Peacock Islands and the Launch of Clipper Ships

The Eritrea Sea, most of which lay within a tropical maritime climate zone, was the second-largest sea in the known world after the Black Sea. It was also a vital transportation hub through which the civilized nations communicated with the Peacock Islands via the Treasure Sea.

Thanks to its climate, this sea had an exceptionally long sailing season. Apart from the summer, when dangerous storms were frequent and unceasing, large numbers of merchant ships traveled between the eastern and western regions of the Source Continent in every other season.

Foremost among them were the Sirius People, who had effectively occupied the Peacock Islands and monopolized the local trade.

Whoosh!

The sky was cloudless for thousands of miles. Across the azure sea sailed a massive fleet, its escorting warships arranged around the outside and its large merchant vessels within, winding forward in three columns.

With an astonishing total of thirty-one ships, it was not much smaller than the former Treasure Fleet.

Most of these ocean-going vessels flew the Flame Pennant of the Sirius Empire, still displaying the mighty remnants of the foremost naval power that had fallen ill but refused to collapse.

However, besides Sirius People, the fleet's crews also included many indigenous people with dark skin, short statures, and mostly deep-brown curly hair.

They were the Negrito People from the Peacock Islands.

The Peacock Islands appeared to be a unified whole, but they were merely a collective name for a series of Native States scattered across the islands. Their peoples, however, did not differ much.

Most of them were employees of the Sirius Santa Babia Company, which now governed the Peacock Islands. Of course, they were only laborers scarcely better off than slaves, the sort whose accidental deaths required no compensation.

Crack! Crack! Crack!

Whips cracked one after another above