Dogplatter, just out of curiosity, how big and sophisticated of boat are you suggesting would be required to carry several Deinonychus, plus their livestock, plus supplies? I'm guessing that a simple raft wouldn't quite be sufficient, especially if they were to run into rough weather.
We can reasonably assume that an adult Deinonychus would require approximately the same capacity as an adult human based on the weight comparison I've cited (the largest Deinonychus specimens would have weighed around 73kg).
The Mayflower, a human ship known to have made intercontinental voyages and built of wood, is estimated to have been just over 25 metres long, and had a cargo tonnage of 180 and a crew of around 25.
Now, let us assume Saurolophus as a test case for transportation (Deinonychus would likely have had other prey/farm animals as well, but Saurolophus would have been one of the largest), and we also assume that the transported Saurolophus would have been juveniles. A yearling might have weighed somewhere close to a ton (a fully grown bull weighs 1.9).
We've established that adult Deinonychus weighed at most 73kg.
There are 907 Kg in a short ton.
so, a livestock craft of this size could have carried the WEIGHT of around 180 juvenile Saurolophus (with a crew of 25 Deinonychus). However, each adult would have been 9.8 metres long, so nowhere near 180 individuals could fit on. If we consider that a yearling might have been half that length, (say 5M) and that the Mayflower was around 7.6 metres wide, the livestock could be "stacked" width-ways with bills and tails facing starboard and port. With each Saurolophus given 2 metres of the ship's length to accomodate their body width, 11 or 12 animals could be kept on a boat the size of the Mayflower, assuming a deck system existed for the crew to be accomodated. If we don't want to concede that the boat might have had a deck (which I am fine with doing, by the way), then removing 3 animals from that number would allow room for a crew on a single-deck raft. So, to summarise, a Mayflower-sized boat could carry between 9-12 Saurolophus.
A boat the size of the Mayflower [pictured below in a painting by William Halsall (1882)] could have held up to 12 young Saurolophus.As for passenger crafts, with each Deinonychus at 73kg, and a ship of that size having a maximum capacity of 907kg * 180 (i.e., 163260kg), a ship without livestock could hypothetically carry the WEIGHT of 2000 Deinonychus - of course a ship 25m long would not fit that many individuals, especially if they had food and supplies with them. Thanks to the handy equivalence of human and Deinonychus weight, with adults of both species weighing almost exactly the same, we can get a much better real-world analysis based on the Mayflower itself. The Mayflower crossed the Atlantic with 102 Passengers and their supplies. However, the North Pacific is much less wide than the Atlantic, so far less supplies would be needed for the trip, which means that well over 100 Deinonychus could travel on a single passenger ship of that size.
A fleet of five of these ships, one for passengers, three for livestock and one for general supplies such as tools, clothing, etc., each with a crew of 25 would be more than enough to start a large, successful colony. I'm going for a conservative estimate of 100 passengers per passenger ship and 10 Saurolophus yearlings per livestock ship.
For crew, 25 * 5 = 125, plus 100 passengers = 225 able-bodied adult Deinonychus, 3 * 10 = 30 yearling Saurolophus, and 180 tonnes of additional supplies (salted meats for the journey, saurolophus feed, tools, clothes, etc) setting out on the voyage. That's far more resources than many of the first human Anglo-American colonies started with.
Above: Cretaceous oceans were filled with plesiosaurs, a possible source of food and materials for Deinonychus sailorsThough salted land-animal meat in a supply ship would probably be enough to sustain the crews and passengers of other ships, hunger on the journey would also have been potentially assuaged by fishing and "whaling". The oceans of the Cretaceous were teeming with sharks, rays, as well as ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs. Some of the larger plesiosaurs would have been up to 20M in length, an incredible catch and having enough meat to sustain a large number of Deinonychus for weeks at sea. It is indicated by the Fossil record that Deinonychus would have known about the existence of plesiosaurs. Specimens of plesiosaur skeletons have been found on the North American continent quite far from the ocean, no doubt brought in by Deinonychus (and later Dromaeosaurus) whalers from the West Coast and traded for blubber, bone and perhaps as zoological attractions.
Above: A specimen of Trinacromerum, a smaller plesiosaur, has been found in the inland United States, probably kept as a pet or traded for blubber.