I know this response is delayed but I wanted to add some first hand information on ship travel during the 1819-1822. I have some correspondence from an ancestor who was a ship mate on a variety of ships traveling to and from Scotland, Ireland and US and Canada. I cannot transcribe these letters or scan them at this time, due family commitments. I cannot speak for all shiphands but here are some observations from his letters: 1. He did not stay with one ship. Sometimes he would look for a different ship to return to his homeland. 2. At times the condition of the ship were so bad that he would wait for months to find another ship to return home. 3. I was amazed to see that he was able to correspond with his family at all. When I have more time I will offer more details. Marilyn

G'Day Marilyn That's very interesting information; I look forward to the letter transcriptions. That puts a different completion on crews changing ship. Robert in Aus -----Original Message----- From: MSiperek@aol.com [mailto:MSiperek@aol.com] Sent: Monday, 28 August 2006 1:27 AM To: IRL-CLARE-L@rootsweb.com Subject: Re: [CLARE] emigrant ship questions I know this response is delayed but I wanted to add some first hand information on ship travel during the 1819-1822. I have some correspondence from an ancestor who was a ship mate on a variety of ships traveling to and from Scotland, Ireland and US and Canada. I cannot transcribe these letters or scan them at this time, due family commitments. I cannot speak for all shiphands but here are some observations from his letters: 1. He did not stay with one ship. Sometimes he would look for a different ship to return to his homeland. 2. At times the condition of the ship were so bad that he would wait for months to find another ship to return home. 3. I was amazed to see that he was able to correspond with his family at all. When I have more time I will offer more details. Marilyn ==== IRL-CLARE Mailing List ==== If you just want to subscribe to this list or unsubscribe from it, send e-mail to IRL-CLARE-L-request@rootsweb.com or (for the digest list) IRL-CLARE-D-request@rootsweb.com and put the word subscribe or unsubscribe in the message body ============================== Search the US Census Collection. Over 140 million records added in the last 12 months. Largest online collection in the world. Learn more: http://www.ancestry.com/s13965/rd.ashx