I am no scholar, but here are my thoughts upon your problem:
When in doubt, leave it as vague as possible.
Of course, being vague is never a good thing, but, let me try to explain with the example of the ship: most ships are pretty much the same. They have the sails and mast, etc. You can also base the ships upon the races that inspired Tolkien's peoples (they were inspired, weren't they, or am I remembering wrong?). But my point is this: instead of focusing on the ship, you can focus on other things, thus making your writing descriptive, yet leaving the object of doubt residing safely in vagueness.
As Bb mentioned, RPG/fan fictions can either be rigidly Tolkien's style, or just a looser form of that style. Either way, Tolkien himself was not that descriptive of details in true mythic style. He gave us enough, and I'm sure that we can draw on that knowledge for our own writings.
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Originally Posted by Ealasaide
Which begs another question... has technology remained stagnant in Middle Earth throughout the ages or has it advanced at all with time? Are the ships, weapons, etc, all the just the same in the third age as they were in the first?
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I believe that technology has advanced. In the Hobbit it is mentioned that we do not see hobbits because they are scared of the Big Folks. He also wrote it as a mythology, a place in this world before ours (ME does look very similar to Europe by the by).