OK, OK, it goes like this!

"Richard I sailed on the third crusade in 1190 from Marseilles...   Off Beirut in June the King himself wioth some of his galleys encountered a large Turkish ship. Her size (she had three masts) and force, which excited the hyperbole of the English croniclers, gave her every advantage over the attacking galleys, whose attempts to board were repelled, but in the end she was sunk - according to various writers by ramming, by the Saracen commander scuttling her with an axe, OR BY A LITTLE BOY SWIMMING UNDERNEATH HER WITH AN AUGER AND DRILLING A HOLE IN THE BOTTOM."

This quote is from The Safeguard of the Sea (A Naval History of Britain, 660-1649). by N.A.M. Rodger. Harper Collins 1997. The references given to the quoted passage are: Nicholas. Royal Navy.1 119-24, 424-7. MF,I, 154-7. Pryor, Geography, Technology and War, pp.120-1.

1190!!! The story must have been in aural circulation since then. So it wasn't Francis Drake who built the 'Golden Vanity'. It also vindicates the text in some versions on the encounter being with 'A Turkish galley."

Tom Brown