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Alexander Coffin, "Remarks at the Asylum, Quaise," 1841 by Edgar L. McCormick IN 1839, CAPTAIN Alexander Coffin (1790-1870) became resident superintendent of the Nantucket County Farm at Quaise. The journal he kept at the farm, along with some miscellaneous papers from his three years there, eventually came into the possession of the late Cyrus T. Plough, Curator of the Portage County, Ohio, Historical Society. Mr. Plough shared these documents with me. They are the basis for this ac count of Quaise Farm and Captain Coffin's role there. After thirty years in the whale fishery, Alexander Coffin was "desirous of relinquishing his seaman's life for that of a farmer," as his obituary in the Portage County, Ohio, Democrat for December 14,1870, noted. He had shipped before the mast in 1810 on the Lydia, just after he had turned twenty. It was a tragic voyage, for according to the tables in Alexander Starbuck's H i s t o r y o f t h e A m e r i c a n W h a l e F i s h e r y . . . . t o t h e y e a r 1 8 7 6 (Washington, D.C., 1878), David Swain 2nd, the L y d i a ' s Master, was killed by a whale. Subsequently, as is recorded in his ob ituary and in the tables in Starbuck. Coffin signed on in 1812 as steersman on the Diana under Calvin Bunker, but the brig had taken only 170 barrels of oil when news of the war prompted its return to Nan tucket. Next Coffin served as 2nd Mate under Captain Benjamin Whippey on the 1815-1817 voyage of The Brothers. He went to sea again im mediately in 1817 as Mate on the Phebe Ann, Charles Covill, Master. In 1820, Coffin sailed from New Bedford as Master of the luckless which was cast on the reefs on an island off Peru. Captain and crew were captured by "treacherous natives and Indians," but after a month's captivity and the threat of torture and possible death, "release was effected". Captain Coffin returned to Nantucket on a merchant ship. He had lost everything, yet, as his obituary said decades later, "he rejoiced at being able to return, destitute, to his native land." Lorenzo
Five more sailings followed, three on the B a r c l a y (1822,1824, and 1825) under Captain Peter Coffin, and then two more as Master himself of the Constitution (1827-1830) and the Edward (1835-1836) out of Hud son, N.Y. The last voyage yielded only 840 barrels of oil. Alexander Cof fin, after ten voyages, was ready to leave the ocean.
