The Drowning of Anadûnê
the early Akallabêth-prose (Sauron Defeated, HoME 9)
Nature
The Drowning of Anadûnê — Anadûnê, the West-land of the drowned kingdom — is the earliest prose telling of the destruction of Númenor, written with and beside the Notion Club Papers in the 1940s. In it the king of the mariners breaks the ban of the Valar, the great fleet of the West is swallowed by the sea, and the world is made round; the loyal remnant sails away to the shores of Middle-earth. It is the forerunner of the published Akallabêth.
Contents
The rise of the mariners’ kingdom, its friendship with the Eldar, and its slow turning from the Valar; The pride of the king’s following and the usurpation that set the throne against the old friendship; The building of the great armament and the voyage beyond the forbidden bound, drawing down the doom; The Drowning: the wave and the chasm, the sinking of Anadûnê beneath the waters, and the changing of the world’s shape from flat to round; The survivors in their few ships who find the western coasts of Middle-earth — the seed of the faithful remnant of the later tale.
Composition
Written in 1945–1946 on the same sheets as the Notion Club Papers, the Drowning survives in a draft and a fair copy; Christopher Tolkien printed both in Sauron Defeated (1992, HoME 9) with a full account of its growth. It is the ancestor of the Akallabêth and so of the account behind The Silmarillion and the gathering The Fall of Númenor (book).