Nov 10: Secret (TA 3019, Summer, Dol Amroth)

Núradan opened the door to the innermost part of the dye works. A miasma of rotting fish and worse filled the air. “I salvaged all that I could after the black ships headed up the river, but most of the dye was ruined.”

Imrahil asked. “Did they discover the tanks?”

“No, my lord. We fought them off.” Núradan urged him to look over the railing at the many shallow, saline-filled pools that filled the room. Thousands of small mollusks crept across the stony bottom.

Imrahil smiled. “Then the secret of Dol Amroth blue is still ours.”

A/N: I postulate that the particular color of blue used in the heraldry of Dol Amroth is derived from a saltwater mollusk, much like the Tyrian Purple (aka Royal Purple) of our past was created from the secretions of a shellfish in the genus Murex, which inhabits the shallow waters of the Mediterranean Sea. It seems likely to me that the secret of how Dol Amroth Blue dye was made would be closely held, and that it would be of great concern to Imrahil that production of such a luxury good would be disrupted by the attacks of the Corsairs on the coastlines of southern Gondor.  

Since we do not know how much damage the Corsairs did to Southern Gondor before Aragorn, the Grey Company, and the Army of the Dead fought them at Pelargir, I think it would have been one of the first things he checked on after he returned home after the end of Ring War and Aragorn's wedding.