French Farce

One of the things I’ve learned in writing historical fiction is to avoid major events – they’ve been written over till there’s so much meat on their carcase, you can’t see the bones; Shadows in the Veldt, the 1914 story, is set in the South African rebellion not the trenches.
This isn’t about my writing, though, so let me get back to the last of the Stuart kings and the forgotten Jacobite invasion of 1708. James, the rightful king if you accept the traditional line of succession – which was not the case among the Britons, whose preference was the best person for the job – set off from France to take advantage of the Scottish abhorrence of the Act of Union with England in 1707. Unfortunately for him, the Royal Navy was on the alert and, when the French were confronted by them, the whole adventure came to nothing. While we might know the eventual outcome, the story has turmoil and for the ordinary reader the uncertainty of the result, did James land and if he did, what happened? Was there another Flora McDonald saving his royal skin?. While the Scots were seriously anti-catholic, they had also shown themselves to believe in having a king; not only a king but one whose descent from antiquity could be proved. (You might think the line had been broken in several places but the royal publicists could prove otherwise.)
Were there British (English) spies among the French and it was them that aborted the mission? James asked to be set ashore anywhere, why did the French admiral not put him in a rowing boat and let him go?
There is also a bit of panic among those who supported both the replacement monarch, Anne, James’s own sister, and the Act and the uncertainty of the Navy’s interference. Would they be in time? Would the French fight? Since this would be a novel and not history, maybe there could be a wee scrap between two boats.