_ 190 _ The comparative study of these various sources invites us to examine more closely the vicissitudes of a voyage whose importance was generally misunderstood, for it was eclipsed by the fame of the events that had preceded and followed it: the battles of Duarte Pacheco Pereira and the foundation of the State of India. I. From Lisbon to Cannanore In April 1504, Lopo Soares' fleet was awaiting the order to depart. Gian Francesco Affaitato wrote from Lisbon on 7th April to the Venetian ambassador in Spain that it had been delayed by a fire on the flagship. Due to the negligence of the crew, who had left a cauldron of pitch on the fire, the "Nunciada" was completely destroyed with its cargo of foodstuffs: four hundred skins of wine and one thousand five hundred cantari of biscuit. [Note: a "Cantaro" is a dry weight of between 2 and 25 kg.]. The losses amounted to twenty thousand ducats, without counting that of the ship, the largest in the Portuguese fleet, which could carry up to eight thousand cantari of spices. All that could be salvaged was seven to eight hundred cantari of copper, and three hundred de Vasco de Gama no Atlantico Sul, ed. Agrupamento de Estudos de Cartografia antiga, 64, Lisbon, 1971. We have given this text the title "Anonymous Account from Florence".
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