Angus Konstam

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Angus Konstam
Angus Konstam1.jpg
Born (1960-01-02) 2 January 1960 (age 64)
Aberdeen, Scotland
OccupationWriter, historian
Genre Popular history
Subject Naval history, maritime history, historical atlas, piracy, Blackbeard
Website
www.anguskonstam.com

Angus Konstam (born 2 January 1960) is a Scottish writer of popular history. Born in Aberdeen, Scotland and raised on the Orkney Islands, he has written more than a hundred books on maritime history, naval history, historical atlases, with a special focus on the history of piracy. [1]

Contents

Early life

Although born in Aberdeen, Scotland, he was raised in the Orkney Islands. [2] [3] [4] In 1978, after leaving Kirkwall Grammar School at the age of 18 he left to join the Royal Navy. [2] [3] After initial officer training at the Britannia Royal Naval College, Dartmouth, and undergoing further naval training at sea, he went on to study history at Aberdeen University. [2] [5] During this time he was attached to the Aberdeen University Royal Naval Unit, and its tender, HMS Thornham. After receiving an MA degree, he returned to active service with the Royal Navy, during which time he visited many places that would later be written about in his books, including the Caribbean. [2] He also gained useful knowledge of military service, customs, seamanship and navigation during this time. [2] After leaving the service in 1983 he studied for a master's degree at the University of St Andrews. [2] [3] [5] During this time he explored the new field of maritime archaeology and wrote his thesis on early naval artillery. [2] Two decades later this formed the basis for Sovereigns of the Sea, his history of Renaissance warships. [2] [3]

Career

United Kingdom

He left the navy in 1983, and the following year he began a Master of Letters in Maritime Studies at the University of St Andrews, a course which combined history with maritime archaeology. [2] After completing his Masters thesis on Renaissance Naval Artillery, he found a job in 1985 as a supervisor on an excavation in the River Thames near the Tower of London, paid for by the Royal Armouries. [2] While he was working in the Royal Armouries, The Tower and the Kremlin decided to swap exhibits – a "Treasures of the Tower" being shown in Moscow while "Treasures of the Kremlin" came to London. [2] At the same time the curators of both museums were encouraged to exchange information, and to examine each other's collections. [2] This ended up with Konstam studying the 18th century Russian military. [2] A mutual colleague introduced him to a historian working for Osprey Publishing, who turned out to want someone to write a book about Peter the Great's Army. [2] The result was two small (15,000-word) books which first appeared in 1993 – the first easily accessible account of the foundation of the Russian army to appear in English. [2] [6]

United States

Konstam moved to Key West, Florida in 1995 and became the Chief Curator in the Mel Fisher Maritime Heritage Museum. [1] [4] Mel Fisher was a treasure hunter who found the wreck of the Spanish treasure galleon Nuestra Señora de Atocha off the Florida Keys. [7] One of his jobs during this time was to create traveling exhibits which toured the United States. [2] During the research for a pirate exhibition, he became increasingly interested in the subject of 18th century piracy. [2] He spent six years in Key West and wrote several more books, there, including The History of Pirates (2002). [3] As he gained more information through his research, he produced Piracy: The Complete History (2008), and then, to reach a wider audience, The World Atlas of Pirates (2009). In 2019 he published The Pirate World, an adaptation of his 2009 work for the same publisher. Konstam also published a biography of the pirate Blackbeard.

Present

In early 2001 he returned to the United Kingdom, and after living in London and then Edinburgh, he returned to Orkney in 2019. He now resides in Herston in South Ronaldsay. [2] [8] Konstam continues to research and write about naval and maritime history. Since 2001 he has written extensively on a number of maritime subjects. He currently has over 120 books in print, [9] Konstam is also a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society [FrHistS]. He served a three-year term as the Chair of The Society of Authors in Scotland and has also served on the board of Publishing Scotland, as well as on other heritage-related committees. [1] In addition, Konstam has also been a "talking head" on many cable TV and radio shows, and makes frequent appearances at book festivals and history events. [5] [10]

Complete list of works

General

Historical Atlas Series

Osprey Publishing Titles

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ship of the line</span> Warship of 17th–19th centuries

A ship of the line was a type of naval warship constructed during the Age of Sail from the 17th century to the mid-19th century. The ship of the line was designed for the naval tactic known as the line of battle, which involved the two columns of opposing warships manoeuvering to volley fire with the cannons along their broadsides. In conflicts where opposing ships were both able to fire from their broadsides, the faction with more cannons firing – and therefore more firepower – typically had an advantage.

CSS <i>Texas</i> (1865) Ironclad of the Confederate States Navy

CSS Texas was the third and last Columbia-class casemate ironclad built for the Confederate Navy during the American Civil War. Not begun until 1864 and intended to become part of the James River Squadron, she saw no action before being captured by Union forces while still fitting out. CSS Texas was reputed to have been one of the very best-constructed Confederate ironclads, second only to CSS Mississippi.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ironclad warship</span> Steam-propelled warship protected by armor plates

An ironclad was a steam-propelled warship protected by steel or iron armor constructed from 1859 to the early 1890s. The ironclad was developed as a result of the vulnerability of wooden warships to explosive or incendiary shells. The first ironclad battleship, Gloire, was launched by the French Navy in November 1859, narrowly preempting the British Royal Navy. However, Britain built the first completely iron-hulled warships.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pre-dreadnought battleship</span> Battleships built from the 1880s to 1905

Pre-dreadnought battleships were sea-going battleships built from the mid- to late- 1880s to the early 1900s. Their designs were conceived before the appearance of HMS Dreadnought in 1906 and their classification as "pre-dreadnought" is retrospectively applied. In their day, they were simply known as "battleships" or else more rank-specific terms such as "first-class battleship" and so forth. The pre-dreadnought battleships were the pre-eminent warships of their time and replaced the ironclad battleships of the 1870s and 1880s.

USS <i>Benton</i> Gunboat of the United States Navy

USS Benton was an ironclad river gunboat in the United States Navy during the American Civil War. She was named for American senator Thomas Hart Benton. Benton was a former center-wheel catamaran snagboat and was converted by James B. Eads, St. Louis, Missouri, in 1861 and commissioned February 24, 1862 as part of the Army's Western Gunboat Flotilla.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mississippi River Squadron</span> Union brown-water naval squadron that operated on the western rivers during the American Civil War

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USS <i>Neosho</i> (1863) Lead ship of Neosho-class

USS Neosho, the lead ship of her class, was an ironclad river monitor laid down for the Union Navy in the summer of 1862 during the American Civil War. After completion in mid-1863, the ship spent time patrolling the Mississippi River against Confederate raids and ambushes as part of Rear Admiral David Porter's Mississippi Squadron. She participated in the Red River Campaign in March–May 1864. Neosho resumed her patrols on the Mississippi after the end of the campaign. She supported the Union Army's operations on the Cumberland River and provided fire support during the Battle of Nashville in December 1864. Neosho was decommissioned after the war and remained in reserve until sold in 1873.

Antony Martin Douglas Leslie William Calhoun Preston was an English naval historian and editor, specialising in the area of 19th and 20th-century naval history and warship design.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Casemate ironclad</span> American Civil War warship type

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Timberclad warship</span>

A timberclad warship is a kind of mid 19th century river gunboat.

<i>Magenta</i>-class ironclad

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Fairmile D motor torpedo boat British motor torpedo and gunboat

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Coastal Forces of the Royal Navy</span> British Royal Navy unit

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<i>Provence</i>-class ironclad

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French ironclad <i>Flandre</i> French ironclad battleship from the 1860s

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bibliography of World War II warships</span>

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References

  1. 1 2 3 "The Society of Authors". societyofauthors.net. Archived from the original on 8 September 2023.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 Konstam, Angus (June 2007). "About Angus" (PDF). anguskonstam.com. Archived from the original (PDF) on 27 August 2008. Retrieved 17 June 2009.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 Konstam, Angus (June 2009). "Web Site". anguskonstam.com. Archived from the original on 4 May 2009. Retrieved 17 June 2009.
  4. 1 2 Mike. "Q & A: Angus Konstam". Osprey Publishing. Archived from the original on 14 June 2011.
  5. 1 2 3 "Expert Profile". prnewswire.com.
  6. Konstam, Angus; Rickman, Dave (1993). Peter the Great's Army . Osprey Publishing. pp.  48. ISBN   978-1-85532-315-5.
  7. "The 1622 Fleet". melfisher.org. Archived from the original on 19 April 2007. Retrieved 12 April 2007.
  8. Konstam, Angus. "Amazon Books Author Profile" . Retrieved 17 June 2009.
  9. "Angus Konstam, Historian, author and pirate expert". anguskonstam.com. Archived from the original on 9 August 2015. Retrieved 29 October 2015.
  10. "Our Authors". Jenny Brown Associates. Archived from the original on 14 March 2008.