Low Bridge, Everybody Down

[Arnorion]

Much has been said in the last few episodes about the in-game design of the Baranduin Bridge, as well as the imagined but reasonably placed bridge at King's Crossing near the outflow of Nenuial. I agree that as the landed descendants of a seafaring culture the Dunedain of the North must have been making use of the waterways extensively but I cannot understand how the river could be navigable by deep-water ships from mouth to source given the placement of the Sarn Ford.

It seems that this stony crossing must necessarily have stopped water traffic at this very shallow point if it was indeed passable by wading. I can imagine small canoes or possibly flat-bottomed barges getting though but nothing more. It is possible that a portage system was used to connect the upper and lower portions like what the Gondorians used to pass the Ruaros falls but that seems like a lot of work. With the Sarn Ford barrier firmly established in the text it seems reasonable that the bridge allowing the great road to cross the river (and any other hypothetical bridges) could have been smaller in scale than what would have been required to allow a large ship to pass.

Also, wouldn't the original bridge here have been of dwarf make? I believe they first constructed this portion of the great east-west road to connect Nogrod and Belegost to the high pass over the Misty Mountains allowing them to traffic with the dwarf clans in the the Orocarni in the distant east. Is that not the case?

 

[FoxFire]

Oh that's interesting. I'd forgotten about Sarn Ford. But right, that would have made the river impassable for any deep water ships sailing up the river.

But there is a good 220 - 250 miles from Sarn Ford to Annuminas. So now I suspect that if they used the river for transportation, they would have had to have used, as you said, flat bottom barges and smaller water craft. (Still makes the in game representation of the Brandywine bridge too low to pass under, but perhaps not High Kings Crossing).

Rivers make for an easy, maintenance free, route of transportation, so it would seem reasonable to use it if they could. Perhaps they would have brought people and things from the mouth of the Baranduin as far north as they could in sailing ships, ferried them across land a ways, and then used other watercraft from that point up to Lake Evendim as needed. The Lake itself was large enough that they likely used various boats and/or ships to travel about the lake.