The Athenians contributed 50 ships to the Trojan War according to the Catalogue of Ships in Book 2 of Homer’s Iliad. Their contingent was led by Menestheus, one of the Greek commanders at Troy.
The Catalogue of Ships lists the communities, leaders, and ships that made up the Achaean expedition. The Athenian entry identifies Athens as the contributing city and gives its force as 50 ships. This number belongs specifically to the Athenians, not to the entire Greek fleet.
The total fleet in the Iliad is traditionally counted as 1,186 ships across 29 contingents. Those figures are literary and epic in scale, and scholars debate how closely the catalogue reflects real Bronze Age geography or later Greek traditions.
A nearby source of confusion is Salamis. The Salaminian contingent supplied 12 ships and was led by Telamonian Ajax, while Athens supplied 50 under Menestheus. The 50 ships therefore cannot be attributed to Ajax’s Salamis force or to the Greek army as a whole.