Vicente Sodré's patrol had captured around five…
April 1503 CE
Vicente Sodré's patrol had captured around five Arab merchant ships at the mouth of the Red Sea, but the Sodré brothers had set about claiming the lion's share of the plunder for themselves, and leaving little for the others or even the crown (Brás Sodré, in particular, had been accused of embezzling the royal fifth due to the crown).
Already unhappy at abandoning their brethren in India, the patrol captains had quarreled with the Sodrés and nearly mutinied.
Around April 20, 1503, the patrol anchors in at the Khuriya Muriya islands off the coast of Oman.
The local inhabitants warn them that a seasonal tempest is forming and that they had better move their ships to a safer shelter on the southern side of the island.
Four patrol captains move their ships accordingly, but Vicente Sodré and Brás Sodré refuse (the ongoing quarrel over the spoils may have been a factor in this separation.)
As the locals had predicted, the tempest comes on April 30, and sinks the exposed ships of Vicente Sodré and Brás Sodré.
In the aftermath, the four remaining ships of the Indian Ocean patrol, now under the command of Pêro de Ataíde, elect to return at once to India.
Ataíde will later (in February 1504) compose a letter to the king, with an account of the travails of the Indian Ocean patrol, in which he carefully excuses Vicente Sodré's actions, laying most of the blame on the bad counsel and decisions of Brás Sodré.
In that same letter, Ataide will ask the king to grant him Vicente Sodré's old position of alcalde-mor of Tomar, but Ataíde will die shortly after in Mozambique).
Ataíde will write that Vicente Sodré sunk and died immediately in the tempest at Kuria Muria, but that Brás Sodré actually survived the wreck.
However, once ashore, Brás Sodré decided to blame his Muslim pilots and executed them on the spot.
Ataíde refrains from saying exactly what happened to Brás Sodré after that, only that 'many things transpired' before his death.
Sodré's lust for spoils is blamed for nearly costing the Portuguese their position in India and dishonoring their name before their Indian allies.
Chronicler Gaspar Correia vilifies Vicente Sodré as a brutish, greedy and petty tyrant.
The remains of the shipwrecks will first be discovered and investigated in 1998 by Blue Water Recoveries Ltd.
With the permission of the Oman Government, a number of artifacts will be recovered from one of the wreck sites; including stone cannonballs of varying sizes, lead covered iron shot and sounding leads.
These shipwrecks are quite possibly the oldest colonial vessels ever found.