Okay, I’ve just heard one hypothesis that sounds very dubious to me, but on quick Google can’t find any hard evidence about this topic at all.
So, here’s the gist:
“All” pirates* are one-eyed because they used a primitive forerunner of thesextant(the Hadley quadrant ?), which involved looking directly at the sun (instead of indirectly through mirrors like the later models), which turned them blind in one eye."
This story sounds dubious to me for several reasons:
This would apply not to all pirates, but only to the navigator (a special expert job) and maybe the captain.
Did all pirate ships really have that skilled and educated navigators and captains, or did they just sail around until they met prey? How much precise navigation was necessary - wouldn’t it vary greatly from time to time and from place to place?
If the navigator was a properly educated expert, wouldn’t he use the proper tools and not inferior ones?
Possible counters: the Royal Navy had a monopoly on sextants? - But pirates don’t obey the law, they can steal, bribe or buy a sextant from a retired person, or get one made from a specialist.
Possible 2nd counter: Everybody used inferior Octant until the sextant was invented - but then all sailors, including the Royal Navy and merchant shipping, and not only the pirates, would be affected.
Were that many pirates really one-eyed - that is, disproportionately compared to Royal Navy/ merchant marine, since sailor had a risky life during that time and many suffered health one way or another - or is this a later invention from movies and popular media?
Lastly, the “plausible because it works but undocumented” explanation the Mythbusters tested for eye-patches was “wearing an eye-patch over one healthy eye keeps that eye dark-adjusted, which is useful if you have to go below decks where it’s dark - then you just switch the patch and can see better than without.”
Although I wonder if it was that useful why only the pirates and not the other sailors used that technique?
So does any of our history expert Dopers have insights, thoughts, ideas or even sources?
Thanks everybody in advance!
I’m lumping proper pirates and official privateers under one label for the purpose of this discussion because during certain times and in some reporting the distinctions were blurred; also, both were different from the official Royal Navy or the Merchant Marine.
To address just one point, it seems to me that navigation would have been very important to pirates. They had to have hideouts like uncharted coves and islands, and their prey was likely to lead them on long chases in random directions.
The patch for seeing below decks thing strikes me as a great idea. The sun on the ocean can be absolutely dazzling, and it might take several minutes for your eyes to adjust to the darkness below decks, especially after your supply of fresh carrots is exhausted.
Like I said, it depends on the place, too. If you were a pirate near a lot of small islands with lots of reefs and shallows, you need to know where you are…
… but you don’t need a map for that, you need a pilot. Somebody who knows the local waters and can tell by sight or by feel of the sand (from the bottom of the log) where they are and that a hundred sea miles further on is their hideway spot, and a half seamile starboard is a reef you want to keep away from.
Actually, an unchartered cove which only one guy on the ship can find would be much safer than using a map - but without a map, you don’t need a sextant. A sextant (or octant) is for use with a map. Without a map, you navigate by sight and feel and touch (and taste - the waters taste different, the wind blows different; Polynesians learned that until recently).
I can’t think of a single well-known pirate captain I have read of (and I’ve done a lot of reading on the subject) that had an eye-patch. Neither are eye-patches commented on as a common feature of pirates in the primary literature on the subject, that is, accounts by the pirates themselves or contemporary chroniclers.
The eye-patch, like the peg-leg or the hook hand, is simply a pirate stereotype based on their combat-filled life. They would be expected to suffer such injuries from cutlasses or cannon fire during attacks on other ships or in fights with those trying to apprehend them. And unlike ordinary sailors or marines, they would be likely to continue in their trade even after injury rather than retire ashore.
The eye-patch stereotype has no real basis in reality, so there is nothing to explain.
In any case, I am not aware of any reason that pirates would use different methods or instruments for navigation than other mariners of the same time.
Pirates are frequently portrayed with eye patches for the same reason they are portrayed with peg legs and hook hands. It makes them appear like men who lived violent lives. And pirates frequently did live violent lives. Many charters for privateers and pirate ships had provisions that were sort of similar to disability insurance. If a crewman lost an eye or a limb he received a special payment as compensation.
Medical science wasn’t great several centuries ago. Amputation was a common treatment for limb wounds that got infected. People tended to notice that people who had been involved in a lot of violence were sometimes missing hands, legs, or eyes. So when they wanted to write books, make paintings, etc. about pirates they frequently portrayed them with scars, missing limbs, and other noticeable signs of injury, including eye patches, to indicate that these men had been in fights. I imagine that certain popular portrayals, such as the one legged Long John Silver or the hook handed Captain Hook led to lots of imitations.
It’s Mythbusters so take it with a grain of salt (WRT to it actually applying to pirates), but they did this one a few years ago and found that if your wore a an eye patch in bright light and then went into a dark room and moved the eye patch over to the other eye, you had instant night vision since the covered eye already had a dilated pupil. The theory was (as stated above) that it would make it easier to go from above deck to below and vice versa without needing time to adjust.
ARgh. Mistake: I wrote log when I meant lot = sounding line. It had a bit of tallow at the end to which the ground stuck, so the sailor hauling in the line could tell whether the ground was sand, clay, or nothing = rocks.
To be technical, night vision isn’t really based on pupil dilation. It’s rhodopsin. The pupil dilates in seconds, while rhodopsin is very slow to build up in low light and very slow to go away in bright light, thus the blindness or pain in quick light changes.
As an aside, US soldiers are taught to close their sighting eye for night fights while illumination rounds or flares are burning. You open your other eye to look around for friends and enemies while the battlefield is lit up, and then you switch eyes when it’s time to shoot. Do it wrong and you won’t be able to shoot a barn once the light burns out.
I think we need to find a Viking and ask him whether he’s stopped wearing horned helmets.
I always assumed pirates often lost an eye because of the violent lives they led, as mentioned by SoE. It’s not as if, when attempting to board the nearest convenient merchantman, that the crew of the other ship didn’t fight back. Nay more: consider the idea that in the days of bladed and pointed weapons, injuring your opponent’s eyes might well have been the easiest way to disable him.
What use would a pirate have for an uncharted island hideaway? Yes, they needed a base of operations, but that needed to be some place where they could buy wine, women, and song (in approximately that order). They didn’t steal all that loot so they could bury it; they stole it so they could spend it.
Back to the navigation thing, even if they were out in the middle of the ocean, navigation would be hugely important. Ships weren’t scattered evenly and randomly over the ocean. There were definite shipping lanes even back then, defined by the prevailing winds and currents. Pirates would need to know where they were with quite a bit of precision.