The White Council

It`s an interesting thought, that Denethor may have neglected the fleet from doubts as to its loyalty, but I thought Throrongil had served not only in the fleet, but everywhere in Ecthelion`s service, and he might have had adherents everywhere, had he chosen to form a party that would support him.

I rather suspect that Gondor`s fleet was seldom a match for Umbar`s. It was Gondor that had a large land frontier to defend, and maintaining a large fleet would have divided her strength and left her dangerously vulnerable to a land invasion. As Denethor`s reign progressed, and the threat from Mordor grew, there may have been some sense in not diverting too many resources to the fleet, dangerous as that proved in the war of the Ring. The Byzantine Empire had to make the same delicate balancing act, generally neglecting the fleet when danger from the sea was less pressing. The Corsairs, on the other hand, had no enemies behind them, and could put all their efforts into maintaining their fleet - rather like Carthage before the First Punic War.

To be superior on both land and sea has always been a burden for any country - England`s success in so many colonial wars was due to the fact that her island status meant she didn`t have to maintain a large army. The French fell between two stools repeatedly, especially in the seven years war. By the time of the American rebellion, they had improved their navy sufficiently to ensure its success, but in doing so they ran heavily into debt.

I don`t think that even under Ecthelion Gondor`s fleet was a match for that of the Corsairs. Thorongil won his victory at the havens with a very small fleet, and chiefly by the speed and surpise of his attack, which allowed him to burn the ships of the Corsairs in their harbour, while they were still unmanned: a kind of "singeing of the King of Spain`s beard." Most of the actual fighting seems to have been done on land, upon the quays.

There were only three times in four millenia that Gondor was strong enough to take Umbar. The first occasion took generations of building up the fleet, at a time when Gondor ruled Enedwaith, Harondor and the lands east of Anduin, when there was no threat from Mordor, and when that from the East had been crushed. Gondor had the luxury of concentrating exclusively on Umbar and the Harad. On the second occasion Umbar had been crippled by the plague, which struck more fiercely the farther south you went, and Gondor evidently recovered sooner, while her enemies were still too weak to attack. The third occasion was under Elessar, when Mordor had been crushed, the east had been retaken, and the Rohirrim, without being distracted by dangers to themselves, were able to ride with Gondor again. (I think we`re told that Eomer fought in Harad under the green banners of the Rohirrim.) Also, Umbar was now much weaker.

In the latter centuries of the third age, Umbar, unlike Gondor, had never been in danger from invasion by land. Her only neighbours were the Haradrim, from whom there was no threat at all: Sauron would never have let his servants destroy each other, and the Corsairs could put forth all their strength at sea. Once Sauron had fallen, however, this changed. The cities of the Corsairs and the kingdoms of the Harad would have lost the artificial unity that rule by Sauron had given them, and they were in any case badly weakened. The Haradrim had lost heavily on the Pelennor Fields and at the Black Gate, and Umbar had lost not only her whole fleet, but her whole expeditionary force, including the slaves, who would now be hard to replace, and perhaps tens of thousands of her own citizens, if they matched the numbers that Gondor held back from Minas Tirith to face them. This must have been a crippling blow, far worse than the temporary setback Thorongil inflicted on them. Even decades later, they may not have fully recovered the loss of manpower, and by then Gondor was once again able to concentrate exclusively on the south; and once Gondor looked like a winning side, I don`t think Umbar would have had much help from the Haradrim.

After the War of the Ring Aragorn receives embassies from all the defeated enemies, although not, if I remember rightly, from the Corsairs. I suppose they were still too much of a potential threat to Gondor for peace with them to be possible. Certainly Aragorn must have built up the fleet for his assault on Umbar, and judging by how long it was before he took it, he didn`t even try until he had finished his campaigns in the east and the south. What I find interesting, is that it retained its importance among his successors. The fleet seems to have a rather high profile in The New Shadow, which is strange in that Gondor doesn`t seem to have any maritime enemies left, unless there were still Black Numenorean cities further south. The curious circumstance in that story of the apparently inexplicable loss of a ship makes me wonder if there might have been a Black Numenrean background to the new cult - whether it was taken by enemies, or sent on a secret mission by the king (which would account for the apparent official cover-up).