The Clemens shipbuilding family

The Clemens family built schooners beside the Gannel during the nineteenth century. Research presented by historian Ben Dobson follows three generations of the family and their work in the estuary.

A report announcing his 2025 talk described around twenty schooners built between 1839 and 1881. Other accounts give shorter lists, so that total should remain attributed rather than treated as a reconciled register. The family gives a human identity to the shipbuilding landscape at Tregunnel. Individual vessels and family members need their own documentary evidence before dates, ownership or relationships are assigned to them.