apparently having had a generally less troubled trip than the others, was the first to round the Cape of Good Hope - albeit losing one ship, that of Pedro Vaz da Veiga, in the process. Francisco Albuquerque's squadron seems to have been the first of the three squadrons to arrive on the East African coast (Malindi). August, 1503 - Afonso de Albuquerque's first squadron rounded the Cape of Good Hope, tossed by terrible storms. According to Empoli (p. 222), the Catharina Dias was sunk, and the remainder were separated. The ship Empoli was on (probably d'Almada's) was forced to stop in the Angra de São Brás (Mossel Bay) for repairs and resupply. Empoli's ship would go on to make a stop in Sofala, before heading on to Malindi, the prearranged rendezvous point, to await Albuquerque. However, the monsoon season was sufficiently advanced, that Empoli's ship would be forced to make the Indian Ocean crossing without the captain-major. The chaotic, scattered manner in which the squadrons had rounded the cape, had created great delays in the armada. It seems they arrived in Malindi, the launching point for the Indian Ocean crossing, quite late in the summer. They could not wait long for the others, for fear of missing the summer southwesterly monsoon winds to take them across to India - a delay which could add as much as an extra year to their journey (see Portuguese India Armadas). So the Indian Ocean crossing of the 5th Armada was to be done in separate waves. The second squadron, the ships of Francisco de Albuquerque and Nicolau Coelho, were the first to cross the Indian Ocean in August 1503. They were followed soon after by the solitary ship of Duarte Pacheco Perreira (of the first squadron), followed soon after by d'Almada's São Cristóvão (on which Empoli probably is) and, a couple of weeks later, by the captain-major Afonso de Albuquerque himself. All three ships of the third squadron (Antonio de Saldanha, Rui Lourenço Ravasco and Diogo Fernandes Pereira) would miss that year's summer monsoon and would only cross the Indian Ocean the next year (1504). Albuquerque in India The First Siege of Cochin The 4th Armada of Vasco da Gama had left India in the early months of 1503 with little resolved. Despite terror, bombardment and blockade, Calicut remained defiant, and the two fledgling Portuguese factories in allied cities - one in Cochin,