Owen Coffin (1802 - 1821)

Born 24 Aug 1802 in Nantucket Island, Nantucket, Nantucket, Massachusetts, United States

Ancestors

Died 2 Feb 1821 at age 18 in At Sea

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Owen Coffin is Notable.

Biography

Coffin was the son of Nancy (Bunker) and Hezekiah Coffin.

"Pollard's boat food was exhausted, and the survivors' situation became dire.

They had even eaten the remains of the dead. When even this resource ran out, the four men remaining in Pollard's boat agreed to draw straws to decide which of them should be slaughtered, lest all four die of starvation.

Coffin 'lost' the lottery, and was shot and eaten.

The captain volunteered to take Coffin's place but Coffin refused, saying it was his 'right' to do so that the others might live."

Owen Coffin died at sea on board a lifeboat from the Whaleship Essex. He gave his life, that others might live.

The Whaleship Essex and its crew met with tragedy on November 20, 1820, when it was sunk by an enraged sperm whale in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. First mate Owen Chase and cabin boy Thomas Nickerson wrote accounts of the ordeal, and the incident inspired Herman Melville's 1851 novel Moby-Dick (Herman and Owen are 5th cousins 1x removed)

The crew drifted for more than ninety days in three tiny whaleboats, succumbing to weather, hunger, disease, and ultimately turning to drastic measures in the fight for survival.

Sources

• Owen Coffin
• Barney Genealogical Record, Person ID I14611
• Essex on Wikipedia
• Nathaniel Philbrick, In The Heart of the Sea, The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex