Yeah, it's announced kind of baldly like that - I think the way real life back then worked; because a character who traveled from the one place to the other arrived before the news would have appeared and then arrived in any formal publication, and since he was such a minor tangential character the death wasn't broached carefully like that of a close friend or family member.

There's some more references to how she became widowed in the next book. You don't get a lot of details, but enough.

Hazards of naval life during wartime.