William Falconer (poet)

William Falconer (21 February 1732 – c. January 1770) was a Scottish epic poet concerned mainly with life at sea.

He became a sailor, and thereby competent to describe the management of a storm-tossed vessel, whose career and fate are told in his poem, The Shipwreck (1762),[1] a work of genuine, if unequal talent.

Falconer was briefly a midshipman on the Royal George, then in 1763 he became purser of the frigate Glory, aboard which he wrote the political satire Demagogue.

William Falconer was a passenger in the frigate Aurora when it was lost at sea on a voyage to India.

The lines "With living colours give my verse to glow:/The sad memorial of a tale of woe!

The Shipwreck , an epic poem written by William Falconer. The edition depicted above was printed in 1813 in Philadelphia, while the first edition was printed in 1762.