: You make a very interesing point. However, I think you may be underestimating the number that could have fled via the ships. The interior volume of a ship is deceivingly big. The old ships of the line were crewed by 1000 men but the men and their living quarters (oftentimes just hammocks) would only have taken a small amount of space in the volume of the ship. Most of the huge amount of volume available is taken up by cargo and ships stores.

: In the case of Elendil, you rightly point out that they would have needed sufficient ships stores to feed the refugees and ahead of time they would not have known that they were going to get a boost over to Middle EArth. However, I think that a large part of the cargo space would have been converted over to extra berths space and ships stores space. If we look at the slave ships or the irish famine ships we see that quite a surprising number of people can be crammed on a ship.

: I don't mean to say that Elendil crammed the failthful on like a slave or famine ship but I think adding only 50% of the crew complement understates what was possible.

: Lastly, we care only talking about potential space for the refugees. That tells us nothing about how many actuallly went over withthe Faithful

: Russ

I suspect that the numbers of refugees was probably a good deal less than the 13,000 or so I suggested. I was looking to give an approximation to the likely maximum figure. What you say about the gross internal capacity of such ships is true, though the Numenoreans were not without impedamenta - 9 palantirs and a white tree for a start - plus they must have carried food and water to last them some time. Also they would have had no idea just where they might end up in Middle Earth if they survived the sea passage, so they would have needed to carry some basic tools weapons etc. to allow them to build a new life and not to be at the mercy of potentially hostile locals. All in all I would have expected the holds of the nine ships to be fairly well packed with goods of one sort or another. The old "First Rates" were very densely peopled - each sailor had 26 inches of width to hang his hammock and even officers were lucky if they got a canvas-screened hutch to call their own - so there wasn't a great deal of extra space available to take many more bodies!