Falconer, WILLIAM

Falconer, WILLIAM, poet, was born in Edinburgh on 11th February 1732. A barber's son, he went early to sea, and before he was eighteen years of age was shipwrecked off Cape Colonna in Greece. The incidents of this voyage and its disastrous end form the subject of Falconer's principal work, the poem entitled The Shipwreck (1762). He then entered the royal navy, being appointed towards the end of 1769 purser on the Aurora frigate, which foundered at sea, with all hands, shortly after 27th December, the day on which she left Capetown. Falconer wrote several poems, but The Shipwreck is the one on which his fame rests; it went through three editions during its author's lifetime. His Demagogue is a satire on Wilkes and Churchill (1764), and he was also author of the Universal Marine Dictionary (1769).