You know, I tried to find this thread just the other day, but for some reason I kept thinking it was started by
Maril rather than BW and forgot the name. Great thread!
Fordim, I've always felt the Grey Havens was under represented in the LotR story. I mean, why maintain an important sailing harbour, manned by one of the oldest and wisest of elves, if it is going to be used only for one-way, one-time only, excursion trips to the West?
My bet would be that there was substantial trading going on via the Grey Havens, accessible to dwarves from the Blue Mountains and Hobbits and run by elves. The Bay of Belfalas offers several ports which fed into Gondor. I bet we could even imagine some kind of pirate RPG game out of this.
Pirates of the Haradrium.
