Which English Romantic poet died in a shipwreck off the coast of Italy?

Percy Bysshe Shelley was the English Romantic poet who died in a shipwreck off the coast of Italy. On 8 July 1822, Shelley was sailing from Livorno toward Lerici in his small boat, the “Don Juan,” when a severe storm struck in the Gulf of La Spezia. Shelley, Edward Ellerker Williams, and the boatboy Charles Vivian all drowned.

The boat had been custom-built for Shelley in Genoa, but its seaworthiness was later questioned. Mary Shelley believed the design was defective, while other accounts emphasise the storm and the crew’s limited sailing experience. Shelley’s body washed ashore near Viareggio about ten days later and was identified from his clothing and a copy of John Keats’s “Lamia” found in a pocket.

Shelley was cremated on the beach at Viareggio, and his ashes were eventually buried in Rome’s Protestant Cemetery. His death is sometimes confused with the deaths of other Romantic figures: Keats died of illness in Rome, while Lord Byron died of fever in Greece. Shelley was only 29 when he drowned.