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Timeline Event

Elendil and the Faithful escape the Downfall of Númenor (estimated date)

Event Type: General

Age: Akallabêth/Last Alliance

Date: May 9, 3319

Description:

An event in the Downfall of Númenor; see that entry for an overview:
But whether or no it were that Amandil came indeed to Valinor and Manwë hearkened to his prayer, by grace of the Valar Elendil and his sons and their people were spared from the ruin of that day. For Elendil had remained in Rómenna, refusing the summons of the King when he set forth to war.... [He] went aboard his ship and stood off from the shore, waiting on the time. There he was protected by the land from the great draught of the sea that drew all towards the abyss, and afterwards he was sheltered from the first fury of the storm. But when the devouring wave rolled over the land and Númenor toppled to its fall, then he would have been overwhelmed...; but the great wind took him, wilder than any wind that Men had known, roaring from the west, and it swept his ships far away; and it rent their sails and snapped their masts, hunting the unhappy men like straws upon the water.

Nine ships there were: four for Elendil, and for Isildur three, and for Anárion two; and they fled before the black gale out of the twilight of doom into the darkness of the world. And the deeps rose beneath them in towering anger, and waves like unto mountains moving with great caps of writhen snow bore them up amid the wreckage of the clouds, and after many days cast them away upon the shores of Middle-earth.

The Silmarillion, Akallabêth

The last leaders of the Faithful, Elendil and his sons, escaped from the Downfall with nine ships, bearing a seedling of Nimloth, and the Seven Seeing-stones (gifts of the Eldar to their House); and they were borne on the wings of a great storm and cast up on the shores of Middle-earth.

The Return of the King, LoTR Appendix A, Annals of the Kings and Rulers: Númenor

Of Númenor [Elrond] spoke, its glory and its fall, and the return of the Kings of Men to Middle-earth out of the deeps of the Sea, borne upon the wings of storm. Then Elendil the Tall and his mighty sons, Isildur and Anárion, became great lords....

The Fellowship of the Ring, LoTR Book 2, Ch 2, The Council of Elrond


Notes
The year is canon, but the date is an estimate, set to follow the estimated date of the sailing of the Great Armament by thirty-nine days.

Contributors:
Elena Tiriel 27Nov05

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