 Angus
Konstam was born in Aberdeen in 1960, but was brought
up in the beautiful but remote Orkney Islands, off the north
of Scotland. Although he no longer lives there, he still
thinks of Orkney as home.
At 18 he joined the Royal Navy on a university
scholarship. This gave him an excellent grounding in service
life and customs, in seamanship and navigation and in all
those little things which a maritime history author needs
to know about. It even gave him the chance to sail the waters
of the Caribbean - an area he'd write about later. He then
studied for a Master's Degree at the University of St. Andrews.
In the process he explored the new field of maritime archaeology
and wrote his thesis on early naval artillery. Two decades
later this formed the basis for Sovereigns of the Sea, his
acclaimed history of Renaissance warships.
It also led to a job. In 1985 he was a supervisor
on an excavation in the River Thames near the Tower of London,
paid for by the Royal Armouries. He ended up staying with
the museum for another ten years, becoming a Senior Curator
of Weapons. Angus began publishing articles about arms and
armour, and this led to his first book - The Army of Peter
the Great - which was published in 1993. This was the start
of an relationship with the publisher that resulted in the
writing of 30 more books for them!
In 1995 Angus moved to Key West, Florida to
become the Chief Curator in the Mel Fisher Maritime Museum.
Mel Fisher was a treasure hunter who found the wreck of
the Spanish treasure galleon Nuestra Señora de Atocha
off the Florida Keys. Angus' job was to help turn the place
into a bona-fide maritime museum. One way he achieved this
was to create travelling exhibits which toured the United
States. These included a pirate exhibition, and it was during
the research for this that his interest in the subject really
took off. He discovered just how little real information
was known about pirates, so he decided to find out for himself.
So began a quest that turned Angus into one of the world's
leading authorities on pirates and piracy!
Angus spent six years in Key West and wrote
several more books - including The History of Pirates, which
went on to sell over 70,000 copies. Of course, as he says,
in the decade since its publication he uncovered a lot more
information. This is why he updated the story - first by
producing the definitive Piracy: The Complete History (2008),
and then - to reach a wider audience - The World Atlas of
Pirates (2009).
Angus finally returned to Britain in early
2001, and found himself a much sought after full-time writer.
He had developed a reputation as an historian who could
write well, and was lucky enough to be able to choose projects
he really wanted to write about.
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