The American Cyclopædia (1879)/Falconer, William

​FALCONER, William, a British poet, born in Edinburgh about 1730, lost at sea in 1769. He was the son of a barber, whose other children were all deaf and dumb. At the age of 18 being second mate of the Britannia, he was shipwrecked off Cape Colonna, on the coast of Greece, and was one of the three who survived the wreck, which afterward became the subject of his principal poem, "The Shipwreck." This was published in 1762. He compiled a "Universal Marine Dictionary" (republished in 1815, enlarged and modernized by W. Burney, LL. D.), and wrote several poems, including a political satire directed against Lord Chatham, Wilkes, and Churchill. In 1769 he sailed for India in the frigate Aurora, which, after touching at the Cape of Good Hope, was never heard from again.

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