William Falconer (poet)

William Falconer (February 21, 1732 - December 1769) was a Scottish epic poet, focusing mainly on life at sea. He also compiled a dictionary of maritime issues. Falconer was the son of a hairdresser in Edinburgh, where he was born, became a sailor and thus was fully competent to describe the operation of a storm ship, the career and fate of which are described in his poem Shipwreck (1762), a work of genuine, albeit different talent. The efforts Falconer made to improve the poem in the subsequent edition that followed the first were not completely successful.