first sets out north to Gujarat, where it captures a great merchant ship off Chaul. The patrol then sails west into the Gulf of Aden, at the mouth of the Red Sea, to catch more prizes. About five Arab merchant ships are seized by the patrol there but, according to the account written later by Pêro de Ataíde, the Sodré brothers set about claiming a disproportionate share of the plunder for themselves, including embezzling the royal fifth. In Ataíde's account, Brás Sodré appears as the villain of the story. Already unhappy at the decision to abandon their comrades in India, the patrol captains quarreled with the Sodré brothers and nearly mutinied. In late April, the patrol anchored in at Kuria Muria islands (off the coast of Oman). The local inhabitants warned them that a seasonal tempest was forming and that they had better move their ships to a safer shelter on the southern side of the island. Four patrol captains moved their ships accordingly, but Vicente Sodré and Brás Sodré refused (the ongoing quarrel over the spoils may have been a factor in this decision.) As the locals predicted, the tempest came, destroyed and sunk the ships of Vicente Sodré and Brás Sodré. Vicente went down with his ship, Brás survived to make it ashore, although he would die soon after in mysterious circumstances The wreck site of the ships was discovered in May 1998 by Blue Water Recoveries Ltd (BWR) and archaeologically excavated in a series of subsequent expeditions in the years 2013, 2014 and 2015 jointly conducted and managed by David L. Mearns of BWR and Oman's Ministry of Heritage and Culture. The findings and conclusions of the project were made public by the MHC in a press conference in Muscat on 15 March 2016, on the same date that a project specific website was launched and an interim report by Mearns, Parham and Frohlich was published in the International Journal of Nautical Archaeology. In the aftermath, the four remaining ships of the coastal patrol, who elected of Pêro de Ataíde as their new commander, set back for India. However, contrary winds make it a difficult journey, and they inch back only painfully and slowly. The battered patrol hobbles into Angediva island sometime in the summer of 1503, where they are forced to stop to repair their crippled ships. Four days after arriving in Angediva, a fifth ship,