[Alfirin]

Originally Posted by Mornorngûr

I thought that Sauron actually held 'The Nine'? After the Men he gave them to were corrupted, did he not take them back? or did the Nazgul still have them?.

Actually I have just been doing some research and it is clear to me that Sauron actually held them and therefore could re-distribute them if he wished.

Yes and no. Sauron did hold them physically, but each ring was still tied to a Nazgul. It's sort of the flipside of their being bonded to their rings, the rings are bonded to them. I tend to think that, as long as a ring was "occupied" it couldn't be given to another person; one ring, one slave. Otherwise, Sauron could have simply kept distributing the rings freely until he had THOUSANDS of ringwrathis If a Nazgul was somehow destroyed, I imagine it just might be possible for that ring to be reassigned (some people thing this may have happened, that, when the Witch King was slain, his ring was then either given to or slated to be given to the Mouth so as to grant that loyal servant immortality and further power to serve his master.)
That being said there is the fact that Sauron did have the ability to grant powers to Men WITHOUT making them ringwraths. The Mouth presumably had some powers granted to him (he's already supposed to be far older than a mortal man is supposed to live naturally) And there were at least two Chief's of the Easterlings that Sauron was supposed to have granted powers of some sort to. He also presumably had a few "special servants" among the Near and Far Haradrians (given how big a part of his armed forces they were, he'd want their leaders to be EXTRA loyal to him). Why he chose not to take this route in Numenor is unknown. Maybe he wanted to simply winnow out the indifferent of Numenor (who might serve him as long as those in power did, but who would rapidly change sides back should things go badly for then under Sauron's rule and leave only those who were TRULY devoted to him as a god (the Black Numenorians and therefore presumably, their decendants, the Corsairs of Umbar)