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By buccaneer fashion standards, eyepatches were rare accessories. What a brilliant strategy!Īlas, the hypothesis has one fatal flaw. Strapping a patch over one eye for an extended period keeps it dark-adjusted and ready for immediate use in low-light conditions. During a pirate raid, if you’re walking around in pitch-black gloom below deck, those are 25 minutes that you might not have. But this doesn’t mean that they actually used them.Īdapting to darkness can take the human eye as long as 25 minutes. There’s an ingenious explanation for why pirates might have worn eyepatches. Stephen Haynes-a despised pirate captain-bribed high-ranking British officials with live ones. Since parrots sold for high prices in London’s markets, pirates were known to round them up. Nevertheless, seamen of the 16th to 18th centuries did frequently capture exotic animals as souvenirs. Granted, the food supply was often low on many vessels, making pets a luxury that most buccaneers couldn’t afford. The literary pirate-parrot link has a slight basis in truth. Stranded on a desert island, Defoe’s protagonist goes for over 20 years without human contact and relies on a talking avian for company. Stevenson hinted that the bird was an homage to Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe (1719). Treasure Island also made celebrities out of its characters-especially Long John Silver and “Captain Flint,” his faithful parrot. Published as a serial between 1881 and 1882 (and in novel form one year later), it’s been the guiding light for every buccaneer story from On Stranger Tides to Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest. A good percentage of the things we all associate with pirates trace back to Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island.
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