The Caird Library at the UK National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, holds a personal logbook (shelf mark BRK/13) kept by Falconer on voyages as chief mate of the merchant ship Vestal in 1760–61. The leaves are not numbered; the log entries occupy the first thirty-three leaves, and are followed by twenty-nine leaves of draft poems, here designated leaves 34v to 62r. These are the only surviving manuscripts of Falconer's poetry. We can assume from the log entries that the date of these drafts is 1760 onward, which corresponds reasonably with the publication dates of two of the poems drafted: the lyric “Written at Sea,” published in 1762 (the year of Shipwreck A), and the Ode on the Duke of York's Second Departure from England, as Rear Admiral, published in 1763. The volume containing the voyage logs and the draft poems is a modest notebook, approximately 9 x 7 inches, on...
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