Most of the Defensor de Pedro pirates tasted freedom in Cadiz for only six days. Perhaps if they had done more laying low and less carousing and drinking they would have been more attuned to the growing suspicions of the authorities around them. The unwanted attention they drew to themselves combined with the suspicions of men like Lirado and Sanchez about the shipwrecked vessel proved their undoing. On 14 May, Don Jose Aymerich y Vacas, the Military and Civil Governor of Cadiz, summoned each pirate separately and demanded they explain why the original documentation of the Defensor de Pedro cited forty-three men on board and only seventeen were on the stranded vessel. At the time, news of the Morning Star's arrival in London nearly a month earlier had not yet reached Cadiz, so Don Vacas had no reason to suspect a connection between the two ships.

Don Vacas began the enquiry with the man who said he was Captain Pedro Mariz de Sousa Sarmento but we know was really the pilot, Rodriguez. The ‘Captain’ told Don Vacas a story about the ship being ordered by the government to swiftly depart Rio de Janeiro with a six-man shortage, meaning a crew of thirty-four men. ‘Sousa Sarmento’ said the destination of the trip was only ever intended to be the islands of Cape Verde, where he would sell the cargo and trade. The armaments were only for self-defence against the privateers known to be active in the area at the time. During the month the Defensor de Pedro sat docked at Cape Verde, ‘Captain Sousa Sarmento’ told Don Vacas, sixteen men left the ship. This left a crew of eighteen. The ‘Captain’ then told how the paperwork to support these assertions had been unfortunately lost. On their departure from Cape Verde, storms damaged the ship and the winds did not favour a return to Rio de Janeiro. Instead, the Defensor de Pedro sailed to A Coruña where it picked up a cargo for Lisbon. However, more bad weather caused it to be wrecked in Cadiz on the way.

It was a feasible enough story on its own but Don Vacas was not a gullible man. He next checked the validity of the story with the Portuguese man who said he was the ship's pilot, Jose Santos.