Coffin (whaling family)
The Coffin family was 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. Family history. Tristram Coffin, born in 1609 in England, sailed for America in 1642, first settling in Newbury, Massachusetts, then moving to Nantucket. The Coffins, 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 whaling ships and a trade vessel . In 1763, six Coffin men were captains of Nantucket ships which sailed as far as South America and Greenland. James J. Coffin. On 31 May 1823, the British whaler 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 after the London whaling firm Samuel Enderby & Sons. However, when he described his own discoveries  of the Bonins to Arrowsmith and other geographers, he did not mention Enderbury. On September 12, 1824, he discovered the southern group of the Bonin Islands. 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. Some sources report that in 1823 or 1824, 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 whaling 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 lots, which Coffin "lost", and he was shot and eaten.