It was most extraordinary that three weeks passed before the people would believe the tidings of the disaster.

A pilot who had left the _Chesapeake_ at five o'clock in the afternoon reported that he was still near enough an hour later to see the two ships locked side by side, that a fearful explosion had happened aboard the _Chesapeake_, and that through a rift in the battle smoke he had beheld the British flag flying above the American frigate.
This report was confirmed by a fishing boat from Cape Ann and by the passengers in a coastwise packet, but the public doubted and still hoped until the newspapers came from Halifax with an account of the arrival of the _Chesapeake_ as prize to the _Shannon_ and of the funeral honors paid to the body of Captain James Lawrence.

The tragic defeat came at an extremely dark moment of the war when almost every expectation had been disappointed and the future was clouded.

Richard Rush, the American diplomatist, wrote, recalling the event: I remember--what American does not!--the first rumor of it.

I remember the startling sensation.