I’ve been watching Mythbusters episodes on DVD and agree with my friend Craig that some of the questions they address would be better answered by some rigorous book research rather than blowing things up (as entertaining as that is). But that would be a different and altogether more boring show.

Episode one of that boring show, hosted by me: Pirate eye patches as way to retain your night vision by swapping which (functional) eye it covers when traveling from light to dark and dark to light. While they showed that it was quite effective in retaining night vision, there was no evidence presented that pirates actually did that.

My research: from Daily Life in the Age of Sail’s section on Pirates, it was pointed out that pirates themselves didn’t really keep records, since they were criminals. Most accurate records were kept by the people in charge of ending their criminal activities, and this did not include handy eye patch tips. More damning, the Oxford English Dictionary entry on Patch defined it only as a covering for a damaged or missing eye, with no information or usage as anything else.

My verdict: no evidence for this usage.