About
I'm Neil. Write to me.
The Archives has no front desk, no ticket office and no gift shop. It has me: one curator, a wall of trial transcripts, and a mild suspicion of any pirate story that sounds too good. Everything sent through this page lands with me personally, and I read all of it. Replies can take a few days if I am somewhere in 1701.
Reasons people write
You have caught me in an error
The best message this museum can receive. Name the page, quote the sentence, and show me the evidence if you have it. If you are right, the page changes and says so, and you have my public thanks. How corrections work.
Where does that claim come from?
If you want to know why something is graded Probable rather than Confirmed, or what a document actually says behind a page, ask. Questions like this have improved more pages than I care to admit.
Podcasts, talks and interviews
I will happily talk about the Golden Age, the documents behind the legends, and why most of what we all knew turns out to be a novelist's invention. Tell me about your show and the ground you fancy covering.
Exhibitions and collaborations
For museums, archives, libraries and heritage folk: the research here is register-based and citable, and I am open to conversations about physical exhibitions, loans of research, or collaboration on the period.
Teaching and reuse
Teachers, students and writers are welcome to draw on the Archives with credit. The period documents are long out of copyright. If you want to reuse my own text or commissioned material, ask first and I will almost certainly say yes.
About Sailing the Black Flag
The book is written from the same records as this museum. Publishing and press enquiries can start at the book page, or write here and it will find its way to the right desk, which is also my desk.
Simply to talk about pirates
Some of the best letters fit no category. If a page here sent you down a rabbit hole, I would genuinely like to hear where you came out. I promise to reply and I promise not to say "arr".
Buried treasure tips
Received with warm scepticism. The one documented Kidd hoard was dug up in 1699, inventoried, and shipped to England, and I will send you the inventory to prove it. But do write; the conversation is always fun.
Write to me
Other routes
I am on Instagram most days, and if you subscribe to my letters, replying to any of them reaches me directly; several corrections have arrived exactly that way.
If you are writing about an error, the perfect report names the page, quotes the sentence, and points at the document. But "this looks wrong" is also fine. It costs me nothing to check, and it has cost me a few evenings I do not regret.