Anna Gibson Holloway is the former curator of the award-winning USS Monitor Center at The Mariners' Museum in Newport News, VA, where she was also Vice President of Collections and Programs. In her long career as a public historian, she has been a pirate, a square-rig sailor, a hurdy-gurdy player, a puppeteer, an understudy fire-eater, college professor, and also served as the maritime historian for the National Park Service in Washington, DC. She holds a PhD and MA in history from the College of William & Mary, and undergraduate degrees from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Her current research focuses on the Battle of Hampton Roads in popular culture, the Oyster Wars of the lower Chesapeake Bay, and the marine salvage firm of B & J Baker & Co. of Norfolk, VA. And yes, those do all go together. Sort of. She is currently the Supervisory Historian for the History and Heritage Program at the Maritime Administration (MARAD). There she is responsible for MARAD’s heritage asset collection, its historic vessel database, and for researching and writing the history of the US Merchant Marine. She was previously the team lead of Fleet History within the Histories Branch of the Naval History and Heritage Command (NHHC) in Washington, D.C. where she was responsible for the team of professional historians who produce the Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships (DANFS) as well as other short- and long-form publications and projects dealing with sailor stories, fleet history, and fleet support.