British · b. 1938
David Cordingly is a British maritime historian and museum curator. He worked at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, where he served as Keeper of Pictures and later head of exhibitions, and he organised the museum's 1990s exhibition on pirates. He is best known for Under the Black Flag (1995), a study that sets the popular image of the pirate against trial records, ship logs and contemporary accounts, and traces how novels and films shaped the legends. He also wrote Pirates: Terror on the High Seas, edited Pirates: Fact and Fiction, and published Women Sailors and Sailors' Wives, Cochrane the Dauntless, and Heroines and Harlots, on women at sea. His work on the Royal Navy and on marine painting, including studies of the Willem van de Velde artists, drew on his museum career. He has advised on television and film productions about piracy.