William Kennish (1799 - 19 March 1862), known as 'The Manx Poet', was a Manx-born Royal Navy carpenter, engineer, inventor and poet who served in the Navy from 1821 to 1841 before teaching school on the Island and later emigrating to the United States in 1849. Surveying in South America, he completed an 1855 report identifying a lock-free canal route across the Isthmus of Panama using the Atrato River, work later publicly honoured at an 1880 New York banquet for canal-builder Ferdinand de Lesseps. He also published poetry celebrating his native Island.