The Achaeans brought 1,186 ships to Troy according to the Catalog of Ships in Book 2 of Homer’s Iliad. The passage lists the Greek contingents, their commanders, the places they came from, and the number of ships assigned to each group.
The total covers 29 contingents under 46 commanders. It represents the assembled forces of many Greek kingdoms rather than one unified national navy. Agamemnon’s Mycenaean contingent was the largest, with 100 ships, while other groups contributed anywhere from a few vessels to several dozen.
The number is a literary count, not a surviving archaeological fleet record. Homer’s catalogue may preserve older geographic and military traditions, but scholars debate how much reflects the Late Bronze Age and how much developed during later oral transmission. The Iliad also says some ships carried approximately 120 men, which produces a legendary total of more than 140,000 troops.
Readers sometimes confuse 1,186 with rounded figures such as 1,200. Those numbers appear in later summaries or approximations, but 1,186 is the specific total given by the Homeric catalogue.