The admiral, or commander in chief of a squadron, being frequently invested with a great charge, on which the fate of a kingdom may depend, ought certainly to be possessed of abilities equal to so important a station and so extensive a command.

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) a work of genuine though unequal talent. Falconer's poems were used by Patrick O'Brian in his Aubrey-Maturin series. External links
Biography
William Falconer's Dictionary of the Marine (National Library of Australia).

In 1769 he publiWilliam Falconerd The Universal Marine Dictionary. One of his lesser characters is a nautical poet but his poems are Falconer's. Falconer was purser on the frigate Aurora when it was lost after rounding the Cape of Good Hope on a voyage when it left from London on 20 September 1769.