The Coffin family were a group of whalers operating out of Nantucket, Massachusetts from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries. Some members of the family gained wider exposure due to their discovery of various islands in the Pacific Ocean.
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Family history
Tristram Coffin, born in 1609 in Plymouth, England, left Brixton, Devonshire, England, for America in 1642, first settling in Newbury, Massachusetts, then moving to Nantucket. The Coffin family, along with other Nantucket families, including the Gardners and the Starbucks, began whaling seriously in the 1690s in local waters, and by 1715 the family owned three whalers and a trade vessel. In 1763, six men of the Coffin family were captains of ships sailing out of Nantucket, and travelling as far as South America and Greenland.
James Coffin
On 31 May 1823, the British ship Transit arrived in Batavia, on the island of Java, having lost its master, Capt Alexander, to a whale near Christmas Island. James Coffin was on Java at the time and was appointed as captain.
Later that year, while working in the central Pacific, James is said to have discovered Enderbury Island in the Phoenix group, naming it "Enderby's Island" after the London whaling house Samuel Enderby & Sons. However, when he described his own discoveries of the Bonins to Arrowsmith and other geographers, he did not mention Enderbury.
Joshua Coffin
Some records suggest that Joshua, while captaining the whaler Ganges, sighted and named Gardner Island in the Phoenix Group in 1825, probably naming it after U.S. Congressman Gideon Gardner, the owner of Ganges.
Alternative sources claim the island was sighted by whaler Joshua Gardner, also reported to have captained Ganges in 1825.
Reuben Coffin
Interestingly, some sources report that in 1823 a "Reuben Coffin" was captain of an American whaler named Transit, out of Nantucket, and was responsible for the discovery of the Bonin Islands. Anchoring unchallenged off Haha Jima, he claimed the islands for the United States, naming them "Coffin Islands".
Owen Coffin
Owen Coffin (1802 – 1821) was a teenaged sailor aboard the Nantucket whaler Essex when it set sail for the Pacific Ocean on a sperm whale-hunting expedition in August 1819. In November the next year, a whale rammed and breached their hull in mid-Pacific, causing Essex to sink. Following months in a small whaleboat, members of the near-starving crew finally concluded a member must be sacrificed. They drew straws, which Coffin 'lost', and he was shot and eaten.