Expressed as a poem in Tweets:
VictorMilan OK, the college football player’s actual name is Jevan Snead. But what I heard is *Jeggan Snee*: Best Pirate Name EVER! (6 minutes ago from web)
VictorMilan Avast! I be Jeggan Snee, Terror of the Seven Sea! (Grammar be’n't my strong suit, arr.) (4 minutes ago from web)
VictorMilan The game, on as background as I try to get something useful done, is *much* more entertaining hearing “Jeggan Snee” as the QB. Arr! (1 minute ago from web)
VictorMilan Jeggan’s Snee’s passer rating sucks: eyepatch destroys depth perception. But he’s *never* sacked. Something about the cutlass. And the hook. (less than 20 seconds ago from web)
VictorMilan I’ve always misheard things & filled in my own, often fanciful version. It’s provided me many characters and even story ideas. (less than 5 seconds ago from web )
That last is perfectly true. Back in the very early 70′s some friends and I took a road-trip to an SCA tournament in Phoenix. (I was very active in the SCA back then. I have even darker secrets from that time.) Well along in an all-night drive in a buddy’s van, one of my close friends gazed out the window and said something in a profound tone.
“The Fetus Warning Star?” I echoed. “What’s that?”
He turned and gave me a wide-eyed look. “I said, ‘Ahh: Venus, the Morning Star.’ ”
“But that wasn’t what I heard!”
He studied me for a moment. Then, gravely, he said, “Never do drugs. They’ll probably just make you normal.”
And I haven’t. And I’m still not.
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Have you seen the Mythbusters Pirate Special, where they examine a theory about why pirates wore eyepatches (and ruled it plausible)?
Sounds familiar, although I can’t place details, such as what their explanation was.
That said, I have to say I surmise the main reason pirates wore eye patches was because they’d lost an eye. Not a lot of safety glasses in those days, and plenty of ocular hazards, especially in combat.
Aside from the obvious, there’re the dangers from primer charges flashing in firearms pans, and the fact that- though I’ve never seen them portrayed in pirate movies – grenades were very popular both among pirates and their enemies.
…and then there’s the joke about a pirate with a wooden leg, a hook, and an eyepatch, explaining his medical history to an insurance agent…
- M \”0
I’m also looking forward to Adam and Jamie’s clever suggestions for alternative reasons pirates wore wooden legs and hooks other than “they lost their damn limbs.”
The theory the Mythbusters tested is that pirates wore eyepatches in order to have one eye _not_ adjusted for open sunlight levels when they carried the fight below decks. When they went below, they’d switch the patch to the other eye, and still be able to see to fight, or search for hidden booty (monetary booty, that is – I’m guessing they could find the other sort reasonably well either way). I guess that, in the close quarters below decks, depth perception was less of a problem than a closed-down iris.
The Mythbusters tested this, and ruled it plausible.
“I’m also looking forward to Adam and Jamie’s clever suggestions for alternative reasons pirates wore wooden legs and hooks other than “they lost their damn limbs.”
Wenches dig prosthetics?
- M. \”/
That does sound plausible. I thought it must have something to do with dark vision; for some reason fighting below decks failed to occur to me.
I wonder if eye-patches were really that prevalent among pirates in the day, or whether later authors and illustrators (Howard Pyle, I’m lookin’ at you) may have basically created the image to make their fictional pirates more colorful, in a scoundrelly, scruffy, physically-impaired kind of way. Or at least played up such features.
Again, no doubt pirates suffered plenty of occupational injuries to occasion hooks, wooden legs, eye-patches and such. They certainly were resourceful, and the top practitioners of piracy could well have been knowledgeable enough about their craft to do the patch-switching thing. My guess is all of the above, with actual injury leading the list.
“for some reason fighting below decks failed to occur to me.”
It had failed to occur to me too, until I saw the Mythbusters ep.
My guess is that, among the crews who were in on the low-light fighting reason, they carried, but didn’t actually wear the eyepatches at all times; just when boarding another ship was immanent.
Your observation about the illustrators has a strong ring of truth too.
- M. \”/