Umbar was once the chief southern port of Gondor, but after the fall of Numenor and ages of strife, Umbar became an independent rival state under the control of the Haradrim.
The Corsairs of Umbar were nominally privateers, though their fleet included more than 50 capital warships, more interested in destroying Gondorian vessels to exert dominance than raiding them for the sake of simple profit.
About this creation
I've been meaning to do a ship for some time now, and I've also been on a bit of a LOTR kick of late, so the Corsairs of Umbar seemed like a good way to kill two birds with one brick.
I debated for some time as to what the ship should look like. The Peter Jackson film envisioned a boat with strong eastern influences, like a junk or a dhow, but I know many history buffs and fans of the books who firmly avow that the ships are clearly dromonds while still others avidly argue in favor of caravels. After much internal debate, it suddenly dawned on me that, while Tolkien's work was clearly informed by history, it was in no way constrained by it and that, rather than trying to cram an accurate model of an historical ship into Middle Earth, I should just build something with lanteen sails (the only feature all the candidate ships and the text itself had in common)that looked both cool and intimidating.
Hopefully it's pretty clear that this is a warship, long keel, narrow beam, battering ram just below the waterline; why even pretend to be a cargo ship?
I was really going for something that looked like it could slice through a ships hull as easily as it cut through the waves. The raised afterdeck is so the helmsman can line up a clean shot over the heads of raiders waiting to board the enemy vessel.
The top of the ram's base is just visible above the waterline on the bow.
A bank of oars (11 per side) helps to put on the extra head of steam for ramming speed (and backing away afterwards)
The elevated stern affords a commanding view of the surroundings.
The wing tipped walls capped with studs are purely gratuitous, but hey it keeps things interesting.
The rigging (or entire lack thereof) could use some work, but overall I'm happy with how things came out.