Shouting from the fountain was a scruffy man.
He had flaxen curly hair and green eyes, only they were cloudy and didn't look clear.
He was obese, with a short neck and a round belly. He wore an old shirt that didn't fit well on top and dark brown suspenders with a poor crotch button on the bottom.
The sleeves of his shirt were rolled up, revealing muscular arms that didn't match his stature and large, bony hands. There were obvious yellow spots on the fingers and the nails were full of sludge.
The sludge was the main reason why Lorraine would consider him sloppy.
Medicine was scarce on the sea voyage, and any regular sailor would pay as much attention as possible to his personal hygiene, even if he couldn't bathe as often as possible, and wouldn't let dirt get under his fingertips.
But after carefully observing it, Lorraine overturned his original thoughts.
He's not scruffy.
The attire was distressed but clean, even the hair was picked up neatly.
As for the sludge on the fingernails, maybe it's some kind of spot that's always hard to wash.
Sailors don't like suspenders at all because they're not loose enough, and the cumbersome suspenders and buckles interfere with a sailor's agility on board.
So this fat guy isn't from the sea ...
Looking at him, it's more likely that he's a dryad who's in middle age before suddenly wanting to venture out to sea.
Lorraine scratched her chin and hid in the crowd, watching the dryads shout in vain at the fountain.
"The Artis Chamber of Commerce is looking for moo seafarers, moo sailors, and young men with a desire to make a go of it are also welcome to join!"
"We're strong, with ships! There are big ships!"
Suddenly a loud voice from the crowd asked, "Have you ever been to sea, sir?"
The fat man became stumped all of a sudden, "Though ... though it hasn't come out before, ..."
"Can you swim?" Another asked, "If the honorable gentleman fell into the water, how many men would it take to fish you out?"
Laughter!
Fatty's face was red to the point of dripping blood, and he stretched his neck in the middle of the crowd to argue strongly, "I can swim! I've swum in my hometown river and fished for fish!"
The jeers got louder.
Amidst the continuous jeers, Lorraine slowly raised her hand.
He asked, "Sir, I can sail a boat. I just want to make sure of one thing, do you really have a boat?"
His voice came into Fatty's ears like heavenly music, and Fatty's eyes glowed as he busily nodded his head.
"There's a boat! It's docked at Pier 13, and it's a brand new big ship! A real seagoing ship!"
Lorraine smiled, "I happen to have thirteen shillings on me, I wonder how many shares I can take up if I use it to invest?"
...
As the sun set, the fat man who had been beckoning Mu all day walked down the street with his head hanging down, and Lorraine followed far behind, covering her nose to avoid the unpleasant, strange odor he smelled.
The fat man's name is Lake, Lake. Artis, from Devon.
He ran his ancestral tannery in the town of Plymouth, and was an excellent leatherworker, as evidenced by the burnt spots on his fingers and the strange odor of his body, which was a mixture of nitrate and the stench of rotting leather, of his extensive resume of practice.
Yet all these things are of no value to a seafaring merchant.
As good as he was at tanning, he was still the same untrusted dryad. After laboring all day, only Lorraine, an equally untrusted half-breed, was willing to join the fledgling Artisian Chamber of Commerce.
Even apart from them, the Chamber doesn't have even one decent sailor.
This frustrated Lake.
He'd heard it said that he needed at least eight competent sailors to sail his big ship, and he only had one right now, and it was still a toss-up as to whether he was competent or not.
His wish to go to sea is yellowed ...
With a heart like a death wish, Lek led Lorraine all the way to Pier 13, just to prove that he had credibility.
Once he had seen the boat, he was ready to sell it and use the money from the sale to pay off the huge debt of the tannery.
Now the time has come to break up.
Lek stood by the dock, pointed his finger at a large ship moored in the sea, and said softly, "Lad, this is my ship, I'm not fooling you."
Lorraine slowly lowered her hand.
A large, slightly chubby boat rested quietly in the bay under the flaming red sunset, softly undulating with the waves on the shore.
She was 30 meters long and 8 meters wide, with a pointed head and broad stern, and her only thick mainmast stood straight up in the middle of the ship, 22 meters high, with clean halyards drawn down diagonally to connect the mainmast to the slender 3-meter-long bowsprit at the bow.
Lorraine recited softly, "Hanseatic Kirk type sloop-rigged transom, one of the most famous designs of the Scandinavian line, famous for the Hanseatic Merchant League, characterized by the first use of a central rudder on the transom. Developed to this day with a standard length of 30 meters, a width of 8 meters, and a mainmast of 22 meters."
"The Kirk type has a wide interior cabin and bilge for smooth sailing in shallow areas. Because of the use of a huge transom-mounted, square-rigged spinnaker, it is able to maintain excellent speed in downwind conditions, but does not perform well in upwind conditions."
"With the introduction of the Arabian bow gennaker, its greatest defect was remedied, and more than four hundred years after the design was finalized, it is still widely used around the North Sea and the Mediterranean Sea with low cost and stable performance, with a standard crew of eight."
Lake did a double take at that, "Boy, you look like ..."
Lorraine smiled to herself, "I used to be a schoolboy at the sea school, if it wasn't for a change in my family and picking up school early, I would probably be on a ship by now."
Lek smiled bitterly, "I thought it was an ordinary young man, but I didn't realize I'd picked up a treasure ... Pity ..."
"Sir, are you worried that there aren't enough people to sail the ship?" Lorraine suddenly asked.
"Eh?" Lek was poked and prodded, and for a moment he was a bit at a loss for words, "You ... don't get me wrong, you're fine ... it's just that if you want to do business, you've got to get the ship out of the harbor first, and sailing a ship is an eight-man job, and you're more than capable of doing it ..."
"As a matter of fact, I can sail this ship all by myself." Lorraine rubbed the tip of her nose, "Because of the older design, she's not complicated to operate."
"Eh?"
Lek stayed there, watching as the teenager ran up, stepped on the pedals, and leapt onto the boat.
Lorraine darted to the bow of the ship and crouched on the tip of the bowsprit like a dexterous monkey, holding onto the cable, "Sir, I haven't asked, what's her name?"
"The Beauty ... Beauty ship!" Lek hissed towards Lorraine as if waking from a dream, "Her name is the Artis Beauty!"
"So it's the beauty of the Artis family?..." Lorraine gently stroked the smooth bowsprit at her feet, gradually revealing a smile, "I didn't realize that it's actually a fat girl."
With only two people, the Artis Chamber of Commerce was intensely busy.
Lake was responsible for purchasing goods and hiring laborers to carry them.
Lorraine, on the other hand, was busy waxing the decks, oiling the anchor and rudder, and checking the sails, cables, hatches, and keel to make sure all the parts were intact.
He was a disciple of Sir Layton, and trusted only himself and his companions with the knots, so that every knot had to be disbanded, re-tied, and busied.
He even painted a two-meter wide box in red paint right in the center of the deck, stretching horizontally and vertically from the transom compartment all the way up to five meters from the bow.
Ryker shipped the goods up and looked strangely at the blinding red frame.
"Little Lorraine, this frame is?"
"This is your captain's quarters." Lorraine clapped her hands, "That's all the space you'll have on deck once you're out of port, and you'll have to wear a life preserver. Sir, you're too fat for me to drag you up if you fall overboard."
"Eh?"
"By the way, since we're crossing the channel, you should have already bought the appropriate charts, right?"
"Charts are expensive eh!" Lek looked like he was finely tuned, "I've heard it said that if you just sail with the wind ..."
"You'll soon drift to Holland, and no surprise, beauty becomes the spoils of the coachmen, basically."
"Eh?"
"Go ahead go ahead ..." Lorraine waved her hand lazily, "As the ship's First Mate and Coxswain and Pilot and Lookout and Shipwright, I'll also need a monocular, compass, a pair of thick linen gloves and some supplies. Everything is at the Captain's service, thank you."