You may have heard a lot of different information about pirates. Among them are many surprising clichés about pirates, from the way they bury their treasures for no apparent reason, to the fact that they all sound like English farmers.
One of the most firmly entrenched in popular culture, along with hook hands and parrot friends, is that too many pirates wear eye patches. You may have wondered why and heard a few different reasons. And one of them is necessarily eye injuries. But the situation could be very different.
One theory, put forward without historical evidence, is that the eye patch did not result from eye injuries, but aided pirates’ vision during wars. The idea is that as you embark on another ship and descend below deck, it takes time for your eyes to get used to the lack of light. Wearing an eye patch meant that one eye of the pirates was used to the sunlight above and the other to the darkness, and they could see more easily by removing the patch as they descended below deck.
Similarly and conversely, pirates may also have worn the eye patch, for example, while standing under the deck at night by candlelight, and the patch may be preparing their night vision should they need to re-board to fight or engage in other pirate activities.
Mythbusters explored the idea in their 2007 pirate special. Kari was sent to an ophthalmologist who tested her night vision in both eyes, one exposed to bright light and the other covered with tape. As you can imagine, the closed eye quickly adapted to the darkness and was able to see much faster than the eye exposed to bright light.
Mytbusters decided that the legend was plausible, but that decision doesn’t necessarily mean that there really is such a practice. Pirate historian Dr. “There is no evidence that pirates wore eye patches,” says Rebecca Simon. There are no pictures, engravings, or mentions of them in any primary sources dating to the 18th and 18th centuries.”
Is it all a fiction of popular culture?
The more likely explanation is that, like accents, the eye patch is the result of popular fiction rather than historical fact. Simon says, “These legends come largely from Robert Louis Stevenson’s novel Treasure Island. The opposite character of the story, Long John Silver, became the model for many other popular culture hacks such as Jack Sparrow.”
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