The White Council

Re: re suite 101 middle earth mysteries (Gondor`s fleet)

Tolkien and Inklings Discussion

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: : 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.

: Yes, but the fleet was his last command, and he WON. On the other hand, the fleet may simply have been overwhelmed in the War of the Ring, or Denethor may have decided to abandon it once it became apparent to him a victory at sea was impossible.

Or he might have decided that he could no longer afford to divide his resources. The kind of fleet that could have kept Gondor safe from the Corsairs would have been expensive to maintain.

: : 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.

: I think comparisons with the Byzantine and classical civilizations only go so far. Gondor's sea-power seems to have declined after the kings, perhaps in part because Umbar had finally been destroyed (at least, in an early version of the Tale of Years this was so). With the loss of Arnor as a trading partner, no further need for keeping an eye on Umbar, and a decline in Elvish populations (presumably), Gondor's need for sea vessels must have diminished considerably. There would have been trade between the various ports, presumably, but there only seem to have been four major ports left by the War of the Ring: Minas Tirith, Pelargir, Dol Amroth, and Ethring.

Yes, I`d not thought of that. What trade survived would have been a short-distance coastal trade, and especially along the Anduin, and all this would have been in very small boats. Also, while Byzantium depended on sea communication for a fair amount of its territory, especially when the Slavs made the land routes across the Balkans and to the west unsafe, Gondor was never in this position, and consequently a fleet was a less pressing requirement.

: : : 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.

: Actually, I think Tolkien had a specific English raid upon the Spanish Armada in mind when he wrote about that, but I can't recall the specifics. I think it might have been a raid on Calais. Except the English didn't attack the quays. They sent burning ships into the harbor because the Spanish were packed in so tightly. They damaged quite a few ships, as I recall, and some sort of panic set in (and these ships had slaves on them, too).

Drake`s attack of 1587. The fact that the Armada was only delayed a year an indication of how short-term such a vistory can be, although as Maglor has just obseved, the water barrels could not be adequately replaced by seasoned ones so quickly, and I think it meant that the Marquez di Santa Cruz died before the fleet could sail, and there was no experienced admiral to succeed him of sufficient rank to be allowed to command it.

There were two more Armadas prepared in the 1590s, both of which only failed through bad luck and bad weather, which shows how quickly Spain could replace both ships and men. That would have been much harder for the Corsairs, a much smaller power than Philip II`s world-wide empire, but still, I think it`s another indication how temporary Aragorn`s victory was. Philip was prepared to milk Castille dry to send out fleet after fleet until he won, and Elizabeth was prepared to bankrupt the finances of the English crown rather than agree to a reasonable peace. Castille was depopulated, and Elizabeth left a poisoned chalice to her successors, and the real victors of the Armada wars were France and Holland. Denethor had too much sense to waste his resorces in the same way.

However, I believe that only the galleys and galleasses had slaves, and the armada took few of them - they were only useful in the Mediterranean.

The use of galley-slaves is another curiously modern thing about the Corsairs - and is the best indication of their similarity to the Barbary Corsairs. I doubt if they had much long-term trade, and they would have taken their slaves from raids on Gondor. Navies of the ancient world and of the early and high middle ages almost never used galley-slaves. That is a feature of the later middle ages and the early modern era; I think the first Mediterranean power whose fleet became dependent on slaves was Venice, in the thirteenth or fourteenth century, and the last to hold on to them was the papacy in the nineteenth - the barbary corsairs were finally crushed in the French invasion of 1830, which resulted in a great freeing of slaves.

The reason why slaves were not much used for the galleys of the ancient world, (I think the atheniand offered their freedom to slaves who served as rowers), is because it did not pay. Most of the time fleets of triremes and later galleys were standing idle, and it was cheaper to pay free people by the day. Also, rowing in such galleys required some skill, especially if several sets of oars had to be synchronised - and in fact, until the Olympias was built in the 1980s, some nautical experts believed the trireme to be impossible, and suggested that it must have contained three men to an oar, like the Venetian galleys, in spite of all the documentary and pictorial evidence. I think it was the innovation of having several men to a single large oar, that made it possible to chain untrained slaves to their oars: only the man at the end would have to possess any skill. All that the rest would need is strength.

I`m not quite sure what ships the Corsairs used, but even dromonds were not that large, and I think that at least the upper bank of oarsmen would be expected to fight. perhaps there might be 200 on each ship? there were other kinds of ship too, and smaller ones. I think they must have thrown everything they had at Gondor. I expect their larger ships would have had two men to each oar, but probably not three, as the quinqueremes of carthage did.

: [snip] : : : 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....

: Actually, there were indeed wars among Sauron's "servants", at least in centuries prior to his return to Mordor. Things may have been different once he announced himself openly.

As his power grew he restrained his allies. I believe that the Waimriders and the Haradrim had once fought, before Sauron made a peace between them to turn them agaist Gondor. By the time that Sauron had declared himself in Mordor, such wars would be impossible.

: : ...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.

: You make good points here. I've often wondered how Aragorn could go on so quickly to defeat the Easterlings and Haradrim again, but I guess without Sauron to coordinate and reinforce them in various ways, they were easier to deal with.

: : After the War of the Ring Aragorn receives embassies from all : : the defeated enemies, although not, if I remember rightly, from : : the Corsairs...

: Tolkien doesn't say. I would presume they did indeed send an embassy. They were not in a position to continue in a warlike state with the resurgent Gondor.

: : 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 Numenorean 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).

: A fleet would have been necessary to restore communication with Arnor. It would be faster, actually, to sail up the coast and land at Tharbad or Mithlond. And Aragorn probably did need to maintain a naval defense because there would indeed have been surviving enemies in the south.

: I don't think Black Numenoreans would have become that powerful in Gondor during Aragorn's reign. Herumor, whomever he was, probably would have turned out to be from an old Gondorian family, in my opinion. Perhaps someone who viewed Aragorn's family as usurpers.

That`s another matter. I`m not sure about that, but I think that the disappearance of that ship is one of the best clues we have, as to what was really up. That`s an interesting idea about Herumor.