Later retellings of the San Salvador explosion grew steadily more elaborate.

Evidence

The further we get from this event the more detailed and dramatic does its story become. … In the diary or smooth log of his voyage sent to Philip on August 21st, Medina Sidonia says simply that aboard the San Salvador some barrels of gunpowder blew up. … Everyone anywhere in the vicinity of the explosion seems to have been killed. Naturally, various conjectures were soon bruited in the fleet. — Garrett Mattingly, The Defeat of the Spanish Armada, 639

Categorization

• SEED: Essay angle: how the San Salvador explosion mutated from a bare report into successively more detailed and blame-laden stories across ports, illustrating rumor diffusion in early modern news culture.
• FICTION: A master-gunner’s unexplained sabotage of his own ship with a pipe ember is a vivid scene seed, and the rival origin stories invite a Rashomon-style episode.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Garrett Mattingly, The Defeat of the Spanish Armada, 639