During the Middle Ages, Porthleven was fairly unimportant, as there was no harbour and the River Cober was passable all the way inland to Helston, though today the Cober is little more than a shallow stream in most places.
It was only because Porthleven offered the only refuge for boats and ships in distress from the storms that regularly lash its shores along this windy coastline, that Porthleven ever grew to become its own parish. Otherwise, it is likely it would have remained a very small fishing inlet.
The harbour itself was constructed in 1825, and as explained above was extremely problematical, to say the least, to achieve. Even though a large fishing fleet for Mackerel & Pilchards soon started fishing off the coast, Porthelven remained a dangerous and difficult harbour to access. The port was taken over in the 1850’s by Harvey & Co, a Hayle based firm, and they made major improvements to the harbour, leaving the massively-built harbour that we can see today.
Porthleven grew a great boat-building and fishing industry, but has never been able to overcome its main problem of facing south-west - you only have to watch the sea as a gale sets in to see why.
