page_title: Coffin (whaling family)
section_title: Various "Captain Coffins"
hierarchical_section_title: Coffin (whaling family) / Various "Captain Coffins"
caption_attribution_description: English: Portrait of 19th-century American sea captain and businessman Abel Coffin, scan of a printed copy of oil painting
context_page_description: 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.
context_section_description: Captain Hezekiah Coffin commanded the first American ship to round Cape Horn. He also commanded a Nantucket whaler the Beaver, which, after conveying a load of whale oil to England and returning with a cargo of 112 chests of British East India Company tea, was one of three vessels in Boston Harbour (the others were Dartmouth and Eleanor) which had their cargoes dumped overboard during the Boston Tea Party on the night of 16 December 1773.
  A Captain Coffin was master of the whaler Baroness Longueville, sailing her on whaling voyage between August 1816 and July 1819, returning to Britain with 600 casks.
  A "Captain Coffin", master and part-owner of the Thule, Nantucket, after 27 months at sea, struck the "Booby Shoals" on Bellona Reefs, near the Chesterfield Islands on 10 September 1844, and was wrecked; the ship was carrying 1050 barrels of sperm oil. Two boats, manned by 16 men, managed to reach Moreton Bay, Queensland, on 20 September, but a third boat was lost.  Losing most of their possessions in the wreck, the sailors were replenished by Brisbane residents.  Shipping lists show that Coffin, Mr W Thompson and 13 crew members took passage from Moreton Bay on the steamer Sovereign, departing 4 October, and arriving in Port Jackson on 8 October. Capt Coffin left Port Jackson on 17th aboard the schooner Vanguard, bound for New Zealand.
  After Scotsman Robert Hunter discovered the original "siamese twins" Chang and Eng in Siam in 1824, he partnered with Captain Abel Coffin to sail them to America in 1829. Abel continued touring with the twins, eventually buying out Hunter's share in the business venture. He later received letters from their manager James Hale.
  Records tell of a "Captain Coffin", whose leg was badly injured in a whaling accident.  With no surgeon on board, Coffin ordered his mate to cut off the leg with a knife, threatening to shoot him if he did not obey. He held the pistol pointing at the mate throughout the operation.
caption: Portrait of Captain Abel Coffin, who was involved in bringing the original Siamese Twins to the West
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