I read a few entertaining things about real life pirates recently that I feel compelled to throw out there for my few readers who may not have known these things. In all my intellectual travels I've found that if I knew nothing about something, then my friends and readers usually find that thing interesting.
Since the British navy at the height of the age of piracy that's been made famous though films was made through basically kidnapping stray drunks at the docks in Britain, it was never a long way to go from a legally "employed" British navy officer and "illegal" privateer and pirate. At least the pirate ships had an equal cut between the booty; every person on board got an equal share, captain included. That was one way to stave off mutiny.
And what, you may ask, did most pirate ships loot? The biggest prizes were medicine and sewing needles, clean water and fresh fruit.
Eyepatches are a staple of piracy in the movies, but historically, why would sailors be more apt to lose an eye than, say, meat packers? They wouldn't is the answer, but the eyepatch serves a purpose, a utility as it were. I learned that the leading consensus is that eyepatches were adorned a few minutes before the crew of a ship was about to storm another vessel. The invaders wore the patch over one of their eyes, got to the other ship, and eventually went beneath deck and into the ship. This was before the advent of artificial light, so it was pretty damn dark down there, and it would take the human eye literally a few minutes to adjust from the sunny day to the darkness underneath.
They would simply switch the patch and be able to see in the dark more effectively with their previously covered eye. Pretty ingenious.
There was something else about Port Royal in Jamaica, but I'll get to that later.
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