"Do you buy the eye-patch theory?" Topic

2 Posts

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Korvessa	15 Jul 2026 11:41 p.m. PST
From time to time I see various things on the net that suggest that the whole pirate eye-patch thing was to protect night vision. That is they would have one eye covered above deck and then switch the patch to the other eye when they went beloy decks. This smells fishy to me. Kind of like Baldric's apple crumble. Do you buy this?
robert piepenbrink	16 Jul 2026 3:18 a.m. PST
Not for a minute. I buy ship-board actions with wood splinters flying in all directions, and I buy late 19th Century pirate stories and Howard Pyle illustrations. Do we have any evidence at all suggesting that 17th and 18th Century pirates were especially eyepatch-prone?

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