The routes by which Manx people reached the American colonies in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries are poorly documented. No passenger manifests survive for the period, and the Manx pass system made unofficial departure risky. Several routes were possible. A Manx person could obtain the Governor's licence and take passage from Douglas or Ramsey to Liverpool or Whitehaven, then board an Atlantic vessel. They could cross to Ireland first and embark from Dublin, Belfast, or Londonderry, where the emigrant trade was well established by the eighteenth century. They could join the crew of a trading vessel and leave it in an American port. Or they could enter an indenture with a colonial planter's agent operating in the British Isles, exchanging years of labour for passage and the promise of land at the end of the term. The running trade itself provided another possibility: Manx vessels trading goods between Mann, Ireland, and the continental ports would have offered informal passage to anyone willing to pay or work. After the Revestment of 1765, when the Island's commercial economy collapsed, the emigration intensified and became better documented. The 1827 ships to Ohio were chartered specifically for Manx emigrants, and the press notices of the 1830s and 1840s recorded departures by parish and number. But the earlier, colonial-era movement left few traces beyond the headright patents and land grants in which Manx surnames appear.