WeTried Translations

Translator: ZERO_SUGAR

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ Wind and a Cluster of Stars

Chapter 11

──────

Funds Run Dry, The Real First Day

20. Funds Run Dry

April 16, 3:00 p.m.

As things with the ship finally started falling into place, I began doing what I had to do as captain.

First, we needed provisions.
We also needed guns for armament, sailcloth for spare sails, and plenty of other supplies.

Compared to our little Balsa, this fluyt was truly big.
Its armament was modest, but it still had to be enough for self-defense.

But right now, the biggest problem was money.

My funds were almost gone, and I had reached the point where I had to scrape cash together somehow.

In the end, I took a credit certificate from the Merchants' Guild and went to the bank.

Naturally, my ship had to be put up as collateral.

I could not borrow a large amount, and even this short-term loan was the limit of my credit.

With that money, I bought the ship's guns first from an artillery dealer.

On the advice of Zenon, a former naval officer, I bought four 6-pounder sakers,
two 12-pounder culverins,
and eight 24-pounder carronades.

The guns were soon hoisted aboard with pulleys and cranes,
and the sailors dragged the gun carriages into place.

The large-caliber carronades went on the lower deck.
The culverins and sakers went on the upper deck.

Next came gunpowder and shot.

I bought about a dozen small wooden barrels of powder.

For ammunition, I bought standard round shot, and Zenon added some chain shot.

Everything was moved below into the ship's magazine.

I had Amy gather provisions for the ship,
so carts brought in sacks of biscuits and vegetables.

On top of that, salt pork and sacks of salt were hauled up onto the deck.

"I can hear my money shattering!"

Last, I bought something for myself.

I bought a long pennant in a fitting color to mark this as my flagship.

The deep blue flag I bought from the paint shop matched the hull color perfectly.

It was raised to the top of the aft auxiliary mast,
and every time the wind blew, it streamed long in the air.

...

6:00 p.m.

Now it was time to find work.

All I had left was one gold coin and a handful of silver.

If I failed to pay wages due in a month, I would go bankrupt on the spot.

I went around several guilds, looking for whatever work I could take.

I had no experience in the adventure side of things, so there was almost nothing they could entrust to me.

At most, I found three or four minor jobs: simple letter delivery and low-profit fishery output reports.

"Then how about this? A request to find an old African legend. Scholars are divided on it, but there are too few records. They want someone with at least a little archaeology knowledge. Do you happen to know anything about archaeology...?"

"Uh... no."

After that, I even stopped by the Soldiers' Guild.

But those jobs were mostly things only privateer fleets or warships could handle, scouting and convoy protection.

In the end, I had no choice but to return to the Merchants' Guild.

I managed to get a document-processing job that passed through Plymouth and Dublin.

That also decided our route.

...

"Even so, these jobs barely pay."

"What will you buy as cargo?"

"I cannot gamble. I'll buy goods that make money and do not crash in price. I've earned this much mostly because luck has favored me so far. I do not expect that to keep up."

After thinking it over, I decided to load paper.

It was cheap, and demand was constant.

Prices had also dipped a little at the trading post because of market fluctuations.

Before dusk set in, I negotiated with the trading post owner.

"I need around 300 boxes of paper."

"That's a bulk order. I'll knock off 3 percent. But do you need more? If you take 500 boxes, I can cut another 2 percent."

"Our loading capacity will be full. Please give me only 300."

Trading post workers and sailors used cranes and pulleys
to load tied bundles of raw, unprocessed paper onto the ship.

After that, all I had left was a few light coins.

...

"We're leaving right now. Raise the sails!"

At the order, the sailors weighed anchor and set sail, and the ship began to catch wind.

"Navigator, the route is set, right?"

"Of course."

The ship took the wind and began accelerating slowly.

Zenon and I took the helm together and left the harbor.

The sun was setting, and the ship's shadow stretched long over the sea.

The ship began gliding over calm water.

At the bow, I felt wind at a speed I had never experienced on the Balsa.

The ship moved almost eerily quietly, and fast.

Large schooners and galleons passed beside the fluyt Red Tea,
but at that moment I did not envy them.

This ship was on a different level from the Balsa.

Everything felt structured, like a real system was finally in place.

...

"Hm... 22 shillings?" (Shilling: an old British silver coin. At the time, 20 shillings = 1 pound.)

"That's for skilled sailors. Ordinary sailors get 19 shillings."

I called Amy and Zenon into the captain's cabin at the stern and discussed wages.

The ship was quiet, and only the lamp flames burned.

"How many skilled sailors do we have?"

"Five in total."

"Ah."

I began writing a crew list and daily ledger on parchment.

"Turnips?"

"Yes. Three sacks of turnips, three sacks of cabbage, six sacks of onions."

As the ship got bigger, there was more to manage.

Food, tools, consumables, hygiene supplies...

The problem was that we were still short on many things.

The navigator's and first mate's wages were also newly set.

First, Amy, as first mate and purser, would be paid 5 pounds.

And Zenon, as navigator and boatswain, would get 2 pounds and 10 shillings.

(These were ordinary wages for that era, and they varied widely by ship role and region.)

At least one thing was fortunate: I was not on the wage sheet myself.

Many captains were hired by shipowners to run their ships.

In that case, they did not need to buy a ship,
but they had to deal with annoying paperwork like cargo and voyage reports,
submit business calculations before departure,
and could not strike deals with other fleets on their own.

Their status was lower, and disputes with shipowners were frequent.

"That's everything now, right?"

"Yes."

They left carrying lamps and candles.

Soon enough, their heads would be aching over their own assignments too.

As first mate and purser, Amy had to manage menus, incoming funds, consumables checks, and cargo management.

As navigator and boatswain, Zenon, a common dual role on smaller ships, had to take responsibility for crew control and everything needed for safe sailing.

As for me, I had to do whatever it took to pay their wages, so of course everything tasted bitter.

21. The Real First Day

April 16, around 11:30 p.m.

I could not fall asleep until late.

I kept steering the new ship and moving around everywhere, and my mind would not settle.

The ship held its course along the coastline.

Lights from coastal towns and fishing villages flickered dimly nearby,
and yellow light leaked through windows and cracks from ships crossing the night sea.

I picked up a lamp and looked through the quarters.

Except for those on watch, most were lying in hammocks.

The sea was calm, and the long-hulled fluyt moved much more steadily than the Balsa.

Built solid, the fluyt moved quietly, without a single creak.

Next to the quarters, the hold was packed full of paper cargo.

The smell of the sea, like wet seaweed, the bleaching smell of paper, the resin scent of a newly built ship...

All of it mixed together and gave off a strange feeling.

"Oh..."

I was startled by eyes reflecting in the lamplight,
but it was just the cat in the corner.

"What are you doing there, kitty?"

When I spoke, the yellow kitten came close, pretending to be friendly.

Maybe it felt cramped, but it seemed to have slipped out of Amy's basket and wandered around.

With the cat beside me, I checked the guns and magazine on the lower deck.

Down the stairs, the very bottom deck held the food storeroom.

Amy had sorted dried rations and fresh food neatly, and she had also organized salt sacks, firewood for fuel, and coal.

A pot hung over the brick stove, water barrels sat beside it, and ladles hung above.

The food storeroom also held a large cask of beer for crew rations
and small bottles of strong brandy for emergencies.

Amy must have run herself ragged all day for all this.

She and I were bound by contract, that was true, but the way she worked and the time we had spent together made her feel less like a mate and more like a close companion.

In truth, she was doing far more than her pay called for.

...

A strange sound snapped me awake.

It sounded like countless tiny birds skittering over a roof.

Outside the door, it was still dark.

"It's raining."

I had fallen asleep inside the upper deck shelter.

I must have dozed off while sitting on a coil of rope, thinking one thought after another.

The cat that had been with me was gone, and only rain filled the space.

It was the sound of rain on the deck shelter, something I had never heard on the Balsa.

...

April 17, 7:00 a.m.

Morning came, the sun rose, and the ship's real work began.

Amy first made hot soup for more than twenty people and served it with bread.

The voyage was still short enough that bread could stay on the menu.

Of course, if it ran longer, we would switch to ship's biscuit.

The sailors took bread and soup in wooden bowls and ate sitting around the gun deck,
or freely out on deck.

I had breakfast in the captain's cabin, salty broth from boiled salt pork, along with soup and bread.

Amy seemed to be at her limit, so after the meal she used her authority to appoint one cook.

She chose a crewman with cooking experience.

All morning, he and Amy kept chopping cabbage finely to make pickled cabbage.

Amy chopped cabbage with a knife,
the cook carried it to casks
and layered in salt to make the pickle.

It was one of the few vegetable foods that could be stored for a long time.

...

"What?!"

Amy's sudden shout startled me, and I stepped out of the captain's cabin.

Amy and one sailor were arguing.

She stood with her arms crossed, splattered with bits of cabbage, the vegetable, not the cat.

As expected, Cabbage, the cat this time, was also messy, with cabbage bits stuck to it.

A new sailor had probably pushed back because Amy was young and a woman.

He must have tried to act tough and said something, but he picked the wrong target.

"What is your problem? If that's not enough, how much do you need to drink before you're satisfied?!"

No doubt the new sailor had been grumbling that the post-meal beer ration was too small.

Beer contained alcohol, so it kept longer than water, and ships always carried and rationed it.

The real problem was that he had challenged the wrong person.

Talking back to the captain was an absolute taboo, and since I paid their wages, they naturally could not challenge that.

A captain also held authority close to power over life and death.

And if they talked back to strict navigator Zenon, they would probably end up thrown into the sea.

But if they got on Amy's bad side...

"You're eating only bread and water for a week!"

That poor sailor's spirit collapsed at once.

For them, this was a matter of pride,
and a direct restriction on the most basic thing of all, food.

I felt sympathy for the sailors.

Many had never received even basic education,
and most became sailors because they were poor.

Among everyone aboard this ship, only a few sailors could probably read.

They had learned ship work and little else, so there was not much else they could do.

Because of that lack of education, their cramped life aboard ship, and poor diets, they suffered from many illnesses.

On top of that, if they met a cunning captain, losing wages or ending up in debt was common.

That was why I always thought I should at least give them a better diet,
and at minimum pay their wages on time.

...

April 17, noon.

The ship moved so fast that, by sextant check, we were almost at Plymouth already.

At noon after the rain, the fluyt sped along as if sliding over the sea on a fair wind.

A frigate eased past us almost as if mocking us,
and a sloop-of-war shot ahead as if teasing us.

"We are entering Plymouth!"

As we approached the harbor, Zenon rang the bell and prepared for docking.

I had guild business to handle first.

I still needed the remaining signatures on incomplete documents,
and for that I had to run around town finding owners.

So I left the sale of the cargo entirely to Amy while I went to find trading post people and factory managers.

Plymouth was one of Britain's top naval ports after Portsmouth, where warship construction and repairs were active.

First, I got a signature from a ship repairman sweeping up wood shavings.

Next was a trading post owner who had not signed the handover papers yet, then a Merchants' Guild official...

That process alone took nearly two hours.

When I came back to the ship, Amy had failed to sell the paper.

She explained that prices had dropped even lower than our cost.

And with no funds, we had nothing else we could buy.

So we only stayed in Plymouth for a couple of hours, then left straight for Dublin.

...

A few hours later,

the ship left Plymouth, sailed west, then reset course and started heading north.

To the west, through a telescope, we could faintly see Ireland.
To the east, we could see the British mainland.

We had entered the Celtic Sea, south of Cornwall.

This sea was important.

It was a route linking onward traffic from the North Sea, so many merchant ships sailed through it.

Not long after we turned north, we came upon a fleet.

One of their ships had stopped and was belching thick black smoke.

"Could it be on fire? Maybe those other ships are trying to put it out."

Near the smoke-belching ship, two more vessels were visible.

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