Big boat

Well, it's the ferry*. Does that make it a boat or a ship?

I don't think I've ever heard anyone here refer to the ferries as anything other than boats.

e.g. "Are you on the boat the night?"

But most of them are pretty big, so how big does a boat have to be before it becomes a ship? Or is not to do with size, e.g. the sailing ships that call in get called ships. And the huge cruise ships, well they get called 'blocks of flats on their sides'.

The again a Longship, of which we get a fair few, are if you go by their name are 'ships' but are again referred to as boats.

Oh, hell I'm confused... see what happens when you go to Stromness for a lunch meeting and end up taking pictures of boats in the sunshine. Must be sunstroke.


*The Hamnavoe, if you want to be precise. We have quite a few others.