William Kennish (1799 – March 19, 1862) was an engineer, inventor, explorer, scientist, and poet, known primarily for inventions developed while he served in the British Royal Navy (1821–1841).
That year Congress approved a joint military expedition of a US Navy and Army party to explore this, and Kennish acted as their guide.
[1] Between 1827 and 1832, while in the service of the Royal Navy, he invented a system ("A Method for Concentrating the Fire of a Broadside"[2]) for improving the aiming of naval artillery.
He proposed the practice of painting naval vessels grey to reduce the distortion and decay caused by solar radiation on black-painted timbers.
[3] He also worked on creating an artificial horizon for navigation; a[n] automatic depth-sounding instrument; a method of drowning the magazine of a ship of war; an hydraulic ventilator; [and] a hydrostatic diving machine[.
He worked for the Civilian Architect's Office at Woolwich Dockyard, London, until March 1844, when he and his family departed to settle on the Isle of Man.
[5] According to his papers, Kennish proposed to use part of the Atrato River (which flows north into the Atlantic), and possibly its tributary Rio Truando, to create a river aqueduct and inter-oceanic route across the isthmus of northwest present-day Colombia, through Nerqua Pass and the valley of the Nerqua, to empty into Bahía Humboldt on the Pacific Ocean side.
[6][7] That year the US Congress approved a joint US Navy-Army military expedition to explore Kennish's proposed route in Chocó Department, Colombia.