The Wooden Whale

Aldarion, the Great Captain of Númenor and the King's Heir, was a famed builder of ships. His vessel Palarran, the Far-Wanderer, was said to have been the largest ever to have been made in its time, and he sailed it to Middle-earth four times. After Aldarion returned to Númenor from his fourth voyage aboard the Palarran, he began to conceive of a vessel to dwarf even that ship, a vessel to be compared to a castle on the sea, or even to a town.

Aldarion began the building of this ship in about the year II 875,¹ laying down its mighty keel in the haven of Rómenna, a city famed for its shipwrights. As the ribbed form of the immense new vessel began to take shape, those who saw it gave it the name of Turuphanto, which translates as the 'Wooden Whale'. It took some two years to complete, but in the spring of II 877 the great ship was ready to set sail.

The 'Wooden Whale' was not the ship's true name, and it was launched as Hirilondë the 'Haven-finder'. At that time Aldarion had duties ashore and no permission from his father the King to depart from Númenor, but nonetheless he did so. He sailed away as soon as he could, with no Bough of Return set on the ship's prow. Nonetheless the Haven-finder did return to Númenor, after a voyage of five years. Aboard was a letter from Gil-galad of Lindon, warning of a rising Shadow in Middle-earth, and that warning caused King Tar-Meneldur to resign the Sceptre to his son Aldarion, whom he deemed better able to judge such a danger.

The old 'Wooden Whale' departed from Númenor for at least one more voyage, after Aldarion had received the Sceptre and become King Tar-Aldarion. On that voyage it bore a new figurehead in the form of an Eagle, a gift from the Círdan the Shipwright. Tar-Aldarion may have made further voyages in the ship but, if so, no records of any such voyages survive.