You need to think in 18th Century terms. The first thing is that land travel was extremely difficult. While by our standards sea travel was dangerous, it was the way that people went. If you look at sources like RJ Dickson, Ulster Migration to Colonial America 1718-1775, you will see that the people emigrated from a local port. If you go to the Ulster Folk Park and see the size of ship that was used you can see why - the ships were small enough to get into local ports and creeks. When Steam ships were developed you had the same system as the airlines use hub and spoke. One of the main hubs was Liverpool. Remember these ships took a lot of steerage passengers. The ones which were going North about round Ireland would collect people in places like /Derry and Belfast, while those going south about would go to Cobh (then known as Queenstown.)The passengers were transported out to the liners by tenders. Dublin was never a huge sea port in passenger terms, neither was Belfast. It was Dun Laoghaire then called Kingstown which was the passenger port for Dublin. I'm not sure what the Transatlantic passenger facilities were there. Remember that the Steamers from Ireland carried agricultural produce including live cattle to both Liverpool and Glasgow, and the fare and the comfort were both modest. However there would have been a better choice of ship and destination from Liverpool. This is not to say that there were no people travelling from Belfast in Cargo ships, just that it was unusual, and ironically the better off. The whole history of cross Channel passenger traffic on the Irish Sea is a specialist topic in its own right. You've got to remember that there were interesting tie ups between the various companies. For example Burns Laird and Cunard had all kinds of links going back to the 1830s at least Edward Andrews -----Original Message----- From: Sarah [mailto:agape2u@msinter.net] Sent: Wednesday, December 07, 2005 6:57 PM To: Scotch-Irish-L@rootsweb.com Subject: [Sc-Ir] Re: Scotch-Irish-D Digest V05 #211 Many of our ancestors may have left from Dublin Ire. or Belfast in NI. Both are huge seaports..........Liverpool is about an hour flight from Belfast so may have been by ferry in early days. They use many ferries now for people and cars etc. to go back and forth across to Scotland and England. They would have had to had quite a bit of money to get over to England to get on ships from there. We need Linda's idea on this. The poor in early 1720sand before when my family lines came over may not have had the money to go to England. Linda what's the truth on this? Sarah ----- Original Message ----- From: <Scotch-Irish-D-request@rootsweb.com> To: <Scotch-Irish-D@rootsweb.com> Sent: Wednesday, December 07, 2005 9:06 AM Subject: Scotch-Irish-D Digest V05 #211 No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.362 / Virus Database: 267.13.12/194 - Release Date: 12/7/05