Premiere of Klingel documentary to be held July 15
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Gilbert Klingel and his 30-foot sloop are dwarfed by his 75-foot Clementine and 62-foot Manteo at his Gwynn’s Island Boat Yard in 1967. He built all three steel-hulled ships himself. Photo courtesy of Marcy Benouameur
Gilbert Klingel in his younger days. Photo courtesy of Marcy Benouame
The documentary tells the story of the Chesapeake Bay pioneer, naturalist, author, diver and boatbuilder who lived on Gwynn’s Island.
“Gilbert Klingel accomplished so many things in his lifetime that his story needs to be told as an educational, historical and inspirational film to folks today,” said the film’s director/producer Dave Miller.
Klingel began coming to Gwynn’s Island on summer vacations with his family at the age of eight. He loved the area so much that he came back as a adult in the 1950s and built the Gwynn’s Island Boat Yard on Milford Haven, making steel-hull boats from 30’ to 75’.
But beyond that, Klingel (1908-1983) was a self-made renaissance man of many talents. After organizing a trip to Haiti to study lizards in his early 20s, he convinced the American Museum of Natural History in New York and the Natural History Society of Maryland to sponsor a research trip to the West Indies so he could continue his studies. He was traveling there with his shipmate Wally Coleman when they struck a coral reef and became shipwrecked on the island of Inagua in the Bahamas.
His first book, “Inagua,” also titled “The Ocean Island” (1940), is a shipwrecked naturalist’s story of adventure and discovery on that lonely island.
Klingel explored the entire Chesapeake Bay area and perhaps knew it better than any other person at that time, said a press release. In cooperation with the Chesapeake Biological Laboratory in Solomons Island, he built a diving device, the Bentharium, to explore the depths of the Chesapeake Bay.
This is how he acquired the knowledge to write his second book, “The Bay” (1951), which brought him the John Burroughs Award in 1952, along with the attention of the National Geographic Society. The society asked him to design and build another diving device for underwater exploration and photography in the Chesapeake Bay, and he built the Aquascope.
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