High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The Chesapeake Affair was an international diplomatic incident that occurred during the American Civil War. On December 7, 1863 Confederate sympathizers from Canada’s Maritime Provinces captured the American Steamer Chesapeake off the coast of Cape Cod. The expedition was planned and led by Vernon Guyon Locke of Nova Scotia and John Clibbon Brain. George Wade of New Brunswick killed one of the American crew. The Confederacy had claimed its first fatal casualty in New England waters. The Confederate sympathisers had planned to re-coal at Saint John, New Brunswick and then head south to Wilmington, North Carolina. Instead, the captures experienced difficulties at Saint John, which required them to move further north and re-coal in Halifax, Nova Scotia. American forces violated British sovereignty by trying to arrest the captures in Nova Scotian waters, which further escalated the affair. Wade and others were able to escape through the assistance of prominent Nova Scotian and Confederate sympathiser William Johnston Almon.