In August 2002 Plunkett Caldwell of Ireland posted information that in the last 1700's, many of the emigrants ships who left Ireland from the Northern ports called at Glasgow,returned to Ireland calling at Belfast, Dublin or Cork before crossing the Atlantic. I wondered whether this be a fair characterization of the vast majority of emigrant ships during the late 1600's and first quarter of the 1700's. It may largely explain why so many lowlander Scots from Ayrshire and Renfrewshire ended up in America among the Scots-Irish settlements.