Manuel I bestowed upon Vasco da Gama the newly created title of Almirante dos mares de Arabia, Persia, India e de todo o Oriente ("Admiral of the Seas of Arabia, Persia, India and all the Orient") - an overwrought title reminiscent of the ornate Castilian title borne by Christopher Columbus. (Evidently, Manuel must have reckoned that if Castile had an 'Admiral of the Seas' running around, then surely Portugal should have one too.) On a side note, this was the first India armada for which the vintena de Belém was introduced - that is, the 5% tax on profits of private trading by captains and officers of Portuguese India Armadas, earmarked for the construction and maintenance of the Jerónimos Monastery in the Belém district of Lisbon. The vintena would continue until 1522. The Fleet The 4th Armada was composed of 20 ships and between 800 and 1800 men. The Armada was originally envisaged as two squadrons - 15 ships under the admiral to head to India, 5 under the vice-admiral designated to patrol the mouth of the Red Sea. As it turns out, not all ships were ready by the launch date, so the armada was re-arranged into three squadrons, the first two squadrons (10 under admiral Vasco da Gama, 5 under his uncle, vice-admiral Vicente Sodré) to head out at once, and the five remaining ships to go out a little while later as a third squadron under Gama's cousin, Estêvão da Gama, with instructions to catch up to the main fleet along the way. (Whatever the mechanics behind the appointment, the 4th Armada certainly turned out to be a Gama family affair!) The exact composition of the three squadrons differs in the various accounts. The following list of ships should not be regarded as authoritative, but a tentative list compiled from various conflicting accounts. This list of captains is principally based on João de Barros's Décadas, Damião de Gois's Chronica, Castanheda's História, the Relação das Náos, Couto's list, Faria e Sousa's Asia and Quintella's Annaes da Marinha. The list of ship names is from Gaspar Correia's Lendas da Índia. and should be suspected as unreliable. As usual, Correia's list of captains differs significantly from the others. In Correia, neither of the Sodré brothers command their own ships - indeed Correia asserts Vicente Sodré was carried as a passenger aboard Vasco da Gama's flagship, with the result that the