Percy Bysshe Shelley was passionately fond of boats. During the previous summer, which
he and Mary spent at Marlow near Windsor, he would drift in a small boat on the Thames
while he wrote. Mary, Claire, and he had a boat on Lake Geneva during the 1816 summer,
in which they sailed out most evenings. Later in the summer Byron and Shelley undertook
a two-week excursion by boat around the lake stopping at the various sites of interest
reachable from its shores. During this venture Mary Shelley stayed home to look after
her infant boy and write.