User blog:TheMightyContorted/How powerful is the Iron fleet?

With Daenerys preparing to go to war, and Cersei preparing to defend the entire country against her, I'm surprised that not many people were debating the numbers for each sides' Military strength before season 7. I did do a little bit of math myself to work some stuff out. We know that Dany's army is huge, with over 100,000 Men, what with her 100,000 Dothraki and 8,000 Unsullied. The rest was a bit hard to work out, but official numbers for House Tyrell and what was essentially the majority of Dorne were given. The Tyrelll army consisted of around 45,000, considering that they'd steered clear of the War of the Five Kings, and hadn't actually seen combat until Dany's invasion, but the Dornish army was a little more blurry. Considering how barren Dorne is, the estimate, most people agree, is around 15,000-20,000 Dornish soldiers, although the exact number is debatable. That adds to a minimal of 160,000 Men. But, hey. Lets not forget the Greyjoys, who brought 100 ships from the Iron fleet as Daenerys put it, although we don't know how many soldiers were in said fleet exactly. That's where the question hit me. Euron is perfectly happy to make a scene about how invincible the Iron fleet is, but how powerful was it? How many soldiers does it have in it? This is a question I kept asking myself, considering that he managed to sneak up on Yara's fleet without fail, and then go all the way to Casterly Rock undetected. So, just how much does the Iron fleet contribute to Cersei's army?

We've already established that Daenerys' army is impressively large, but Cersei's army is also reasonably large. According to this wiki, the Lannister army, after several consecutive battles, including the Battle of Blackwater Bay, has been cut down to arond 20,000-30,000 troops. Alongside the Tarly forces, which consisted of around 15,000, that makes at least 45,000 troops, which is more realistic considering that they were ambshed by a gigantic Dothraki cavalry charge being lead by a bloody Dragon and, for the most part, held their own, which is another topic I'll be writing about in the future. Doesn't sound like much against Dany's 160,000 though, does it? Let's throw Euron Greyjoy and his big co-I mean, his Iron fleet, into the mix. Before we establish anything, I want to take a look at his menacing ship "Silence".

For late medieval standards, the Silence is impressively large. With several sails, an armoured and pointed front, gigantic bow and towering mast, It easily dwarfs every other ship in the Iron fleet and, as we saw in season 7's second episode, is easily capable of taking down ships that rival its' size. However, what is it used for? As we've seen, Euron's fleet certainly comes with Warships that hold siege weapons, considering he's fond of flinging flaming balls at his enemies. But, when the Silence attacked Yara's Flagship, it didn't fire anything at all. Instead, it used its' pointed front like a spear, slamming into the side of the ship, and then dropping a sort of bridge down like an axe that held the ship it was attacking in place. So, the Silence is clearly not built as a ranged combat ship, so what purpose does it have?

The obvious answer is that it's Euron's personal Flagship. His office can be seen at the back of the ship, he probably has a brig in there somewhere considering what he does in the books, and the ship is certainly large enough to have several floors to it. My theory is that the ship acts as a sort of boarding vessel, designed to specifically target large enemy Flagships and Warships, holding them in place while soldiers from the inside rush along the deployable axe-bridge...thing, and onto the enemy's deck. So perhaps the Silence is sort of like a troop transport ship? A boarding vessel? An anti-ship vessel? Judging by the ships' size, and the fact that it wouldn't need to allocate storage space to siege equipment, it could easily hold around 150 Men inside it, and if we're being generous, perhaps even 200, right? It's honestly hard to work out. All we have to go on is size, appearance and historical equivalents to make our verdict. There is lore surrounding the Silence in the show and books, but they can be passed off as myths and legends, since people in Westeros sure like their gossip. My theory is that the Silence is used, in almost every scenario, similarly to how Euron used it to attack Yara's fleet. Hook onto large enemy ships and dispense a big enough cluster of Ironborn warriors that they can brutalise the crew and essentially render the ship useless. It's a topic I find personally interesting, but I'm going off-topic. Let's get back to answering our question. How powerful is the rest of the fleet?

We know that the Ironborn are loosely based on the Vikings, so we can use that to figure out how each type of ship they use is built and used. Now, let's give the show's universe the benefit of the doubt here, and trust Eurons' specified number of 1,000 ships. If we're following basic fleet structure, which we should considering that the Ironborn are slightly more intelligent than the Vikings, that means that the fleet should have around 600-700 Longships in it, meaning the bulk of the fleet is dedicated to carrying Ironborn warriors. That leaves at least 300 warships in the fleet, and of course one Flagship, the Silence. Considering how massive the fleet is, it's possible that there are multiple Flaghips, possibly around 20 or 30, but we've only seen the Silence so far. Also, before you ask me where the Hell they got all the wood from, I haven't a clue. They probably stole it from the North, considering the amount of forests in it. They could easily get away with it too, as Jon doesn't seem to care about anything that isn't a White Walker these days. Viking Longships could easily carry 60 Men, but if we're being realistic here at least 10 or 20 of them would be members of the crew, since the Ironborn tend to rely more on sails and wind than Manpower and rowing when it comes to getting from place to place. During attacks, the crew would probably stay put on the ship. The Ironborn aren't stupid enough to leave their ships unmanned while attacking, it seems.

As for the Warships, every shot we've seen of the Iron fleet shows that they're around the same size as the Longships, if ever so slightly larger, so their crew at least consists of 20 Men. However, they have siege equipment on them. So far, we've seen that Westeros' siege technology has only really progressed as far as ballistas, catapults and trebuchets, and the siege weapons that Daenerys used at the gates of Mereen closely resemble small, spring-mechanism catapults to be exact, which were operated roughly by 5 people in a combat scenario. The catapults used at Mereen are a nice size for the ships in the Iron fleet, so the Warships are possibly crewed by 25 people each. So, how big is Yara's fleet? Again, following basic fleet structure, 70 of the ships would probably be Longships, and 30 of them being Warships, with Yara's Flagship "Black Wind" leading the fleet. With 60 people on each Longship, and 25 on each Warship, Yara's fleet probably consists of around 5,000 Men, which is miniscule considering the rest of Daenerys' army. However, the numbers are still blurry, considering a majority of the Dornish armies were being carried and were killed in Euron's ambush.

So, the Iron fleet has 700 Longships holding 60 people each, and 300 Warships crewed by 25 people each. That brings us to a number of around 50,000 Men, which sounds like a LOT, right? ESPECIALLY for the Iron Islands. However, looking at a map of Westeros, Dragonstone, which is where Dany's entire army landed, is rather small compared to the Iron Islands, and it's apparently large enough to compensate for an army of around 160,000 Men, with perhaps a chunk of them on ships, so it's reasonable to suggest that the Iron Islands could muster 50,000 Men in a short span of time. However, that would suggest that, with those numbers, the Ironborn should be successfully able to invade the North every single time they try. The North had over 20,000 Men in it before the Red Wedding, solely loyal to House Stark. The Riverlands, who would have no doubt assisted in their defense, had around 15,000-17,000 to, so the North only had a defensive army of 37,000. What's the deal? Well, here's the thing. Remember how I said that around 10-20 of the people on each Longship and would be crew members, making them sailors and not warriors? Well that means that only 40 Men on each Longship would be deployed to attack enemies. As well as that, the Warships wouldn't take part in the land assaults either. So, that drops the attacking force down to around 28,000 Men, which is much more believable. So there we go. Euron's Iron fleet consists of a Military power of roughly 28,000 Men, bumping Cersei's numbers from 35,000 to around 60,000, making them much more realistic. This means Euron would probably only need around 100 Longships and I'd say 70 Warships to gain a clear advantage in his ambush, making it easier to sneak up on Yara's fleet. Plus, even if he didn't sneak up on them and Yara was just slow to realise what was going on, his numbers were more than enough to completely wipe out the fleet. Also, his attack seems more pluasable considering the Greyjoy Longships were filled with Dornish soldiers, who aren't used to fighting at sea.

So there you go. 28,000 soldiers on 700 Longships, with 14,000 people crewing them, and 7,500 people crewing 300 Warships. As for the Silence, I'd estimate that, despite its' size, only around 30 people crew it, and it's possibly capable of holding 200 Men, topping Euron's 28,000 Men to 28,200 Men. Of course, the exact number is still debatable, and I'm probably going wrong somewhere here, so I encourage people to talk and debate in the comments of this blog, and I'd welcome the discussion. Thanks for reading and hope you found the article useful.