We all grew up reading books about pirates or watching movies about them. Two things are common about pirates in those movies and books. First, pirates use eye patches to cover one eye and they are always in search of treasure boxes. There are assumptions that pirates wear eye patches to cover their missing eye. But it has nothing to do with a missing eye. Well, the eye patches help pirates in seeing everything clearly. Ok, don’t get confused because we are here to tell you why pirates wear eye patches?

Enhance night vision   

One purpose of wearing eye patches is to enhance night vision.

Seeing above decks and below them

Life at sea in reality is very difficult, especially, for pirates. Because they have to navigate through every inch of the vessel. Pirates not only have to move through their ships but also have to jump from one ship to another even at night. Similarly, battles with opponents at night caused them to use something that helped them win in the cover of darkness.   

How did they come to know this trick?

From hundreds of years pirates were practiced to combat in darkness. Perhaps, it was a proven method of triumph to attack adversaries in darkness. With the passage of time, as the pirates master the trick to fight in darkness when embroiled in combat. Without a doubt the best option to deceive the opponent is to trick their vision so that they could quickly adapt to darkness.

Dark Adapting

Naturally our eyes have the ability to adapt light quickly when going into darkness. But transitioning from light to darkness takes some time. This is known as dark adapting. Actually, transitioning from an extremely lit area to darkness can take up human eyes 25 minutes to adapt the darkness.

According to Dr. Jim Sheedy

Jim Sheedy is the director of the Vision Performance Institute at Oregon’s Pacific University. According to Jim, it takes up twenty five minutes to adapt darkness when going from light because photo pigments have to be regenerated during this time.

There is a built-in delay in responding to sudden shifts from light to darkness. So what exactly happens when one moves from darkness to light? The rhodopsin cells in human eyes are extremely sensitive to light. So a flash of light makes them active instantly.

Going from light to dark causes some chemical reactions to occur. When light vanishes the pupils get dilated to let in more light. But the light that gathered is not enough to make you able to see in darkness. This is when rhodopsin breaks down into chemicals and sends messages to nerves to process in darkness or low light. That’s why there are built in delays in being able to see in darkness.

Does eye patching really work for pirates?    

Throughout history pirates are known for wearing eye patches. This eye patch helped them to adjust to darkness quickly. So if they went below the deck or had to combat in darkness then simply they just lifted the eye patch which could make their sight better than a person without an eye patch.

You can test it too

Turn off the lights of one room in your house then come to a lighted area. Here cover your one eye with a patch and then go to the dark room. Remove the patch and you will notice the difference. So now it’s clear that pirates are not blind in one eye nor their eye is missing.