Two Royal Navies clash - GB vs Numenor

King Ar-Pharazôn of Númenor is sailing to invade Valinor. However, Eru thinks why let them get there and sink a continent, etc - why not do this? Opening a portal to 1815 Earth, he ports the entire sailing Royal Navy to interpose between Numenor and Valinor. The admirals are told that they will get back to Earth with spoils if they take care of the Numenor fleets.

Now that Royal Navy has cannons of course and are battle hardened. The Numenors have a vast fleet with thousands of soldiers and men of mildy superhuman physical abilities.

Who wins the day?

[QUOTE=Captain Smith;6227027]King Ar-Pharazôn of Númenor is sailing to invade Valinor. However, Eru thinks why let them get there and sink a continent, etc - why not do this? Opening a portal to 1815 Earth, he ports the entire sailing Royal Navy to interpose between Numenor and Valinor. The admirals are told that they will get back to Earth with spoils if they take care of the Numenor fleets.

Now that Royal Navy has cannons of course and are battle hardened. The Numenors have a vast fleet with thousands of soldiers and men of mildy superhuman physical abilities.

Who wins the day?[/QUOTE]

This is book Numenor or TV Numenor?

I'm not... Sure it really matters, considering the Royal Navy has an air fleet.

[QUOTE=Cthulhu_of_R'lyeh;6227387]I'm not... Sure it really matters, considering the Royal Navy has an air fleet.[/QUOTE]

The Royal Navy from 1815?

Anyway, I give the long range to the Brits. Canon fire is gonna do a lot of damage. But if the Numenoreans get close enough, the tide turns drastically. Book version, that is.

[QUOTE=Jackalope89;6227391]The Royal Navy from 1815?

Anyway, I give the long range to the Brits. Canon fire is gonna do a lot of damage. But if the Numenoreans get close enough, the tide turns drastically. Book version, that is.[/QUOTE]

Oh lol, I missed the 1815 bit.

They got uh... Hot Air Balloons.

No idea based on Canon text. I mean, how many warships would it take to endure the cannon-fire and close to Númenorean steel-bow range? British navy has 130 ships of the line and 600+ frigates at this point; we have very little on in-canon Númenorean ships (they are sail powered, no cannon) and numbers (there are flipping thousands of them, but how many thousands?).

Hard to say. Can the Númenoreans accept massive losses and get within steel-bow range, ramming range, or boarding range? Or do they not have enough numbers and just get shot to bits? It is a mystery.

Based on the expanded Tolkien stuff, Númenoreans absolutely crush this, having similar numbers but their ships being engine-powered ironclads (or fully metal) carrying artillery of some kind (rockets, from the description).

Excuse my ignorance on expanded stuff. I thought we were looking at lots of Roman, Middle Ages ships. Iron clad, engines and rockets - news to me. I read just LOTR years ago. The show ships were rather primitive.

Did the Elves have cruise ships with engines?

If it's engine powered, it's the Numenors.

[QUOTE=Captain Smith;6227726]Excuse my ignorance on expanded stuff. I thought we were looking at lots of Roman, Middle Ages ships. Iron clad, engines and rockets - news to me. I read just LOTR years ago. The show ships were rather primitive.[/quote]

In [I]The Silmarillion[/I], the Númenorean stuff IS more into the area of more primitive stuff than 1815. Lots of discussion on it online, but nobody can point to anything conclusive. We know they were sail-powered, we know they were ocean going with ease, we know they were considered pretty scary by the standards of the time and place. So that would put them above quite a few Roman and Middle Age ships (the whole ocean-going and perfectly safely, sail powered thing).

That's the [I]primary [/I]canon. Hence my first comment in my post, above: with Primary Canon...I don't know? It comes down to numbers, and all we know is that Númenor had a truly gigantic navy.

[quote]Did the Elves have cruise ships with engines?[/quote]

Eärendil had a void-worthy ship that flew between the stars (potentially outfitted with point-defense and powerful weapon systems, given how he took down Ancalagon but we don't have anything on that). <-- True, but not germane to the discussion, and also only became that way after the Valar - presumably Aulë and Varda - fiddled with it. More seriously, no, they didn't; Eldar were less-interested (like, not at all) in 'technology' and really didn't require it.

[quote]If it's engine powered, it's the Numenors.[/QUOTE]

So, in Tolkien's expanded ideas (that he either didn't get to, or didn't end up liking and shelved, or whatever) that never made the edit into [I]The Silmarillion[/I]...okay, small aside: it should be noted that [I]Sil[/I] was basically edited from his father's notes by Christopher Tolkien, who chose the particular version he felt was best (like, he had a LOT of versions to choose from, and didn't necessarily go with 'the most recent', because whooo, that one would have changed a whole lot). So [I]The Silmarillion[/I] is primary canon; we can't really say it's where Tolkien would have ended up (it is not), but it is effectively the only solid canon we have.

*coughs*

To recommence, in Tolkien's expanded ideas there are discussions with Númenorean people where ironclad ('metal', actually) ships that need no sails are described, where they talk about these ships firing 'darts' that are propelled over vast distances (rockets), etc. Heck, the fact that the Númenoreans made 'engines' is actually in [I]The Silmarillion[/I] (and thus primary canon), even if the tech-ships didn't make it. Basically, at one point Tolkien was toying with the idea of Númenor having steam-powered tech.

In many ways, Lord of the Rings is a [I]post-apocalypse[/I] setting. It takes place in a world where the Elvish civilizations have dwindled to tiny enclaves (thanks to both wars and the Eldar just leaving) that desperately seek to hold back the ravages of Time, where the ancient dwarven bastions have fallen to dragonfire and war, where the powerful, highly-advanced Númenorean civilization (a civilization that made buildings of surpassing durability that could no longer be duplicated, that made weapons with spells on them to defeat specific foes, that had hoards of lore, etc, and honestly looked to be approaching renaissance levels of technology and philosophy even without Tolkien's expanded ideas) has not only fallen due to endless war, necromantic plagues, and the world being shattered, but what remains of it is barely more than the base human civilizations that have sprung up. It's a world where vast areas of land are considered wildlands now and are filled with ancient ruins and dangers...and human (and Hobbit) civilizations are basically Middle Ages to varying degrees. Even the height of human civilization - Gondor - is only a shadow of what it once was, not even approaching Númenor...just a faint memory of its glory.

Tolkien's expanded ideas wandered into territory that took that a little further in some ways.

Interesting. Thanks for spending the time with such an update. I've always wondered why lots of fantasy worlds get stuck in the Middle Ages. Of course, there are the magic and tech worlds around. One ponders if the Hogwarts kids would find Iphones and that would speak to the end of their isolation.

One ponders if Rome had not fallen and the Greek scientific progress and Roman engineering continued to progress. Why we would on other star systems by now! Speaking Latin to aliens!

[QUOTE=Captain Smith;6228059]Interesting. Thanks for spending the time with such an update. I've always wondered why lots of fantasy worlds get stuck in the Middle Ages. Of course, there are the magic and tech worlds around. One ponders if the Hogwarts kids would find Iphones and that would speak to the end of their isolation.[/quote]

In fairness, JRRT was a bit of a pioneer in terms of 'modern' high fantasy. But there are plenty of different fantasy series where the tech level varies wildly from our Middle Ages, be they 'different worlds' or 'Urban fantasy' in our world. There are even space opera series with magic or the equivalent.

[QUOTE=Captain Smith;6228059]Interesting. Thanks for spending the time with such an update. I've always wondered why lots of fantasy worlds get stuck in the Middle Ages. Of course, there are the magic and tech worlds around. One ponders if the Hogwarts kids would find Iphones and that would speak to the end of their isolation.

One ponders if Rome had not fallen and the Greek scientific progress and Roman engineering continued to progress. Why we would on other star systems by now! Speaking Latin to aliens![/QUOTE]

Well, in a shipwreck that was thought destined for Rome, was an ancient computer.
[url]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism[/url]

[QUOTE]Eärendil had a void-worthy ship that flew between the stars (potentially outfitted with point-defense and powerful weapon systems, given how he took down Ancalagon but we don't have anything on that)[/QUOTE]

Forehead projected Silmaril lasers, damnit!

[QUOTE=Pendaran;6230509]Forehead projected Silmaril lasers, damnit![/QUOTE]

Sorry, sorry, I forgot the Rumbles canon!

[QUOTE=Sharpandpointies;6230625]Sorry, sorry, I forgot the Rumbles canon![/QUOTE]

Hehe. Head cannon. Heh.

[QUOTE=The Arbiter;6230649]Hehe. Head cannon. Heh.[/QUOTE]
*whistles nonchalantly*