Before Francis Drake became the scourge of Spain, before the circumnavigation, before the queen’s favor and the legends that followed him, he was a boy learning the sea the hard way.

Sic Parvis Magna is a historical fiction novel about the early years of Francis Drake: an apprentice cast into the dangerous world of Tudor seafaring, where courage, luck, faith, violence, or betrayal make a man’s future. Set in an England unsettled by religious division and in the narrow seas off its southeast coast, the novel follows young Drake as he begins to understand both the promise and the cost of life at sea.

This is not the story of a finished hero.

Drake enters a world of hard masters, narrow decks, sudden storms, private ambition, and moral choices that rarely come cleanly marked. The sea offers freedom, but that freedom carries a cost. It teaches skill, endurance, and at times, ruthlessness. It gives a poor boy glimpses of wealth and glory, then asks what he is willing to do in order to seize them.

If you enjoy the sweep of historical naval fiction, the grit of Tudor England, or the kind of story in which a young man is tested long before history remembers his name, I invite you to begin here.

Read the Two Opening Chapters

The first two chapters of Sic Parvis Magna are presented below in ten scenes.

Chapter 1, “Cold Winds,” begins with an ordinary errand in Tavistock. Religious hostility intrudes on Francis’s friendships and family life, and the day ends in a hurried flight from Crowndale.

Chapter 2, “House of Hawkins,” follows the family to Plymouth. In the Hawkins household, Francis encounters the business of ships and distant trade, begins to learn to sail, and receives news that promises another journey.

These opening chapters are an early glimpse into the novel and may still change before release. Your early interest means a great deal, and I hope you enjoy these first steps into Drake’s world.

Begin with Going on Delivery .

About the Release

Sic Parvis Magna is currently in preparation for release.

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Read the scenes from both opening chapters below and enter the world that shaped him.