Those of you that have read this blog over the years know that I always wanted to be a pirate. For some reason, swashbuckling has just always appealed to me. But as we all know, and I’ve mentioned here on occasion, real pirates were not much like the images portrayed in books and movies.
Take the eye patch, for instance — nothing says “pirate” much more than a black eye patch. But the truth is, the real swashbucklers didn’t wear eye patches.
If you read the biographies of most of the famous pirates — Blackbeard, Calico Jack, Bartholomew Roberts, and others — you’ll notice that their portraits don’t show them wearing eye patches.
So why did the eye patch become synonymous with pirates? Because the creators of fictional pirates like them that way. Eye patches have become part of pirate lore mostly because pirates are portrayed as wearing them in books and movies.
The primary reason anyone wears an eye patch is because he or she has a missing or injured eye. So it’s possible that some pirates may have worn one — pirating, after all, is an extremely dangerous activity.
Eye patches do serve a useful purpose, and their use is a “trick of the trade” for seamen, as well as for law-enforcement officers and the armed forces. An eye patch (or simply closing one eye — but that that doesn’t look nearly as cool as an eye patch) can help your eyesight when moving from a bright place into a dark one. Let’s say you’re a pirate and you’ve just boarded a ship at noon on a bright sunny day. If you’re not wearing an eye patch and everyone you need to plunder is below deck, you could be at a disadvantage because you eyes have to become accustomed to the dark.
Not so with an eye patch! A patch gives you one eye that is already used to the dark. So when you get down below, you simply move the patch from one eye to the other. This allows for much more efficient pillaging.
Maybe I’ll tackle the subject of parrots next time….
— 30 —