A Ferry is a ship used to transport people and goods across a small body of water (bay, river, creek, etc.)
A Wherry is a small boat used to transfer people to and from a ship.
Are there any other boats that use similar names? What is the origin of these words?
Are you going to insist on ‘erry’, or does dory count?
No it isn’t. But anyway, carry on.
I’m always impressed that Wikipedia has a list for stuff like this.
It doesn’t show anything else ending with ry, other than what’s listed already in this thread.
Well, maybe.
From the Wikipedia link:
A lighter can be a smaller boat used to transfer people and goods to a larger ship, (although I am not sure that the River Tyne wherries were used for exactly that purpose).
There’s a type of boat known as a skerry cruiser.
No, a lighter in the coal trade is for transferring coal, not people.
Who would name a boat “Larry”?
Of course, there’s always the good ship John Kerry.
Where does the expression “the good ship…” come from?
Would YOU take a ride on a boat referred to as “The fair-to-middling ship …”?
I seem to recall small craft called jerry boats, but I can’t find a cite. May have been a regionalism or even a local term.
Isn’t that a tender?
I think the word “wherry” was used in one of the Hornblower books-it was also referred to as the captain’s “gig”.
“Wherry” doesn’t get used much today-a shame, it is such a nice word!
Would you settle for a Galway or Irish hooker?
They would carry sod and limestone across Galway Bay and be used for fishing.
Are you sure you’re not thinking of “jerry built”? That wouldn’t be a good name for the only thing between you and a watery grave.
You could sail a jerry can, if you were really tiny and stuff.
There’s also the Perry-class frigate.
Yeah, that and a thoroughly despicable equivalent I won’t give air time… possibly, though. I can’t bring a context to mind but “jerry boat” is stuck in my linguistic bank from somewhere. Might be a conflation of jerry-rigged aka jury-rigged aka jerry built as applied to things that hopefully float.
Isn’t a U-boat a Jerry boat?
I could have sworn it was another term for a rubber dinghy but I can’t find any reference to the phrase.