This merchandise included wash basins, clothes, sugar, honey, corals, glass beads and trinkets, and turned out to be neither adequate in quality nor in quantity for its purpose.

[1] The ships also carried a number of padrões, pillars of stone headed by the cross and bearing the seal of Portugal and used as markers to claim land.

After rounding the Cape of Good Hope, the armada anchored at the Aguada de São Brás (Mossel Bay) where the supply ship was broken up and its contents distributed on the others.

Bérrio under Nicolau Coelho's command arrived at Cascais near Lisbon on July 10, 1499,[5] and São Gabriel without Gama and directed by João de Sá came in one month later.

[6] Gama had left São Gabriel on its final leg and commissioned another vessel to bring him with his dying brother Paulo to the Azores[7] before he returned to Portugal in early September 1499.