Injury to Order: Hand Injury from Maintaining an AOS Wooden Sailing Vessel
Hi! So, I am writing some historical fiction, and I am drowning in research, but it's been a few days and I still haven't found a good solution to this problem, and you guys are consistently awesome about helping find answers to questions like this, so I thought I'd come to you.
Setting: Early-18th century (the year isn't strictly important, but I've been using 1715 anytime I need a year in my searches to keep things consistent) pirate ship in the Caribbean.
Scenario: My protagonist is a Royal Navy officer in his late twenties who is taken by pirates. Pirates are being relatively chill, just asking that he do some work while on board and not make a fuss until they find a good place to cut him loose. I need him to sustain a semi-serious injury to his hand doing something routine on the boat that does not involve weapons. I need the injury to be serious enough that he worries about losing his hand without treatment, but not so bad that he can't recover from it with intervention from a surgeon, and I need it to be something he can hide for a couple days. I have been considering burns, either rope burns from dealing with the rigging or heat burns from dealing with tar, but I'm not sure this is serious enough for him to worry about losing his hand.
Searches: I have done a lot of searches on Google and boat forums on things like, "wooden boat maintenance" and "how you can hurt yourself on a wooden boat," but these are mostly giving me modern solutions to keeping your small, seasonal watercraft from rotting. I've also searched things like, "pirate ship maintenance," "pirate ship jobs," and "pirate ship injuries," both on Google and in some pirate and Age of Sail specific blogs and archives, and I'm mostly getting ways you can be hurt in battle. I also went through the age of sail and injury to order tags in this comm.
Thank you in advance!