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The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.
William Falconer (1732–1769)
Falconer, William. A Scotch poet (1732?–69). All his family but himself were deaf-mutes. He was orphaned in boyhood, and at eighteen was a seaman on board a Mediterranean vessel that foundered in a storm off Cape Colonna, Greece. He with two others was saved, and his poem ‘The Shipwreck’ (1764) commemorates the event; it was received with great favor. The author was made midshipman and afterward purser in the navy through the influence of the Duke of York; and in gratitude he wrote ‘The Demagogue’ (1765), a satire against Chatham, Wilkes, and Churchill. He wrote other poems (odes, satires, etc.); and a valuable ‘Universal Dictionary of the Marine’ (1769).