A libell of Spanish lies : found at the sacke of Cales, discoursing the fight in the West Indies, twixt the English navie being fourteene ships and pinasses, and a fleete of twentie saile of the king of Spaines, and of the death of Sir Francis Drake

A rare glimpse into the fevered contest for Caribbean supremacy, this early‑seventeenth‑century pamphlet was printed in London shortly after the death of Sir Francis Drake. Its author, Henry Sauile, served as a captain on one of the English vessels that faced a Spanish fleet of twenty galleys off the West Indies. The work opens by exposing a printed letter from Don Bernaldino Delgadillo, which the Spanish claim to be an accurate record of the engagement, and then sets out to dismantle those “Spanish lies” with a soldier’s plain‑spoken testimony.

Sauile’s rebuttal is framed by an endorsement from Sir Thomas Baskerville, the English commander in the campaign, lending the piece official weight. Within its concise pages the reader finds a straightforward description of the clash between fourteen English ships and the opposing force, paired with reflections on the loss of Drake and Hawkins. For anyone fascinated by the raw, unvarnished voices of Elizabethan naval warfare, the pamphlet offers both vivid detail and a valuable perspective on how truth and propaganda wrestled on the high seas.