Prologue
Two copies of the plans existed. One set was held at the American Consulate in London, very much out of reach. The other set was meant to be safe amongst the papers of the Navy Board at Somerset House.
The clerks at the Navy Board were all questioned.
Finally, one young man admitted he had allowed a respected gentleman to be alone in the underground archive during a fine day in April.
The clerk had not meant for the visitor to stay so long unattended, but the gentleman had been most insistent.
He had to find some important documents. It might take several hours.
Alas, the respected gentleman’s visit happened to be coincident with the third Varnishing Day for the Exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts, just across the courtyard of Somerset House.
The young clerk—Reginald Moss was his name—had long harbored a desire to see the pictures hung and all the artists gathered in the Great Room.
He went, and, indeed, it was a momentous event.
Mr. J. M. W. Turner himself swept into the Great Room and magicked up a picture from a blank canvas in the matter of an hour.
By the time the imprudent Mr. Moss returned to the archive, the respected gentleman was gone.
One bureaucrat recommended prosecuting the young clerk for treason, but that idea was quickly dismissed. Ultimately, the fool was only reprimanded for carelessness and demoted, and new procedures were put in place at the Navy Board.
After all, it was difficult to argue the plans were of any value either to the British empire or to an enemy of the same.
No one seemed to care the Americans had a set of plans themselves, even though the British government had commissioned and paid for the bloody thing.
No one gave a fig that Mr. Fulton, the American who had dreamt up the design over ten years ago, had built—and subsequently scrapped—a similar ship for the exiled Napoleon Bonaparte, to boot.
And why should they trouble themselves? It was absurd to suppose anyone might use the plans to build a vessel that could be only twenty days at sea and held a crew of six and dipped down under the water such that it became sub-marine.
Besides serving as an expensive underwater coffin, what use could such a ship have?
The Royal Navy ruled the seas. Nothing was going to change that.