- William Falconer
William Falconer (1732 – 1769) was a Scottish
poet .Falconer was the son of a barber in
Edinburgh , where he was born, became a sailor, and was thus thoroughly competent to describe the management of the storm-tossed vessel, the career and fate of which are described in his poem, "The Shipwreck " (1762) [http://www.victorianweb.org/victorian/art/crisis/crisis2g.html] , a work of genuine, though unequal, talent. The efforts which Falconer made to improve the poem in the subsequent edition which followed the first were not entirely successful. The work gained for him the patronage of the Duke of York, through whose influence he obtained the position ofpurser on various warships.Falconer was one of the three survivors of a trading ship on voyage from
Alexandria toVenice and in 1751 he wrote and published a poem on the death ofFrederick, Prince of Wales . He had also contributed poems to the "Gentleman's Magazine ". The poem "The Shipwreck" was dedicated to the then rear-admiralDuke of York where the poem states::"From regions where Peruvian billows roar,
To the bleak coasts of savageLabrador ."Falconer was a
midshipman on the "Royal George " for s short period of time and then in 1763 becamepurser of thefrigate "Glory " aboard which he wrote the political satire "Demagogue ." In 1767 he was purser of the "Swiftsure ". In 1769 he published "The Universal Marine Dictionary ". Falconer was purser on the frigate "Aurora" when it was lost after rounding the Cape of Good Hope on a voyage when it left fromLondon onSeptember 20 ,1769 .Falconer's poems were used by
Patrick O'Brian in hisAubrey-Maturin series . One of his lesser characters is a nautical poet but his poems are Falconer's.External links
* [http://www.bruzelius.info/Nautica/Biography/GB/Falconer,_William.html Biography]
References
* [http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext05/8pbbf10h.htm#section26] "The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair and Falconer" in
Library Edition of the British Poets edited by the Rev.George Gilfillan
* [http://www.mun.ca/iser/encyclopedia.html Encyclopedia of Newfoundland and Labrador] ]
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