Bard the Bowman
🤡 - Banned User
- Joined
- May 23, 2011
- Messages
- 418
We are all asking it; we're all thinking it. How did two powerful kingdoms come into being in 100 years, all from 9 ships?
First of all, how could Anarion hold back Sauron's might with just the contents of 5 ships?
Let us first examine the facts.
1. The Numenoreans were incredibly skilled shipbuilders and mariners.
2. The Faithful, although a minority and persecuted, still would have been a relatively large group.
3. There would have been Faithful already on Middle-earth, although some definitely would have been killed by Sauron and the Black Numenoreans.
So, keeping this in mind, I think we need to examine how many people could fit on a ship. Let us compare it to a Napoleonic War frigate. Now this is definitely an exaggeration, but let's just try this. On a war frigate, the crew numbered around 200-250. That's just crew. Let's say you were running for your life and your families needed to be on there. You could probably jam that number up to 1000 if you needed to. That's 9000 people, but we'll bump it up to 10000, just to be nice. And kids are small, you squeeze 5,000 more on. So 15,000, and that isn't including casualties of the sea, which they had. Now on to Gondor.
So Anarion lands with 8000 men, women, and children and sets up Gondor. Let's say he enlists 2000 surviving Faithful soldiers already there and their families, putting his population around 13,000. So maybe 6000 soldiers. In a hundred years there would be about 5 generations, and probably about 1 male per family. If almost every male is enlisted, then that puts the total males at around 36,000. This isn't including deaths or men dying of old age, but that would probably bring it back down to 30,000.
Now this number is very very generous and not taking into account the people washed overboard or who died from disease from being cramped in such tight quarters on the ships. Anarion probably had only 25,000 soldiers to start the Last Alliance, and Elendil about 20 thousand. The elves probably contributed between 20 to 30 thousand. The dwarves, maybe 5000 at the max. Other men, maybe half that.
First of all, how could Anarion hold back Sauron's might with just the contents of 5 ships?
Let us first examine the facts.
1. The Numenoreans were incredibly skilled shipbuilders and mariners.
2. The Faithful, although a minority and persecuted, still would have been a relatively large group.
3. There would have been Faithful already on Middle-earth, although some definitely would have been killed by Sauron and the Black Numenoreans.
So, keeping this in mind, I think we need to examine how many people could fit on a ship. Let us compare it to a Napoleonic War frigate. Now this is definitely an exaggeration, but let's just try this. On a war frigate, the crew numbered around 200-250. That's just crew. Let's say you were running for your life and your families needed to be on there. You could probably jam that number up to 1000 if you needed to. That's 9000 people, but we'll bump it up to 10000, just to be nice. And kids are small, you squeeze 5,000 more on. So 15,000, and that isn't including casualties of the sea, which they had. Now on to Gondor.
So Anarion lands with 8000 men, women, and children and sets up Gondor. Let's say he enlists 2000 surviving Faithful soldiers already there and their families, putting his population around 13,000. So maybe 6000 soldiers. In a hundred years there would be about 5 generations, and probably about 1 male per family. If almost every male is enlisted, then that puts the total males at around 36,000. This isn't including deaths or men dying of old age, but that would probably bring it back down to 30,000.
Now this number is very very generous and not taking into account the people washed overboard or who died from disease from being cramped in such tight quarters on the ships. Anarion probably had only 25,000 soldiers to start the Last Alliance, and Elendil about 20 thousand. The elves probably contributed between 20 to 30 thousand. The dwarves, maybe 5000 at the max. Other men, maybe half that.
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