Coffin, Sir Isaac (16 May 1759–23 July 1839), Loyalist and British admiral, was born in Boston, Massachusetts, the son of Nathaniel Coffin, the last receiver general and cashier of His Majesty’s Customs at Boston, and Elizabeth Barnes. Born into a family of wealth and social prominence, Isaac Coffin attended the Boston Latin School and then entered the British Royal Navy in May 1773. Assigned to the brig ...
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Loring, Joshua (03 August 1716–05 October 1781), British naval officer and Loyalist, was born in Boston, Massachusetts, the son of Joshua Loring, a tanner, and Hannah Jackson. Fatherless by the age of five, Joshua moved to Roxbury, where he was apprenticed to a tanner named James Mears. However, the continuing warfare between England and France attracted him, and when of age he went to sea and served on a privateer. In 1740 he married Mary Curtis; they had seven children. During the War of Austrian Succession (1740–1748), he became captain of his own privateer with 120 seamen under his command. In 1744, near Louisburg, Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, his ship was captured by two French men-of-war after a four-hour chase. He spent several months in a prison in Louisburg, then was released. When the French and Indian War began, Loring was commissioned a lieutenant in the British navy and by December 1757 was commissioned a captain in command of a twenty-gun vessel named the ...
