Odysseus starts his journey home from Troy with twelve ships. After the war, the fleet sets out for Ithaca, but storms and a series of mythic encounters gradually destroy it.
The voyage begins with a raid on Ismarus, the city of the Cicones. The crews then encounter the Lotus-Eaters, the Cyclops Polyphemus, Aeolus, and the cannibalistic Laestrygonians. By the time they reach the Laestrygonians, Odysseus’s ship is the only one to escape, leaving him with a single vessel.
That distinction matters: twelve ships describes the fleet at the start, not the number that survives the whole epic. Later, Scylla kills six sailors, and after the crew slaughter Helios’s sacred cattle, Zeus destroys the remaining ship. Odysseus alone survives that wreck.
The Odyssey therefore turns a large returning fleet into a solitary hero’s struggle. The twelve ships also reflect the scale of Odysseus’s Ithacan contingent as he returns from the Trojan War.