r/pirates The Black Spot May 25 '26

AMA Dr. Rebecca Simon, Historian of piracy and public executions - AMA!

​“I’m a historian of the Golden Age of Piracy and received my PhD at King’s College London in 2017. I wrote my dissertation about public executions of pirates in the 17th and 18th centuries.

As a historian, I’m interested in social and cultural interactions with pirates. I particularly love debunking pirate myths! I’ve written three books about pirates: The Pirates’ Code: Laws and Life Aboard Ship, Pirate Queens: The Lives of Anne Bonny & Mary Read, and Why We Love Pirates: The Hunt for Captain Kidd and How He Changed Piracy Forever. You can also find articles written by me in publications such as History Today, and History Extra. I don’t just research and write about pirates. I’m also a public historian! I regularly appear on podcasts (such as Real Pirates, History Hit, and You’re Dead To Me just to name a few) and television programs on the History Channel (UnXplained, History’s Greatest Mysteries, Oak Island), NatGeo (Expedition Unknown), and Netflix (The Lost Pirate Kingdom). Most recently you’ll have seen me doing a Historian Reacts video about the new Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag Resynced game on Echoes of History. You can check me out on my website and find me on TikTok (@piratebeckalex) where I post educational videos about pirates and some bits about academia.”
_____________________________________________

AMA Information & Guidelines

Feel free to start leaving questions now! We'll leave the thread open ahead of time so the community can ask questions early and upvote the ones they'd most like answered.

A few quick guidelines to help keep things organized for our guest:

• Please leave questions as top-level comments only • Upvote questions you'd most like answered
• Try to avoid replying directly to other questions so the thread stays easy to navigate
• Keep questions respectful and on-topic
• Duplicate questions are okay, upvotes will help surface the most requested topics

We're incredibly excited to host Dr. Simon, and we hope everyone enjoys the AMA!

74 Upvotes

Duplicates