Coffin Bay was named by British naval explorer Lieutenant Matthew Flinders after Admiral Sir Isaac Coffin, the Resident Commissioner of Sheerness Naval Dockyards in England, where Flinder’s survey ship, HMS Investigator, was fitted out.
The bay was identified in 1802 by Flinders and his crew on board the Investigator during the first ever circumnavigation of Australia by ship.
Originally named Coffin’s Bay, the sheltered bay in the Southern Ocean, just off the Eyre Peninsula in South Australia, later gave its name to the Coffin Bay Peninsula, including Coffin Bay National Park, and the town of Coffin Bay, which was established in 1957.
