Ships

Numerous different ships ply the oceans of the Known World.

House Baratheon of Dragonstone Fleet

 * Fury
 * Black Betha

Iron Fleet

 * Sea Bitch

Other ships in the Seven Kingdoms

 * Myraham - a trading galley from Oldtown in the Reach

Outside the Seven Kingdoms

 * Balerion - the ship which Daenerys Targaryen traveled in from Qarth to Astapor in Slaver's Bay. She renamed in "Balerion" in honor of the dragon ridden by his ancestor Aegon the Conqueror in the War of Conquest.

In the books
In the A Song of Ice and Fire novels, only three fulls-scale fleets operate in the ocean-waters around Westeros:


 * The Royal Fleet - in the east, docked at Dragonstone to defend nearby King's Landing from attack.
 * The Redwyne Fleet - in the southwest, belonging to House Redwyne staunch vassals of House Tyrell.  It is based at the Redwyne's holdings in the Arbor, a large island-region off the coast of the Reach.
 * The Iron Fleet - in the west, belonging to the ironborn, under the command of their current ruler from House Greyjoy.

Other major lords might keep a war galley or three in their ports to ward off pirates, but do not possess major offensive capabilities. While House Lannister can afford a reasonably well-sized fleet docked at Lannisport, due to the close proximity of the Iron Islands to the coasts of the Westerlands their ships are kept in a defensive posture to protect ports such as Lannisport from attack. The Lannister fleet was burned during the Greyjoy Rebellion but subsequently rebuilt. Even so, when the War of the Five Kings breaks out the Lannisters never consider using their relatively small naval forces for offensive actions, particularly because the Greyjoys declared their independence again. The small local Lannister fleet is arrayed to defend Lannisport, where its presence at least deters the ironborn from trying to launch an attack from the sea.

House Tyrell is in somewhat the same position as the Lannisters, but must rely even more on their bannermen, as unlike Casterly Rock and Lannisport, their seat at Highgarden is located far up the Mander River, not on the coast where they could dock large ocean-going ships. The wealthy House Hightower of Oldtown, also staunch vassals of House Tyrell from the Reach, can also afford a reasonably well-sized fleet. It includes several impressively sized dromonds, rivaling flagships of the Royal Fleet in size. However they favor a quality-over-quantity approach, and have relatively few ships overall. The Hightower fleet is better suited to defense of the immediate area around Oldtown, but is not considered to be the equal of the Redwyne Fleet, owned by their neighboring vassals just to the south: of the fleets maintained by local vassals in the Reach, only the Redwyne Fleet is capable of large-scale offensive actions on-par with the Royal Fleet or Iron Fleet.

While the Royal Fleet is stationed in the east, the Redwyne Fleet in the south, and the Iron Fleet in the west, House Stark in the North has had no strength at sea for centuries, not since Brandon the Burner destroyed the Northern fleet, after his father sailed west into the Sunset Sea and never returned.

At the outbreak of the War of the Five Kings, the Royal Fleet in the east consists of about 200 war galleys plus support ships, and the Redwyne Fleet also consists of about 200 war galleys plus support ships. The Iron Fleet consists of 100 longships, which are faster than war galleys but have less tonnage, but are only the core ships which are held to belong to the Iron Islands as a whole, directly under the command of House Greyjoy, and which can dip 100 oars each. The Iron Fleet is supported by other longships which belong to each of the noble Houses of the ironborn, which collectively number over 500 longships, though most dip only 20 oars and are meant to quickly transport raiding parties, not to engage in pitched ship-to-ship naval combat.

Up until the Battle of the Blackwater, no faction (other than the ironborn) made extensive use of ships to maneuver in the war. Stannis was gathering his ships for a quick and decisive strike at King's Landing itself, while the Lannisters were holding their ships back to brace for Stannis' assault. While the Battle of the Blackwater did remove the threat of further assaults on the capital by Stannis, this left Joffrey's Royal Fleet so depleted that no thought was given to naval maneuvers against other factions such as House Stark (i.e. with barely a dozen ships afloat, the Lannisters never considered making a sea-based invasion of White Harbor in the North). Thus the War of the Five Kings would continue to be decided by land forces.

The naval forces available to the Iron Throne were so depleted that for many months after the battle no thought was given to making a follow-up assault upon Stannis' stronghold on Dragonstone island, because the Lannisters simply no longer possessed the number of ships needed to mount an invasion of the formidable island fortress. Stannis was left sidelined from the war, bereft of most of his army and unable to make any significant strikes again, while the Lannisters were content to let him rot on Dragonstone while they rebuilt their superior forces (as seen in Season 3 of the TV series).

Yara Greyjoy (named "Asha" in the books) is captain of her own ship in the Iron Fleet. The books specify that the name of her ship is the Black Wind.