216 



DISCOVERY 



Via Reggio." Dr. Biagi's ^ investigations in 1S90 have 

 put beyond doubt that the Ariel was found and towed 

 into port by two fishing-smacks belonging to a certain 

 Signor Stefano Baroni of Via Reggio. On September 

 iSth Roberts again wrote to Trelawny, and his letter 

 shows that he had begun to consider that the Ariel 

 had been run down. The two masts had been carried 

 away, the bowsprit broken off close to the bows, and 

 the gunwale stove in. But further examination 

 brought to light more tell-tale evidence — many of the 

 timbers on the starboard quarter had been broken. 

 Roberts' belief that " she must have been run down 

 by some of the feluccas in the squall " was shared at 

 the time by most persons who saw the salvaged boat. 

 Mrs. Shelley wrote to a friend on May 3rd, 1823 ^ : 



"It is plain to every eye she was run down from 

 behind. On bringing her up from fifteen fathoms, all 

 was in her — books, telescope, ballast — lying on each 

 side of the boat without any appearance of shifting 

 or confusion ; the topsails furled, topmast lowered ; 

 the false stern . . . broken to pieces, and a great 

 hole knocked in the stern timbers. When she was 

 brought to Leghorn, everyone went to see her, and the 

 same exclamation was uttered by all, ' She w^as run 

 down ' — by that wretched iishing-boat, which owned 

 that it had seen them." 



Later biographers have been uncertain as to whether 

 the Ariel was rammed at all. Dr. Garnett ^ concluded 

 that " the collision, if collision there was, was acci- 

 dental " ; Prof. Dowden preferred to pronounce no 

 definite verdict on the subject ; Dr. Biagi agreed 

 with Garnett that the storm would have rendered any 

 intentional running-down impossible, but he definitely 

 concluded that the boat was accidentally rammed. 

 That the boat was not merely sunk by the storm there 

 seems on the whole to be little doubt, and we will now 

 look at further evidence which does not only support 

 this conclusion but leads to the third theory, that the 

 Ariel was rammed intentionally. 



' Ref. I. He gives an extract from the Royal State Archives 

 of Lucca, Home Affairs, 1822, No. 95, Duchy of Lucca 

 (letter of Governor of City of Via Reggio to Secretary of State 

 for Home and Foreign Afiairs, Lucca) : " The two fishing- 

 smacks belonging to Sig. Stefano Baroni of Via Reggio have, 

 while fishing, discovered at the bottom of the sea, at the dis- 

 tance of about fifteen miles from shore, a small vessel, schooner 

 rigged. . . . They arrived {at Via Reggio) towards noon this 

 morning." Also one of the eight natives of Via Reggio, whose 

 knowledge of the disaster Biagi examined in August 1890, 

 stated that " he belonged to the crew of Baroni's paranzelle, 

 commanded by Giampieri, who recovered the schooner in the 

 roads at Via Reggio, precisely five miles out, in the direction 

 of the Tower of Migliarino. The schooner caught in their net," 

 and they towed her westward and beached and bailed her. 

 They afterwards towed her into Leghorn. 



' Letter from Albaro to Mrs. Gisborne. 



^ In his article, " Shelley's Last Days," quoted by Dowden. 



Now, on the day following the disaster, Trelawny ' 

 and his Genoese mate examined as carefully as they 

 could the crews and boats that had returned to harbour. 

 The mate noticed on board a fishing-boat " an English- 

 made oar that he thought he had seen in Shelley's 

 boat." The crew flatly denied this. Their obvious 

 reason for doing so was, as Trelawny indicated, the 

 fear of the quarantine laws, then so strict, that " when 

 at sea, if you render assistance to a vessel in distress, 

 or rescue a drowning stranger, on returning to port 

 you are condemned to a long and rigorous quarantine 

 of fourteen or more days." So, even if they had 

 rammed the boat accidentally, they would have wished 

 to conceal the fact. The Genoese mate held suspicions 

 as to the veracity of the crew, and he must have had 

 a thorough knowledge of the psychology of the seamen 

 of his own coast. 



Apparently, however, the captain of the felucca 

 asserted that he had seen Shelley's boat " go down off 

 Via Reggio, with all sail set " (Trelawny, p. 117) 

 Also " when the Bolivar arrived off Via Reggio on 

 August 14th, she fell in with two small vessels hired 

 by Trelawny at Leghorn for the purpose of ascertain- 

 ing, by the means used to recover vessels, the spot at 

 which Shelley's boat had foundered. They had on 

 board the captain of a felucca in which Roberts had 

 observed several spars belonging to the Ariel. The 

 captain declared that he had seen the Ariel at the 

 moment of her disappearance ; it was four in the after- 

 noon, the boy was at masthead, when thwart winds 

 struck the sails ; they had looked away for an instant, 

 and looking again the boat was gone. They could not, 

 said the captain, get near her, and passing three- 

 quarters of an hour later over the spot where they had 

 seen her, no wreck was visible." '" It was this man 

 apparently who conducted the dredging operations 

 between August 13th and 19th, and eventuallj' reported 

 that he had " succeeded in finding her, but failed in 

 getting her up." ^ 



Trelawny was too occupied during this time with the 

 cremation of his friends' bodies and the official for- 

 malities connected therewith to be able to do more 

 than rely on this man's statements. Immediately 

 afterwards he proceeded to Rome, as we have seen, and 

 entrusted the salvaging of the boat to Roberts. As we 

 have also seen, the boat was eventually found accident- 

 ally and salvaged by two fishing-smacks belonging to 

 Signor Stefano Baroni — and it was found about fifteen 

 miles out, not two. In fact, Trelawny's account of 

 the attempts to recover the boat has the inevitable 

 inaccuracies of a man who was not on the spot, and it 

 is noteworthy that as late as 1S75 " he still entertained 



< Ref. V. Pp. 108-117. 

 6 Ref. V. P. 117. 



= Ref. IP 

 ' Ref. V. 



PP- 579-580. 

 P. 116. 



