midnight
Newsagents flung their shops open , and in a few minutes were besieged by eager , anxious crowds , fighting for the first copies . There was no more sleep for man or woman in London that night , though the children slept on in happy unconsciousness of what the morrow was to bring forth . What happened in London was happening almost simultaneously all over the kingdom . For more than a hundred years the British people had worked and played and slept in serene security , first behind its wooden walls , and then behind the mighty iron ramparts of its invincible Fleets , and now , like a thunderbolt from a summer sky , came the paralysing tidings that the first line of defence had been pierced by a single blow , and the greatest sea stronghold of England rendered defenceless -- and all this between sunset and midnight of a November day . Was it any wonder that men looked blankly into each other 's eyes , and asked themselves and each other how such an unheard-of catastrophe had come about , and what was going to happen next ? The first and universal feeling was one of amazement , which amounted almost to mental paralysis , and then came a sickening sense of insecurity . For two generations the Fleet had been trusted implicitly , and invasion had been looked upon merely as the fad of alarmists , and the theme of sensational story-writers .