Gondor's sea power / Middle Earth economics

[Coffeehouse]

Which means Gondor probably had the option of taking a route out to the open seas if the trade winds or currents really do head southwards. (In all probability there does not even exist the kinds of trade winds along the coastline as we have in the Indian Ocean, the monsoon.)

I can't recall there being any great forests of hardwood close by to Gondor though. For such an ambitious ship-building that must have been a problem.

[Coffeehouse]

Originally Posted by Gordis

Valandil is right: the great ships must have had several decks and were many masted, so they had to use square rigging. I think they were similar to Spanish galleons, if not more modern Clippers

It's perhaps a stretch that they had developed the sort of fast-going ocean vessel that the Clipper was. Is there any evidence of that sort of ship? Since there's a quote implying they used oars on their sailing ships I'm thinking that perhaps the sailing technology that Gondor had developed or 'borrowed', since it incorporates oars, would be more similar to the Chinese junk of the 1400s.

Originally Posted by Gordis

I don't think in real history there are examples of HUGE many-masted many-decked ships also having oars.

The Chinese junks of that period were large with multiple compartments, many-masted and fitted with oars, which was greatly assisted by the lack of a keel (in place they added the sternpost-rudder). The sails of the Chinese junk could also be shifted in position and direction, giving the navigators more options out on the seas.

A ship made of wood that could be sea-worthy and carry a thousand men sounds to be impossible. Would it be sea-worthy? Yet if there was a ship that could carry greater loads of cargo and passengers than any other sailing ship it was the Chinese junks with their multi-levelled compartments and carefully placed balast. Those ships were an oasis of stability on the seas, so perhaps the answer lies there.

[Valandil]

Originally Posted by Coffeehouse

:
:
A ship made of wood that could be sea-worthy and carry a thousand men sounds to be impossible. Would it be sea-worthy? Yet if there was a ship that could carry greater loads of cargo and passengers than any other sailing ship it was the Chinese junks with their multi-levelled compartments and carefully placed balast. Those ships were an oasis of stability on the seas, so perhaps the answer lies there.

I believe that the HMS Victory (and other three-decker, 100-110 gun ships of the line from that period) had a CREW of about 1,000 men. I suppose you could cram on a lot more if they were just passengers, or even soldiers who were being carried someplace. Especially if you didn't need room for all those cannons... and gunpowder... and shot.

[Coffeehouse]

Right. The article I came across stated a crew of 820 at the Battle of Trafalgar, while the total tonnage was 3,200-3,500, which is a lot more than I imagined that sort of ship could carry, so it seems possible.

Any views on the Chinese junk theory?

[Gordis]

I am totally unfamiliar with Chinese junks... can't even imagine what they looked like.

Anyway - about oars. Oars imply many rowers, most of them (if not all) slaves. ("but they had many oars and many strong slaves to row beneath the lash"-Akallabeth) It may well be that the use of oars was specific for late wicked Numenor, maybe only specific for the latest Ar-Pharazon's ships. At the time the Numenoreans enslaved ME natives, and also had a supply of convicts from jails - likely not all the imprisoned Faithful ended their lives in the Temple, most of them filled the lower decks of the King's navy.

Another thing is that, once Sauron took over Numenor, the winds and the Sea stopped to be friendly. That would necessitate oars, when previously the use of sails was more than sufficient.

Thus I guess normal Numenorean ships had no oars, Elendil's ships had no oars, probably even Ar-Pharazon's fleet that went to ME to fight Sauron had no oars. It was only the Armada preparing to sail into the forbidden West that had a new type of ships developed just for the occasion - huge ones with oars.

I believe in Gondor they didn't have oars either - but in Umbar they might have had them. One needs to be cruel enough and have a vast supply of slaves to use oars on a large scale.

[Coffeehouse]

Originally Posted by Gordis

I am totally unfamiliar with Chinese junks... can't even imagine what they looked like.

This is a depiction of an early 1400s Chinese Junk.

http://i277.photobucket.com/albums/k...hineseJunk.jpg

As you can see there's a smaller vessel in the bottom-right corner.. that's a European 1400s caravel, as used by Bartholomieu Diaz, Christopher Columbus and Vasco da Gama The actual build of the ship isn't all that different from the build of vessels such as the caravel, carrack or later galleons, except the enormous difference in size. This junk, built for Zheng He's legendary naval excursions from China and into the Indian Ocean, all the way to the Middle-East and Africa, was the largest specimen of the junk, and so it's important to underline that the average size of a Chinese junk is not even remotely as large, falling instead in the size-width of a typical carrick or even galleon.

Originally Posted by Gordis

Anyway - about oars. Oars imply many rowers, most of them (if not all) slaves. ("but they had many oars and many strong slaves to row beneath the lash"-Akallabeth) It may well be that the use of oars was specific for late wicked Numenor, maybe only specific for the latest Ar-Pharazon's ships. At the time the Numenoreans enslaved ME natives, and also had a supply of convicts from jails - likely not all the imprisoned Faithful ended their lives in the Temple, most of them filled the lower decks of the King's navy.

Well it's true that the typical imagery of oar-working shipmen are slaves aboard the 17th and 18th century galleys doing their privateering along the Barbary Coast. But that does not mean working the oars implies slavery.
We can only look to the Vikings and their longships and see that on the great voyages they undertook the oar-working shipmen were not slaves, but the crew, the traders, the warriors all-in-one. Likewise, the oar-men aboard the Chinese junks in Admiral Zheng He's fleet were not slaves, but skilled seamen.

So you know it may be premature to conclude that the ships of Gondor did not also use oars in times when the waters of the Sea were at 'peace' from the anger of the Valar.

Perhaps it boils down to, again, whether the ocean currents and possible trade winds made it easier or more difficult, excluding any influence 'from above', to say, travel from Pelagrir or Dol Amroth to Lindon.

We could also think of it this way: with the lack of a stable trading ports out in the Sea, i.e. the sunken Númenór, and a lack of peaceful ports south of Gondor, the level of seamanship in Gondor might have taken a fall, increasing the likelihood of using easier, but more labour-intensive, means of travel such as oars. Now if a fleet sent up north to Lindon was carrying an army it would not lack the manpower to man those oars.

[CAB]

Regarding the use of oars, didn't ancient (before the use of cannons, I suppose) military ships have to possess oars to be able to deal, both offensively and defensively, with other military ships. I would think that, in almost every case, an unoared ship would be at a huge disadvantage when facing an oared opponent.

[Coffeehouse]

Definitely.

If we imagine a scenario where one military vessel, large and well-equipped encounters another similarly-sized vessel. Both ships are in headwind, and the currents are strong, and some miles ahead lies a protuding peninsula with omnious-looking rocks. Now if one of the vessels for one reason or another do not want to engage in close-quarter battle, and make a daring escape ahead, the skill at which they can row away from the other vessel is the difference between life and death.

I think this does not have to stretch back to ancient history even. Until the advent of the truly powerful canon-ships in the mid 16th century, and the galleon, it's not unreasonable to assume that many ships did possess oars.

Admiral Zheng He's fleet would have another reason to employ oars. On their journey from off the Chinese coastline all the way to the waters of current-day Somalia they would encounter shallow waters, days with strong headwinds, unfavourable currents and windstill nights out on the open ocean. In those circumstances the availability of oars would be nothing but crucial.

It's probable that those very same conditions at sea confronted a Númenórean fleet heading to Lindon or elsewhere I'd say.

[Alcuin]

In the tale of “Tal-Elmar” in Peoples of Middle-earth, the Númenórean vessels had black sails on them. I can’t find my text, but I do recall that the implication was that there was more than one sail on at least the principal ship in the story. So the Númenórean vessels in the middle of the Second Age were sailing ships with more than one sail, and probably more than one mast. The Dúnadan captain told Tal-Elmar, who feared the black sails of his ship meant that it was in the service of Sauron, that his black sails represented the night, which the Faithful Dúnedain honored because of the stars.

In Return of the King, the vessels of the Corsairs of Umbar that were seized by Aragorn had both sails and oars. And these also had black sails, only theirs were probably to strike fear into the folk of Gondor. The folk of Umbar were of Númenórean or mixed Númenórean descent, and their sailing technology was probably similar to that of the folk of Gondor and descended from their Dúnedain ancestors, as well as from innovations brought from Gondor by the followers of the sons of Castamir the Usurper after the Kin-strife of Gondor.

Not all oarsmen were slaves. The kidnapped folk of Gondor were enslaved by the Corsairs; after Aragorn and the Grey Company freed them at Pelargir, they rowed as freemen. The Vikings were certainly not slaves: they were freemen. The Greek sailors of the Argonaut and from the journeys of Odysseus were not slaves either. In the great naval battles of Artemisium and Salamis during the Second Persian Invasion of Greece in 480 BC, the Greeks gave part of the credit for their victory to the rowers, who unlike the Persian rowers, were all free men.

The Spanish occasionally rowed the galleons of their treasure fleet in the sixteenth century. If galleons were becalmed, the vessels were equipped with oars so that the crew could row for a while until their ship reached wind again.

The famous Pauline Baynes map of Middle-earth that appeared in the 1974 Tolkien Calendar has one, two, and three-masted ships on it. The map was drawn during Tolkien’s lifetime and with his approval. The ships Baynes depicted look like longships, cogs, caravels, or carracks. Baynes prepared maps for both Tolkien and CS Lewis, as well as other artwork for Narnia for Lewis, and for Tolkien, Farmer Giles of Ham, Adventures of Tom Bombadil, Smith of Wootton Major, Tree and Leaf, and Bilbo's Last Song. In Smith of Wootton Major, the elves visiting England who sailed from Tol Eressëa are depicted disembarking from a single-masted ship much akin to a Viking longboat. This picture was also drawn during Tolkien’s lifetime.

[Coffeehouse]

Interesting map! I actually haven't seen it before. Did Tolkien really approve of the map?

From the look of it there are ships of a great variety indeed. From what I can spot there are similarities to Phoenican, Venetian, Norse, Portuguese, Spanish vessels and the galleys of the Barbary coast pirates.

None of the ships depicted are especially large ships, though one of them could be a smaller carrack (less than 1000 ton is my guess, though I could be wrong). Yet it does not exclude the likelihood of larger ships. Fleets bred for the purpose of war and the transport of self-supplied armies would be rare (despite piracy raids) and so large ships would be the exception not the rule, with most vessels sailing under the flag of Gondor being the size of carracks, caravels and lesser, for purposes of commerce.

Interesting that the ships of Gondor sailed under black sails. Indeed the colour of the sails on the map are blackish-greenish with an emblem the shape of a star(?)

[Alcuin]

Originally Posted by Coffeehouse

Did Tolkien really approve of the map?

My understanding is that, Yes, he did. All of the other pictures in the 1974 Tolkien Calendar were drawn by Tolkien himself. It would be out of character for the family, which oversees the production of the Calendars, to publish something of which they knew their father would disapprove, particularly right after his death in August 1973.

I don’t believe we can pin down exactly what kinds of ships the Dúnedain sailed. We can get a good idea from Tolkien’s own descriptions and from the illustrations he and other people drew, as long as he approved of them. (He worked with Pauline Baynes for nearly 25 years.) I can’t locate my copy of Tolkien Artist and Illustrator either (my office is a real mess), but I do recall that there is a color drawing in it of a longship-type vessel with a large swan-prow (reminiscent of the description of Galadriel’s barge or the ships of the Teleri at Alqualondë), oars, and one mast with a square sail. I think I recall it was an Elven-ship.

[Coffeehouse]

I think that proves, nearly without doubt, that there was an array of different ships that traversed the seas off Middle-Earth. I don't think either that the Tolkien family would publish such a calendar if it weren't in line with what JRRT himself thought.

If we return to one of the earlier questions in the thread, it dealt with the time spent from the message calling for aid arrived in Gondor, until the time the Númenórean fleet landed at Lindon, and at least in the context of it taking weeks or months, the Númenóreans definitely seemed to have the capability of long stays out on the high seas and would seemingly, judging by sails on the drawings on the map, have the ability to tack very close up to a headwind.

The vessel you're describing sounds very familiar, I think I've seen that picture before sometime. Would it happen to be in the Grey Havens by any chance?

[Alcuin]

Originally Posted by Coffeehouse

The vessel you're describing sounds very familiar, I think I've seen that picture before sometime. Would it happen to be in the Grey Havens by any chance?

I don't know. I cannot locate my copy.

[CAB]

This may sound a little silly, but I would like to sincerely thank everyone for their comments on this thread, especially Alcuin and Coffeehouse. I learned quite a bit from you two. Thank you.

[The Dread Pirate Roberts]

Not silly at all. I think most of us learn something in every thread here (in the top half of the Moot, at least).

[Coffeehouse]

Thrilled to be of some slight enlightenment CAB. The pleasure of reading Alcuin, Attalus, CAB, DPR and Gordis (these past weeks) is mutual I can assure you all

[Varnafindë]

Originally Posted by Coffeehouse

Interesting map! I actually haven't seen it before. Did Tolkien really approve of the map?

Hey, I hadn't seen this thread! I've seen the map, though - a friend of mine has got a copy of it on her wall.

Yes, Tolkien approved of it. Brian Sibley tells in his blogspot obituary of Pauline Baynes in August last year that she told him of taking her artwork for the Middle-earth map to show Tolkien, and that Tolkien was pleased with the map, apart from one mis-spelled name that had to be corrected.

Brian Sibley's blogspot obituary of Pauline Baynes

My Norwegian translation, posted with Sibley's permission

[Earniel]

I don't think I had seen that map before. Man, she was an awesome artist.