#also you def can see the deadeyes in the tops from the deck as long as you're not standing directly beneath it or a sail is in the way

[fluentisonus]

This is all definitely true, thank you for the elaboration! However to be clear when I made this post I wasn't really intending for it to be taken literally (as in literally being able to look up from the deck and see them without ropes exactly as pictured), rather that since their name derives from "dead man's eyes", their resemblance to skulls was clearly something that sailors thought about and were conscious of when they went about their work. It was meant more to express a sense of awareness that the rigging above you (& there I was thinking of the tops) was full of metaphorical body parts than that there was a direct line of sight

standing on the deck of a ship while all the dead men's eyes look down on you from the rigging. just sailing things