My guest today is Kate Bateman who is bringing us Regency submarines!

My guest today is author Kate Bateman, also writing as K.C. Bateman, a RITA nominated, #1 Amazon bestselling author of Regency and Renaissance historical romances. Her books feature feisty, intelligent heroines, wickedly inappropriate banter, and heroes you want to both strangle and kiss. 

Kate is also an auctioneer and fine art appraiser, the co-founder and director of Bateman’s Auctioneers, a fine art and antiques auction house in the United Kingdom. She currently lives in Illinois with her husband and three inexhaustible children, but returns to England regularly to appear as an antiques expert on several popular BBC television shows.

Be sure and leave a comment and your email as Kate is giving away the e-book of This Earl Of Mine, sent via NetGalley to the winner. 

Kate is sharing from her research from This Earl of Mine in a post titled, A submarine in Regency England? Surely not!

As an author of historical romance, all my books include elements of real history, whether it be real historical figures or—as in the case of my latest release, This Earl of Mine—something a little more outlandish but nevertheless true: a real-life the submarine plot to rescue Napoleon from exile on St Helena!

Researching a topic often provides surprising inspiration for plots, and nobody was more surprised than me when I uncovered an account of an actual submarine in Regency England. I’d had no idea submersibles were in use that early, but a little digging soon revealed a tale far stranger than fiction.

Let’s start with a little background history: it’s 1815 and following his defeat at the battle of Waterloo, Napoleon has been exiled on Saint Helena; a forty-six square mile island five thousand miles away from Europe, twelve hundred miles off the coast of Africa, and eighteen hundred miles from northeastern Brazil. The Royal Navy has almost guaranteed the impossibility of an escape or a rescue attempt.

But Napoleon’s oldest brother, Joseph Bonaparte, has successfully escaped to the United States and has a vast fortune at his disposal. Several independent sources suggest he financed attempts to rescue Napoleon, one of which is mentioned in Sir Walter Scott’s Life of Napoleon.

The man behind the plan was a certain captain Thomas Johnstone, “a smuggler of an uncommonly resolute character, whose life had been a tissue of desperate risks.” Johnstone seems to have been a mix between a rogue and an adventurer, who also dabbled as an inventor. Scott describes the plot as this:

“A submarine vessel, that is, a ship capable of being sunk under water for a certain time, and of being raised again at pleasure by disengaging certain weights, was to be the means of effecting this enterprise. It was thought that, by sinking the vessel during daytime, she might escape the notice of the British cruisers, and, being raised at night, might approach the guarded rock without discovery.”

The Fulton sub under another ship

Johnstone was not the inventor of the vessel. He was using plans previously developed by an American inventor named Robert Fulton (1765-1815), who’d pioneered a submersible for use by the French against the English some fifteen years earlier.

Fulton’s submarine towed an underwater bomb (which he called a torpedo) to be planted under enemy vessels. He’d built the vessel, ‘the Nautilus’, in 1800 and in 1801 Napoleon had agreed to pay him 10,000 francs to improve and test it at Brest. News of Fulton’s successful experiments quickly reached England where they caused some alarm, but the peace Treaty of Amiens, signed in 1802, put an end to the war between the two nations.

The British authorities, however, had taken note of Fulton’s experiments. When hostilities resumed between France and England in 1803 they sought ways to bring him over to their side. Fulton was disappointed at the lack of enthusiasm for his projects in France and, encouraged by a greater financial reward on the other side of the Channel, moved to London in 1804 and signed a contract with William Pitt the Prime Minister, and Lord Melville, First Lord of the Admiralty, for the use of his plan “of attacking fleets by submarine bombs.” The contract would pay Fulton nearly £100,000 for developing his torpedo system.

The Fulton Design

In October 1805 Fulton succeeded in blowing up a brig with his torpedo, but since Nelson had just destroyed French and Spanish naval power at the battle of Trafalgar, his torpedoes were suddenly rendered unnecessary. The American became embroiled in a bitter negotiation with the British government to get paid what he believed were his fees.

This is where Johnstone enters the picture. He appears to have become well acquainted with the Fulton’s submarine designs—either because he worked directly with Fulton, because he stole the plans, or because somebody else gave them to him.

Either way, in 1812, when England and America entered into war and an irritated Fulton offered his services to the American government, the British commissioned Johnstone to build a torpedo system and submarine, using Fulton’s designs.

Facts are scarce as to how far Johnstone got in building a copy of Fulton’s sub for the government, (it was certainly never completed and used) but when hostilities finally ended in 1815 Johnstone seems to have returned to smuggling and less-than-legal activities. It is then he became embroiled in a plot to use a submarine to rescue Napoleon.

Contemporary sources seem to confirm this. Chateaubriand, who served as French foreign minister during the Bourbon restoration, mentions the story of a smuggler named Johnson who had “meditated an attempt to carry off Bonaparte by means of a submarine vessel,” in his memoirs. And Count Montholon, who accompanied Napoleon to St. Helena, mentioned the submarine rescue plot in his memoirs and added that five or six thousand louis d’or (roughly equivalent to 12,000 francs) were spent on its construction.

For This Earl of Mine, I play the well-known author’s trick of wondering: WHAT IF…?

What if someone loyal to Napoleon stole the plans for the submarine from the Admiralty? What if they got in contact with a rogue like Johnstone—who was not only a smuggler accustomed to clandestine operations—but also had experience building a vessel capable of stealthy underwater maneuvers?

And what if London’s fledgling police force, The Bow Street Runners, were tasked with finding the vessel and foiling the plot to rescue Bonaparte?

These questions, and amazing facts, form the basis of the adventure subplot in This Earl of Mine. The main plot, of course, is the romantic one between shipping heiress Georgie Caversteed and Bow Street Runner Benedict Wylde. They try to piece together the clues, while trying to ignore the inconvenient attraction that sparks between them. Spoiler alert: they succeed at the former, but fail miserably at the latter! 

One of the most memorable (and fun to write) scenes in the book is when Georgie and Ben are squashed tightly together, hiding inside the submarine. The forced proximity provides all manner of temptations, and they share a scorching kiss in the semi-darkness.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this peek into the real and surprising history that lies behind my story. If you’d like to know more about my books, or read more historical tidbits, visit my website: www.kcbateman.com to sign up to my newsletter, or follow me on social media.

This Earl of Mine is available for preorder now, and will be officially on sale October 29th. On Amazon.

Kate's links: Website, Facebook, Amazon Author Page, Twitter, BookBub, Goodreads.