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\u2019ve mentioned here on occasion, real pirates were not much like the images portrayed in books and movies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Take the eye patch, for instance \u2014 nothing says \u201cpirate\u201d much more than a black eye patch. But the truth is, the real swashbucklers didn\u2019t wear eye patches.
If you read the biographies of most of the famous pirates \u2014 Blackbeard, Calico Jack, Bartholomew Roberts, and others \u2014 you\u2019ll notice that their portraits don\u2019t show them wearing eye patches.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The primary reason anyone wears an eye patch is because he or she has a missing or injured eye. So it\u2019s possible that some pirates may have worn one \u2014 pirating, after all, is an extremely dangerous activity.
Eye patches do serve a useful purpose, and their use is a \u201ctrick of the trade\u201d for seamen, as well as for law-enforcement officers and the armed forces. An eye patch (or simply closing one eye \u2014 but that that doesn\u2019t look nearly as cool as an eye patch) can help your eyesight when moving from a bright place into a dark one. Let\u2019s say you\u2019re a pirate and you\u2019ve just boarded a ship at noon on a bright sunny day. If you\u2019re 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\u2019ll tackle the subject of parrots next time\u2026.
\u2014 30 \u2014<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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\u2019ve mentioned here on … Continue reading