Loki: “There are more advantages to being a pagan god than you’d think.”
I have never read about a real life pirate who wore an eye-patch. The ones we read about in detail, though, were the successful pirate leaders, and for every one of them there were thousands of underlings and minions and able seamen and drunken louts. I’m sure many had lost eyes, but who knows if they wore eyepatches or not. I have never read about or heard about wearing eyepatches so they could see below decks. They had lanterns and gunports and such to let in light, but I’m sure the bowels of the ships were quite dark. It’s not like they were running up and down the hatches all the time, though.
As far as eye-gouging sword fights went, they avoided fights if possible. When a Royal Navy warship appeared, they usually ran as fast as they could. If an unarmed merchant appeared, they closed fast and used intimidation, threats of annihilation, and overwhelming force to make the merchants give up without a fight. Pirate crews often dramatically outnumbered merchant crews, and merchant seamen weren’t keen on fighting anyway. Their thinking was: 1) the ship doesn’t belong to me, 2) the goods don’t belong to me, and 3) I’m getting paid to sail the ship, not lay my life on the line fighting pirates.
The Master on the thread topic: “Lost eyes, and thus patches, weren’t too unusual.”
He can be quite succinct when he wants to.
Yes, I loved Under the Black Flag. There are a lot of good books about pirating, though.
Ditto. I can’t recall any mention of a one eyed pirate in any of the primary documents I’ve read.
The only peg legged pirate I’ve come across was in Charles Johnson’s A General History of Pirates.
To the extent pirates had the disabilities commonly attributed to them in movies, I’d have thought they would just be an outcome of lifestyle - get in a lot of fights - you’re likely to lose an eye. Why only the one? - well, if you lose both, you can’t be a pirate any more.
I highly recommend this book I read last fall: A pirate of exquisite mind : explorer, naturalist, and buccaneer : the life of William Dampier / Diana & Michael Preston. I knew nothing of this fascinating character until I read this book. Guy sailed around the world 3 times in an age when crossing the Atlantic once was a pretty big deal.
And their thinking is still about the same with modern-days pirates (Somalia, etc…).
The only difference is that today pirates take hostages even when no governor’s daughter is on board.
No, the German word for sounding line is lot, which I confused with the word log, which happens to be same in English and German.
Thanks for confirming what I suspected; however, that leads me to another question:
The risk of injury due to battle / dangerous life should not have been much (noticeably) greater between pirates and Royal Navy (Merchant Marine being different), because both were in danger from battles in addition to the danger of wooden sailing ships and plagues, scurvy etc.
And some pirates had not only democratic structures in running the ship and distribitung the prey, but also at least one famous pirate instituted a (the first?) social insurance (in written form, as compared to many oral arrangements) that part of the money was laid aside to pay for injured or too old pirates.
Whereas the Royal Navy just press-ganged everybody they found if they needed people, so they didn’t have to offer incentives, unlike pirates who had to make attractive offers.
So was it really common for enlisted men, not only officers, of Royal Navy to get pension on shore after an injury, but for most pirates, to continue fighting for lack of pension? (I realize things varied over the time, and that the Royal Navy might have introduced pensions at some time, so “no” before and “yes” after that; and that many pirates might have only oral arrangments which didn’t survive as documents).
That’s why the Mythbusters, when they tested it, declared it “plausible” and not “true/ proven”: the mechanism of dark-adaption worked, but they found no evidence that the eye-patch was ever used for that reason.
In addition, there are other problems with this idea:
Having only one eye open means no depth perception, which would be very important for shooting going on during the battle;
as you said, most sailors were either on deck sailing/ fighting there, or below decks, working the canons, and only designated runners and people carrying wounded were allowed* below-decks, so there was not much need for switching from light to dark.
- (that is, in the Royal Navy where soldiers = marines? guarded the hatchways so cowards couldn’t hide below-decks. Don’t know about the rules on pirate ships)
That’s what I often wondered, too: it would be in the pirate’s own best interest to spread the word that: surrender when we apppear, and we will only take your goods, but leave you unharmed; fight us, and we will kill you all.** That would cut losses on both sides, and both sides were interested mostly in money (unlike warships fighting for other reasons).
Instead the popular depiction is of pirates as blood-thirsty half-bezerk guys who want to cut throats for laughs (the Evulz), which doesn’t make much sense to me. (OTOH I’m, a woman, so I don’t understand the fighting eagerness of some men).
** I’m thinking here of western pirates interested in non-living cargo, as opposed to the “Barbary” pirates from Africa who attacked European ships in the Med and the Atlantic not only for cargo, but to get Europeans as slaves, who because of their rarity had higher value on the African slave markets. Obviously the prospect of being sold as slave or dying during the journey from mistreatment motivated everybody to fight harder - though it didn’t help much, as the Barbaries had much better ships and more men.
And of course, it’s not just pirates who led violent lives on the high seas. One of the world’s most famous sailors had an eye patch and lacked an arm.
As we know Nelson lost his eye in naval battle, Presumably pirates wore eyepacthes for similar reasons.
I always wondered if the opposite might be just as true. If you’re inside at night, with lanterns, candles, and whatnot, you might want to preserve your night vision so you could go on deck and see the stars or nearby ships.
A pirate “battle” generally consisted of an attack on a ship that wasn’t well armed or was otherwise vulnerable. For the most part, a pirate ship will not only avoid risking a stand up fight but will flee from one if possible. There are some exceptions of course.
Pirates really aren’t all that complicated. They’re criminals. Most pirates continued to be pirates because they didn’t know how to do anything else.
I always assumed that our modern stereotype of a pirate was greatly influenced by Treasure Island. In that case, ONE pirate with a patch and a wooden leg gave rise to many nore in years since.
There’s a blind pirate in Treasure Island, and one who hobbles around on a crutch, but no eye-patches or peg-legs there either.
However, I strongly suspect Blind Pew and Long John Silver are the origin of the “pirates missing body parts” meme.
Nit pick, Nelson was blinded in one eye in battle but didn’t actually lose it, and never wore an eyepatch.
I think to answer the o.p. that the eyepatch is a stereotype from fiction, in much the same way that Americans who earned a living from herding livestock in the 19thc. (cowboys), are routinely portrayed as being able to draw their weapons incredibly rapidly and fire them quickly and accurately .
This though they were in effect usually the equivalent of farmboys living far out in the Cuds.
Another quick couple of points, navigation was VERY important to pirates, if you can’t find the shipping routes of your prey quite accurately, then you aren’t going to be able to rob them .
Also in the midst of a featureless ocean you’re not going to be able to find your way back home if you can’t navigate.
As to the press gang, the R.N. was legally only allowed to press proffessional sailors.
And there were a surprising number of volunteers from all walks of life, usually because they had the chance of making a lot of money if they were lucky in taking prizes.
(Which the R.N. often was)
The reason that merchant seamen avoided the press like mad was because ironically, the press caused a labour shortage for shipping firms so seamans wages sky rocketed.
Conditions on British naval ships were by the standards of the time considered to be quite good.
There were plenty of men doing the jobs on board ship, they were well fed (by the standards of the time) and the punishments were more lenient then those for crimes ashore.
Stealing a loaf of bread was a hanging offence ashore, but a flogging offence in the navy.
By contrast, during wartime, the merchant mariner was worked into the ground becuse he was carrying out tasks usually performed by several, and because of this also usually got very little sleep.
Which I suspect caused a great many deaths, due to the hazardous nature of the job.
But as I said the men involved were more then happy to suffer these privations for the very high wages that they received.
Pirates sailed around in crappy, poorly maintained and poorly supplied ships. The Royal Navy sailed around in superbly armed, provisioned and maintained ships.
If you were going to fight one, but surrender to the other, which do you think you’d be more likely to fight?
So what about the parrot?
Not necessarily, on many occasions, especially dealing with early pirating, they would stay close to the shore and navigate by looking at the land. I know, it sounds pretty stupid, but they did, in fact, if they ever lost sight of the land, they were fu**ed. That’s not to say that pirates in the caribbean had this problem so much, I’m mostly talking about european pirates, mostly going from England even as far as India. Even though these pirates were basically just roaming to and fro, they weren’t easy to catch, or even find for that matter. The Skull and Bones was their main trick of keeping the law from boarding the vessel, military ships wouldn’t even get near, it meant that the ship was infested with the plague, the black plague (AAaargh 
). Hence the flag became a pirate symbol, and even carried over, more as a tradition, to the west (by this time everyone knew this was just a trick, but it took a while for them to find out). The other thing is, that pirates in the caribbean did not really have much to fear from the military, so they often sailed into ports like Tortuga and Port Royal with narry a threat…Aaargh (is the pirate voice helping?). One reason is 'cause they weren’t any law to stop’em, second, they always had the better ship (even a great fleet of ships), or at least most of the time they did.
Also the myth that pirates burried their treasure is just that, a myth. They’d spend it all, rather quickly in fact, on rum and fine lasses at the local taverns, usually durring the colder parts of the year.
As far as the one eyed pirate, well, ye’d have to have seen the size of that shark matey, t’was a biggin’ for sure…AAAaaaargh! (actually I don’t really know the answer to that question for sure, I suppose there’s a myriad of reasons like those that be mentioned and much more, It also looks mighty cool, and always comes with a good story. I just wanted to give my 2 gold pieces on pirates )