After an unsatisfying rematch against the Li family fleet at Sofala, the rotten merchant Girolamo de Espinosa lost several more ships. Immediately afterward, he decisively led the dozen or so vessels he had left—mostly Spanish square-rigged galleons and the broad-beamed, three-masted square-riggers favored by Dutch sea traders, with their wide hulls and small decks to reduce taxes and make slave transport easier—and made a spectacular escape!
He abandoned the important ports and trading posts along Africa's eastern coast, including Mogadishu, Mombasa, Mozambique, Madagascar, and Sofala, to the Li family merchant fleet that had come all the way from afar. Then he sailed south with his fleet, disappearing to who knew where.
There was no doubt that the rotten merchant Girolamo de Espinosa had been thoroughly frightened.
When the Li family admiral Li Huamei had first arrived, she had sunk or damaged several of their merchant fleet's ships. But at the time, he hadn't thought those people from the Ming were all that formidable—just a little crafty, at most. Yet when he brought his fleet back and searched all over Africa for a chance to retaliate, reality had delivered Espinosa a crushing blow!
First came the disastrous defeat in the Comoros Islands campaign, followed by the great battle outside Sofala's harbor. In just those two naval battles, Espinosa's merchant fleet of nearly seventy ships had been reduced to a mere dozen or so. The enemy had escaped virtually unscathed and even captured several ships. Such a thing was unheard of and unprecedented anywhere in the world!
And so the rotten merchant Girolamo de Espinosa had decisively fled, taking the last of his possessions and the dozen or so ships that were as skittish as he was. He had abandoned the ports and influence he'd spent years building along Africa's eastern coast