Haunted by betrayal and loss, Francis Drake returns to the Spanish Main with a singular purpose.

First Blood follows a young captain Francis Drake on his ruthless transformation from embittered survivor to the scourge of the Spanish colonial possessions. In the wake of the catastrophic ambush at San Juan de Ulúa—where Spanish treachery shattered a fragile peace and slaughtered hundreds of English sailors—Drake emerges from the smoke of burning ships with a single, consuming purpose: vengeance—at any cost.

His target—none other than the King of Spain himself.

From the moment Drake escapes with his life and little else aboard the battered Judith, his soul burns with rage. He watched the royal ship Jesus of Lübeck, symbol of England’s investment in a new age of exploration, become a holed, smoldering hulk. Friends died under a Spanish Vice Roy’s false flag of truce.

But Drake is not broken.

He returns to the Americas to do what nobody else dared to even imagine. He will collect the blood debts due. With a ragged band of volunteers and three nimble ships, Drake stalks the Caribbean coastlines, probes the contours of Spanish weakness, and calculates how to inflict the most pain. These are not random raids, but a strategic, personal plan to strike at the ultimate prize: the Spanish King’s famed mule train carrying Peruvian gold across the Isthmus of Panama.

His first attempts are thwarted at a staggering cost—ships founder, supplies run thin, and his two brothers die at the hands of the Spanish. But Drake presses on, navigating tropical disease, mutiny, and the impenetrable jungle terrain. When at last he launches the ambush on the silver-laden convoy near Nombre de Dios, it is not just a tactical victory—it is the vindication of every loss he has suffered.

Yet victory comes with a Faustian bargain. The treasure is secured, the voyage redeemed, but something within him has hardened. The boy who sought the peaceful fortune of a maritime trader is gone. In his place stands a man remade—an English corsair with a vendetta and the tactical brilliance to pursue it.

First Blood is a story of obsession, revenge, and the birth of a legend. Drake’s war with Spain has only begun.