South Seas plans to offer on-line editions of a number of dictionaries and encyclopaedic works published between 1760 and 1840 that provide detailed information about eighteenth-century voyaging, exploration and early encounters between Europeans and indigenous Pacific peoples.

To date, editions of the following works are available:

William Falconer, An Universal Dictionary of the Marine, or, a Copious Explanation of the Technical Terms and Phrases employed in the Construction, ...of a Ship...London: Thomas Cadell, 1780 edn.

William Falconer was a purser in the Royal Navy and poet best known for his poem, the Shipwreck (1762). In 1769 he published his Universal Dictionary Marine. Later that same year he was drowned in the sinking of the frigate H.M.S. Aurora after the vessel left Cape Town. The Dictionary was reprinted in 1771, 1784, 1805 and in a much revised edition of 1815.