiting there.
When Zhou Shida was captured alive by Yang Hui, the minions on Heisha Island completely gave up resistance, laid down their weapons and surrendered.
After the imperial court took control of Heisha Island, they waited for work on the island, waiting for Zhang Chuang to surrender. Unexpectedly, Zhang Chuang didn't know that something had happened on the island. As soon as he rashly landed on the shore, he was caught by the officers and soldiers. The rest of his troops fled in all directions by boat, but most of them were chased back by the officers and soldiers. At this point, Heisha Island was completely under the control of the imperial court. bingo.
But what surprised Wang Jinghong and Yang Hui was that there was no trace of the treasure ship around Heisha Island. No objects on the treasure ship were found on the island, and no people on the treasure ship were found.
After interrogating Zhou Shida and Zhang Chuang, they found out that Zhou and Zhang had indeed harassed the coast of the Ming Dynasty, but were defeated by the Ming Dynasty navy several times. They suffered heavy losses and were not worth the gain. Later, they stopped using mantis as a chariot and instead went to Sulu, Java, Chenla, etc. The land was plundered, mainly to rob passing merchant ships, and occasionally to land.
Wang Jinghong asked what evidence he had for what he said? Zhou Shida also provided the account books on the island, which record every ill-gotten gain stolen in recent years. Most of them are specialties and treasures from Sulu, Java, Chenla and other places. The items found on the island The supplies also prove that what he recorded is true, because among these supplies, there are indeed few Ming products. This is also the reason why in the past few years, people along the coast of the Ming Dynasty rarely reported to the government the evil deeds of Zhou Shida and his group.
Logically speaking, Wang Jinghong and Yang Hui should be happy to have defeated the bandits entrenched on Heisha Island, but in fact, neither of them were happy. Compared with exterminating pirates, it is their duty to investigate the disappearance of the treasure ship.
Originally, they pinned all their hopes on Heisha Island, but when they found out that Heisha Island was a waste of water, all they felt was loss and heaviness.
"Master Wang, what should we do now?" Yang Hui asked Wang Jinghong.
Wang Jinghong had no choice but to sigh in vain and said: "Escort Zhou Shida, Zhang Chuang and his group to the Ming Dynasty, and the rest can only wait until they return to discuss it."
Tang Xunzhong was anxiously waiting for news about Wang Jinghong and Yang Hui. When the three met, Wang and Yang told Tang Xunzhong what happened on Heisha Island, and Tang Xunzhong almost lost his temper.
"Who did it? What happened? Two hundred warriors, an indestructible treasure ship, who on earth has such great ability to make all this disappear out of thin air?"
Wang Jinghong said: "Why don't you ask Zhou Shida? Let's hear his opinion on this matter. This man has been wandering the sea for many years, and he must be able to tell that he is ugly."
Tang Xunzhong said: "Good idea. Let's try it."
Therefore, Zhou Shida was considered guilty of meritorious deeds and expressed his opinions to the officials.
"The treasure ship probably didn't disappear out of thin air. It must have sunk at the bottom of the sea," Zhou Shida said. "The large blood stains on the sea must have been left by the people on the ship. My feeling is that everyone on the ship should have been killed. The top priority now is, It is to find out the cause of the shipwreck and the deaths.
First of all, there is absolutely no way the ship sank due to an accident or workmanship. The large amounts of blood and bloody pieces of clothing left behind by the crew indicate that the treasure ship was attacked by an external force. The most likely thing is that pirates first captured the treasure ship, killed the crew, and then scuttled the treasure ship and destroyed the evidence. It can only be scuttled, because there is not a single plank or wood chip floating on the sea, which means that the treasure ship is completely missing. If it is sunk, there will definitely be traces of the treasure ship on the sea. But now, only the crew's clothes are left on the sea, which is enough to show that the treasure ship was scuttled and completely submerged into the ocean. "
"If it was scuttled, there should be sawdust floating on the sea, right?"
"If you had killed all the crew members and then calmly committed the crime inside the treasure ship, cleaning it up as you went, there would be no traces of sawdust or the like left on the sea."
Tang Xunzhong asked again: "If it was a pirate attack, then the pirates might have left on the treasure ship after killing all the crew members. This could also explain why there were no traces of the treasure ship on the sea."
Zhou Shida said: "Impossible. Pirates will not do this. When the pirates saw the treasure ship, they thought there was something valuable on the treasure ship. They might kill all the crew members and board the ship to rob them. But after that, they would never sail the treasure ship again. Leave, because the treasure ship is a large piece of evidence and the most conspicuous target. Who pirate would be so stupid and willing to expose himself and blatantly become an enemy of the Ming Dynasty? Therefore, the only option is to scuttle it, if they really encounter pirates. "
"In your opinion, which pirate has such strength and dares to do such an earth-shattering thing?"
"There is only Chen Zuyi and his group. There can be no others. They have tens of thousands of people and hundreds of warships. Only they can do this important thing of scuttling the treasure ship and killing more than 200 officers and soldiers. But the pirates' warships are smaller. , to kill two hundred officers and soldiers, there were at least three to four hundred pirates. There must have been no less than ten warships at that time, and if there were really a dozen pirate ships sailing into the Ming Dynasty waters, I think there must be witnesses. The merchant ships and fishing boats passing by that day , you’ll know just by asking.”
Tang Xunzhong nodded as he listened, seeming to be convinced.
"Is there another possibility?" Tang Xunzhong frowned and asked, "Big fish appear in the sea from time to time, such as whales, sharks and other behemoths, and the crew members were all bitten to death and eaten by the big fish?"
Zhou Shida asked back: "The crew members were fine on the treasure ship, how did they fall into the sea?"
"Is there a big fish that can capsize the treasure ship?"
"Impossible, there is absolutely no such huge sea fish. To take a step back, even if the treasure ship is capsized by a particularly huge whale, big whales do not bite or eat people. Others will bite or eat people. The sea fish cannot overturn the treasure ship at all, and if the treasure ship is smashed, then once it is smashed, there will be traces of the treasure ship on the sea, such as ship boards, wood chips, etc. But the problem is that there are none of these. . So it can only be pirates, it can only be scuttled. The government can post notices and collect clues from the people along the coast, asking if anyone saw a dozen pirate ships passing through this sea area on the day of the treasure ship's accident."
Tang Xunzhong had no doubts anymore and acted according to Zhou Shida's words.
