Based on Biot's wave equation, this paper discusses the transient response of a spherical cavity with a partially sealed shell embedded in viscoelastic saturated soil. The analytical solution is derived for the transient response to an axisymmetric surface load and fluid pressure in Laplace transform domain. Numerical results are obtained by inverting the Laplace transform presented by Durbin, and are used to analyze the influences of the partial permeable property of boundary and relative rigidity of shell and soil on the transient response of the spherical cavity. It is shown that the influence of these two parameters is remarkable.The available solutions of permeable and impermeable boundary without shell are only two extreme cases of this paper.