Falconer was the son of a barber in
Edinburgh, where he was born. 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), a work of genuine, if unequal talent. The efforts Falconer made to improve the poem in a later edition were not wholly successful. The work won him the patronage of the Duke of York, through whose influence he was appointed
purser on various warships. He had himself been one of three survivors of a trading ship on a voyage from
Alexandria to
Venice. In 1751 Falconer produced a poem on the death of
Frederick, Prince of Wales. He had also contributed poems to the ''
Gentleman's Magazine. The Shipwreck'' was dedicated to the then rear-admiral the
Duke of York. 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. In 1767 he was purser of the
Swiftsure. In 1769 he published
An Universal Dictionary of the Marine. William Falconer was a passenger in the frigate
Aurora when it was lost at sea on a voyage to India. He was last seen on 24 December 1769. ==Later borrowings==