FALCONER, WILLIAM (1732-1769)

—Poet, s. of a barber in Edin., where he was b. , became a sailor, and was thus thoroughly competent to describe the management of the storm-to ed ve el, the career and fate of which are described in his poem, The Shipwreck (1762), a work of genuine, though unequal, talent. The efforts which F. made to improve the poem in the succe ive ed. which followed the first were not entirely succe ful. The work gained for him the patronage of the Duke of York, through whose influence he obtained the position of purser on various warships. Strangely enough, his own death occurred by shipwreck. F. wrote other poems, now forgotten, besides a useful Nautical Dictionary .