Chapter 455: The Spoils of War

The cargo manifests from both ships had been translated. According to the manifests, besides the 230,000 pesos of royal subsidy, there was also 60,000 pesos of private funds. However, based on the Great Library’s speculation, silver smuggling was rampant on the Manila galleons at that time. The high officials and nobles of New Spain smuggled out large amounts of American silver to Manila to purchase Chinese goods for sale back in the Americas.

The results of the inventory proved their speculation to be correct. In addition to the 310,000 pesos listed on the manifest, there were private funds registered under the name of “sundries” but which turned out to be silver coins, totaling 124,000 pesos. This brought the total silver coin harvest to 410,000 pesos. There were also 311 silver bars, each weighing one Spanish arroba. Some were stamped with the mark of a mine, while others had no markings at all.

One Spanish arroba is equivalent to 11.5 kilograms, for a total of 3.5 tons. However, Yan Maoda, the former manager of the jewelry company who was specially summoned back from Guangzhou to appraise this batch of gold and silver, believed that the purity of these silver bars varied greatly. The best were about 85% pure. The stamps were mostly from the silver mines of Zacatecas and Guanajuato in New Spain. The silver bars stamped with the mark of Potosí and other Peruvian silver mines were generally of low purity, between 60% and 70%.

The unmarked silver bars also varied in fineness, from as high as 90% to less than 60%.

“Since the purity is insufficient, what are the remaining components?” Sun Xiao asked.

“Mostly lead—that stuff is particularly fond of silver and looks very similar, so it’s often used as a filler. Of course, there’s also copper and gold. These are by-products of the silver ore, and if the refining is not pure, it’s easy to carry these impurities.”

“I thought it was pure silver,” Sun Xiao said, slightly disappointed.

“It can’t be pure silver. Even the best Spanish pesos are only 84% pure. Even if we want to mint silver coins, there’s no need for them to be purer than pesos,” Yan Maoda said. “Besides, look at these silver coins; they also have different fineness.” He picked up a silver coin. “This is a peso minted in New Spain, 84% pure. This one was minted in Peru, at most 60-70% pure. You can feel that the Peruvian one is lighter.”

“So if we want to use them for minting, they all have to be re-smelted.”

“That’s right. The composition of these silver coins and silver bars varies greatly. They have to be smelted into a uniform coin material first,” Yan Maoda said. “Let me see the others.”

There wasn’t much gold, but the variety was considerable. There were both Spanish and Portuguese coins, as well as those from other European countries. The two ships had a total of over 3,400 gold coins of varying fineness, weight, and size. They also seized 35 gold bars, each weighing a quarter of a Spanish arroba, for a total of one hundred kilograms, with a fineness of about 80%.

Although the fineness was not high, this much gold was still a considerable gain. If calculated according to the 19th-century gold standard British pound, with each pound containing 7.9 grams of pure gold, this could be used as a reserve to issue about ten thousand pounds.

“As for this pile of jewelry, it’s difficult to appraise,” Yan Maoda said. “Besides the gold chains, almost all of them are inlaid with gems and pearls. They are very heavy, and the material value alone is considerable. The craftsmanship is not bad either, so if you count the labor cost, it’s probably worth a lot of money. It would be a pity to melt them down. It’s more cost-effective to sell them directly as works of art. The difficulty is that no one in the Ming Dynasty wants this kind of jewelry. I think we can give them to the Portuguese or the Dutch to try to cash them in. The gold chains can be melted down directly.”

Among the seized jewels, the largest quantity was emeralds, with eighty pieces. Emeralds were the most abundant gemstone produced in Spanish America. Although the cutting was rough, Yan Maoda estimated their value to be not low. If they were recut with modern techniques, their value could be further increased. Next were various gemstones: rubies, garnets, opals, corundum, and diamonds, all in small quantities. There were also 1.5 liters of Caribbean pearls of varying sizes.

“These saltwater pearls can fetch a high price,” Yan Maoda said, wearing gloves and carefully picking up a blue saltwater pearl the size of a little finger. “If this is sold in Beijing, it could fetch at least eight hundred to a thousand taels of silver—but it would be difficult to sell, as there are very few people who can afford such things.”

After all the precious metals and jewels were registered and sorted into special boxes, Sun Xiao estimated the value of the spoils of war from the entire Hunger operation to be eight hundred thousand pesos.

As for the other goods, the variety was extensive. The largest bulk items were bales of cotton and large rolls of extremely tough thread. Sun Xiao consulted the Great Library and learned that this thread was agave fiber. The Philippine colonial government imported American cotton to weave canvas and agave fiber for caulking—all for shipbuilding and repair.

Next were a large number of animal hides—mainly cowhide and sheepskin, numbering in the tens of thousands. Besides the hides, another major commodity was cochineal—the secretion of this insect was a high-quality red dye. There were also several hundred barrels of tobacco from Cuba and several hundred bags of a strange tuberous root with an extremely difficult-to-pronounce Spanish name: sarsaparilla, listed as a “medicine” in the cargo manifest. The people from the Great Library checked the information and learned that this was a specialty of the Americas, considered at the time to be a panacea for many diseases.

As for the magnificent clothing made of silk and wool, and the sets of silverware, packed in reinforced chests covered with animal hides, they were obviously the luggage of the high-ranking officials and nobles on board. If the Senate eventually allowed the captives to be ransomed, this luggage could also be ransomed, so it was temporarily only counted and registered before being resealed and not included in the warehouse inventory.

However, the most surprising cargo came from the hold—two hundred sealed pottery jars of mercury, each with a capacity of a quarter fanega, or 13.75 liters. The stamps on the jars indicated that this mercury came from the Huancavelica mercury mine in Peru.

In this time-space, the main use of mercury was for refining silver. What did the Philippines need so much mercury for? Were they also planning to develop a silver mine?

Sun Xiao didn’t know if the Philippines had a silver mine, but the fact that the Manila galleon was carrying so much mercury was very unusual. He immediately reported this information to the Executive Committee.

However, this situation alone didn’t explain much—because the Philippines had always imported mercury from China. But such a huge amount of import was too abnormal. Therefore, the Executive Committee handed this problem over to the Foreign Intelligence Bureau, instructing them to investigate.

After being cleaned up, the two Spanish galleons were towed to the Bopu Shipyard for a complete overhaul. The cannons, remaining masts, sails, and rigging on the ships had all been dismantled, to be modified and reused as the situation dictated.

The cannons were naturally dragged directly to the smelting plant. The 65 bronze cannons dismantled from the two ships made the metallurgy and materials departments overjoyed. “We are in desperate need of high-quality bronze!”

The galleon was a very sturdy sea vessel, with all its timber made of strong oak. The hull planks were up to 11 inches thick at their thickest, and the ribs were thicker and more densely packed than on ordinary ships—no wonder the Spanish used them to cross the ocean, transporting gold, silver, and treasures.

According to the ship’s register and on-site surveys, the registered tonnage of the San Luis was 800 gross tons, with a displacement of 1450 tons. The San Raimundo was slightly smaller, with a registered tonnage of 650 gross tons and a displacement of about 1200 tons.

After inspecting them, Wen Desi believed that these two ships could be modified and reused. After all, the tonnage of both ships was close to that of the H800. Although their hull lines were a bit poor and their speed was slow, they were sturdy and durable. If they were modified with steam power, they would be very useful transport ships.

“Actually, with the scale of these two ships, if they were equipped with enough cannons, they could rule the South China Sea even without steam engines,” Chen Haiyang said after his inspection. “The problem is that we don’t have enough sailors to man them.”

“If only we could use the Spanish prisoners,” Qian Shuiting said, then shook his head with regret. This was first of all “politically incorrect,” and secondly, the reliability of the Spanish prisoners could obviously not be guaranteed.

“I think it’s not impossible to hire Europeans in non-military shipping enterprises—after all, we lack qualified senior sailors,” Chen Haiyang said. “At least their seamanship is much better than the local natives. Just the fact that they can cross the Pacific and the Atlantic is enough to put them leagues ahead of most of the naturalized citizen captains in our navy and shipping enterprises.”

According to the captain’s certificates issued by the navy, the captains of the Senate’s navy and shipping enterprises had three classes of certificates: A, B, and C. Class A: proficient in using navigation instruments, able to navigate across the ocean using charts. Class B: able to use navigation instruments, familiar with traditional Chinese long-distance sea routes, able to sail to Japan, Thailand, Manila, and Batavia. Class C: familiar with Chinese coastal routes, able to sail from Hainan to Tianjin.

Most of the captains in the Senate’s fleet, who were former pirates and fishermen, held Class B and C certificates. Only the captains of a few steam warships, as rare as morning stars, held Class A certificates—they were all, without exception, graduates of the Fangcaodi Naval Officer Cadet Class.

“Reliability, reliability,” Qian Shuiting said. “Don’t you know that the sailors on long-distance sea vessels in this era are a concentration camp of dregs?”

“That’s true, but we might be able to try with senior sailors. I remember reading a book about this before. The treatment of these senior sailors was not high at that time, and many did not serve their own country. They would work for anyone who paid them. Italian sailors served everyone. By the way, wasn’t Columbus an Italian?”