On This Day July 8

The poet Percy Bysshe Shelley loved the sea and yachting but never learnt to swim. On July 8, 1822 he drowned whilst sailing in a sudden storm as he traveled back to Lerici, Italy in his schooner, the Don Juan. When his body was washed up on the beach two books were found, a slim edition of The Works of Sophocles and a volume of Keats' poems still clutched in his hand. Shelley was cremated soon afterwards on the beach near Viareggio attended by his anguished friends including Lord Byron.

The Funeral of Shelley by Louis Édouard Fournier (1889)

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