[spoilers extended] Where in the world is the Targaryen fleet?

Edit: yes, I know Preston Jacobs did a video on this topic; yes, I've seen it; yes, that's why I wrote this post; no, you don't need to be the umpteenth person to point that out

WARNING: THIS DOESN'T ADD UP TO MUCH

Quick recap for those who ain't been down the tinfoil mines...

Daenerys Targaryen is nicknamed "Stormborn" because she was born during "the greatest storm in the memory of Westeros" (ASOS, Daenerys I).

Problem: nobody else ever mentions this storm.

She says it "smashed her father's fleet to kindling" (ibid.) "while it lay at anchor" (AGOT, Daenerys I) at Dragonstone.

Problem: it apparently didn't smash Stannis's fleet while it lay at anchor at King's Landing.

Further problem: several characters recall Stannis's assault on Dragonstone, and the way they tell it, it doesn't sound like there were no enemy ships. Indeed, they boast about it, and nobody ever replies that there's not much to boast about.

She says of her escape from Dragonstone: "...Ser Willem Darry and four loyal men had broken into the nursery and stolen [her and Viserys], along with her wet nurse, and set sail under cover of darkness for the safety of the Braavosian coast." (ibid.)

Problem: on what ship was he sailing, if the fleet had just been smashed to kindling?

Further problem: isn't he worried that someone will chase him, and catch him?

Further problem: why is he taking the last surviving Targaryens to Braavos? It's further away than other ports, and the Braavosi are ancient enemies of the dragonlords.

My purpose here isn't quite to rehash the finer points of the (f)Dany theory. (Click here if you're unfamiliar with it.) My question is, if it didn't get destroyed in a storm, and if there really was a battle, what happened to the Targaryen fleet?

It surely wasn't destroyed. Such recollections as we get don't suggest that the fleet was burned. (Although if it was, then we know where Euron got the idea.) It's possible that in the battle some of the ships were sunk, or damaged beyond repair - but all of them? Surely not. The way naval warfare works (source: I once read a book about Trafalgar) is that if you defeat an enemy ship, you make a prize of it. It's yours. Thus Stannis's victory should've led to the enlargement of Robert's fleet with several formerly Targaryen ships.

This does in fact appear to be the case. I will leave it to others to comb through every single ship named in the books, but I can see at least two ships in the Baratheon fleet with Targaryen names: the Queen Alysanne, and the Prince Aemon. And it's quite possible that some of these ships could have been renamed. We see a lot of the ships in the royal fleets are named to honour various bigwigs: King Robert's Hammer, Queen Cersei, later Lord Tywin, Queen Margaery, and so on. I doubt the new Baratheon regime would have been happy sailing a ship called the King Aerys.

The point being, here's another point of evidence in favour of (f)Dany: the Targaryen ships are incorporated into the Baratheon fleet, suggesting they weren't destroyed by a storm. In future books, we may look out for further confirmation via ship names, or histories of ships: if we're told that King Robert's Hammer was once named the Prince Rhaegar, for instance, that would be another clue.

But that's not insane enough for me. Have a look at this:

...[Myrcella's] smile was a shade tremulous when her brothers took their leave of her on the deck of the Seaswift, but the girl knew the proper words to say, and she said them with courage and dignity. When the time came to part, it was Prince Tommen who cried, and Myrcella who gave him comfort.

Tyrion looked down upon the farewells from the high deck of King Robert's Hammer, a great war galley of four hundred oars. Rob's Hammer, as her oarsmen called her, would form the main strength of Myrcella's escort. Lionstar, Bold Wind, and Lady Lyanna would sail with her as well.

It made Tyrion more than a little uneasy to detach so great a part of their already inadequate fleet, depleted as it was by the loss of all those ships that had sailed with Lord Stannis to Dragonstone and never returned, but Cersei would hear of nothing less. Perhaps she was wise. If the girl was captured before she reached Sunspear, the Dornish alliance would fall to pieces. [...]

He cleared his throat. "You know your orders, Captain."

"I do, my lord. We are to follow the coast, staying always in sight of land, until we reach Crackclaw Point. From there we are to strike out across the narrow sea for Braavos. On no account are we to sail within sight of Dragonstone."

"And if our foes should chance upon you nonetheless?"

"If a single ship, we are to run them off or destroy them. If there are more, the Bold Wind will cleave to the Seaswift to protect her while the rest of the fleet does battle."

Tyrion nodded. If the worst happened, the little Seaswift ought to be able to outrun pursuit. A small ship with big sails, she was faster than any warship afloat, or so her captain had claimed. Once Myrcella reached Braavos, she ought to be safe. He was sending Ser Arys Oakheart as her sworn shield, and had engaged the Braavosi to bring her the rest of the way to Sunspear. Even Lord Stannis would hesitate to wake the anger of the greatest and most powerful of the Free Cities. Traveling from King's Landing to Dorne by way of Braavos was scarcely the most direct of routes, but it was the safest . . . or so he hoped.

[...]

Out on the river, Bold Wind unshipped her oars and glided downstream in the wake of Seaswift. Last came King Robert's Hammer, the might of the royal fleet . . . or at least that portion that had not fled to Dragonstone last year with Stannis. Tyrion had chosen the ships with care, avoiding any whose captains might be of doubtful loyalty...

-- ACOK, Tyrion IX

As mentioned, Daenerys recalls the story her brother told her of their "midnight flight to Dragonstone, moonlight shimmering on the ship's black sails" (AGOT, Daenerys I), and also that:

The garrison had been prepared to sell them to the Usurper, but one night Ser Willem Darry and four loyal men had broken into the nursery and stolen them both, along with her wet nurse, and set sail under cover of darkness for the safety of the Braavosian coast. [ibid.]

It's been suggested before that Daenerys is here confusing her trip to Dragonstone (which took place in daylight) with her trip from Dragonstone: that, therefore, the midnight flight on a black-sailed ship is the one arranged by Willem Darry.

But look at all those preparations Tyrion makes. Consider the catastrophe it would be for the Targaryen cause if the last Targaryens should fall into the hands of their enemies. Did Willem make no such preparation?

Perhaps the situation was so hopeless that he had to throw caution to the wind. After all, he could only find four loyal men: maybe this was a last-ditch attempt, and he was just lucky that there was still a ship he could sail away on. (Remember, the Targaryen fleet is supposedly destroyed by this point.) Lucky also that these four men were such good sailors that they could sail a ship by themselves, or at least, that the ship's crew were also loyal. Lucky also that there weren't any other ships left that the treacherous garrison could use to give chase, or that Stannis didn't chase after them either.

I would like to propose two alternative hypotheses, both resting on the assumptions that the fleet wasn't destroyed by a storm, and the garrison remained loyal.

The first hypothesis is that Darry had as much foresight as Tyrion, and fled the island with enough ships to make a decent escort. If he left prior to the battle, this means either that the garrison was ignorant of his having left, or that they understood their role to be a distraction: by obliging Stannis to fight hard to take the island, they delay the moment he realises the Targaryens aren't there. (Recall what Doran Martell says to Arys Oakheart: "Myrcella will be safest if no one knows just where she is." (AFFC, The Soiled Knight))

Alternatively, he left after the battle: this would've required Darry to prearrange something with his loyal men. I suppose something like this: if the fleet looks apt to lose the battle, certain ships are to flee the area and regroup elsewhere, before returning near Dragonstone, under cover of darkness, after a prearranged interval, with Darry tasked with figuring out a way to escape the island in time to make the rendezvous. This is convoluted, and difficult, but no more convoluted or difficult than Tyrion's plans for Myrcella, or Roose Bolton's plan to take Harrenhal. Indeed, Roose's plan suggests an option for Darry: a phony surrender of certain troops, to ingratiate themselves with Stannis and gain freedom of movement under his power; then a prearranged prison break. (The escape taking place after Stannis took the island would help explain why the eight-year old Viserys was in Daenerys's nursery: they were imprisoned together.)

Either way, this means that when Viserys fled, he did so with several ships and dozens of loyal men in tow, if not hundreds. Therefore there could actually be a large contingent of Targaryen loyalists operating secretly in Essos since 284 AC. Imagine what shenanigans they could have gotten up to!

The second hypothesis rests further on my prior contention that Stannis helped the Targaryens escape. You can read the details and the thinking behind it here; in brief, the idea is that Stannis looked the other way while Willem Darry escaped with the Targaryens rather than hand them over to his brother to be butchered. We may note here that, thanks to Davos, Stannis had just been given a crash course in nighttime maritime smuggling and the importance of black sails, all of which Willem Darry apparently took advantage of.

This opens up three possibilities: first, that Stannis permitted Darry to steal some of the Targaryen ships for his escort, and then deliberately failed to catch them. (Perhaps Darry was to sail north, while Stannis was to sail east or south: south is the more likely direction for escaping Targaryens, since (a) it's further from Braavos, and (b) it's closer to escaping the bottleneck of the narrow sea, and thus to the freedom of distant Essos. Since it's what would be expected, Stannis can give chase to the south without betraying his assistance, and Darry can escape to the north without fear of capture. This might help explain why Darry apparently sailed "to the Braavosian coast", rather than simply "to Braavos".) Second, that Stannis permitted Darry no escort, in which case, there disappointingly isn't a small Targaryen loyalist fleet sailing around Essos, getting into adventures. But the third possibility is interesting: that Stannis did permit an escort, for protection against pirates, but arranged for the recapture of the ships, to deprive the Targaryen loyalists of power, and to make it look like he made the effort. (Recall that the very fact that Stannis isn't able to abscond with the entire fleet after Jon Arryn's death is suggestive of the fact that these ships are constantly making patrols and carrying out missions; it's quite likely that Stannis would have been tasked with hunting down the Targaryens after their escape.)

This last would mean that some of the ships in the Baratheon fleet were the ones that Daenerys supposedly escaped upon. Perhaps some detail of these ships - animal carvings, perhaps? - gives us a clue that she's sailed on one before; perhaps this explains why some small number of ships still have Targaryen names - because Stannis recaptured them months or even years later, after the intial anti-Targaryen renaming mania had passed, and perhaps also as a clue that Stannis isn't as anti-Targaryen as we might think; and perhaps also this is a bizarre and convoluted way to explain the possibility that the Loyal Man, a ship of the Baratheon fleet, is named thus as a clue in this direction: that Daenerys's memory of being taken by Darry and "four loyal men" is confused, and what actually happened is that she was taken by Darry aboard the Loyal Man, with four other ships as escort, and with Stannis ultimately reclaiming the ship after they had abandoned it.