Cemetery Records age 60 born England died Tremont Hotel
Deposited in Vault Remains lost in 1900 Storm∼Ever heard the one about Coughlin's coffin? It's an old Island folk tale about a gentleman named Charles Coughlin who lived on the Island, left for work, then came back home again. Sounds like many an Island story, except for the coming home part is a little different in this one.
Coughlin was, in fact, quite a respectable stage actor in the mid to late 19th century. Raised in Britain, his theatre aspirations would eventually lead him to NYC. While living and performing in New York he, as the story goes, happened upon a tourism brochure for a charming little Island nestled in the Gulf of St Lawrence. As a result, he would visit the Island and become so enamored that he bought land in Fortune.
You may have heard the stories of a small colony of actors and playwrights who settled in the area of Fortune, indeed it was Coughlin who was the impetus in forging that community of dramatists, but that's another story.
Fortune became a beloved summer retreat for the actor. It is said that he intended to retire there one day. However, retirement was not in Coughlin's cards.
Whilst on tour with his theatre company in Galveston, Texas, he took ill and died. Fifty seven years old he was, and never did make it back to his beloved Island. His body was interred at a local cemetery in Galveston until he could be transported home. While there, in the year 1900, a great hurricane struck Galveston, washed through the cemetery and set Coughlin's coffin afloat in the sea.
According to lore, Coughlin's coffin set sail from the Gulf of Mexico and was found several months later by some fishermen. Not Mexican or American fishermen but PEI fishermen who found the coffin on the shore near Fortune.
There you have it. The magnetism of the Island is so strong that it can even draw back the dead. Make what you want of this unlikely tale. We'll not let a little hang-up like "the truth" get in the way of a great story.

from Wikipedia:
Charles Francis Coghlan (11 June 1842 – 27 November 1899) was an Anglo-Irish actor and playwright once popular on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.

Early life
Charles F. Coghlan was born on 11 June 1842, in Paris, France [1] to British subjects, Francis (sometimes spelled Frances) and Amie Marie (née Ruhly) Coghlan. His father, a native of Dublin, Ireland, was the founder of Coghlan's Continental Dispatch and publisher of Coghlan's Continental Guides, and counted among his friends, Charles Dickens, Charles Reade, and other literary figures of the day.[2][3] Amie Coghlan was born on the English Channel Island of Jersey sometime around 1821. Charles Coghlan was later raised in Peterborough, Cambridgeshire and Hull, Yorkshire and though originally groomed for a career in law he had chosen instead to be an actor whilst still in his teens.[1][4][5]

Charles Coghlan began his stage career in 1859 as a minor player with the Sadler's Wells Theatre's summer tour. During their engagement in Dublin, Ireland Coghlan approached John Baldwin Buckstone, then manager of the Haymarket Theatre, with a play he had written. Buckstone passed on the play, but instead gave him the chance to play Monsieur Mafoi, a small role in "The Pilgrim of Love" a play adapted by Lord Byron from Irving's "Legends of the Alhambra" that opened at the Haymarket on 9 April 1860. Over the following few seasons Coghlan would play a number of supporting roles that steadily increased his stature as an actor. In 1868 he played Charles Surface in Sheridan's "School for Scandal" at the St James's Theatre and later that year played Sir Oscar opposite Adelaide Neilson in Marston's "Life for Life" at the Prince of Wales Theatre. Coghlan would remain with Prince of Wales over the next seven or eight seasons playing leading roles such as Geoffrey Delamayn in Collins' "Man and Wife" and Harry Speadbrow in Gilbert's Sweethearts.[5][6]

In 1876 Augustin Daly brought Coghlan to America where he would spend the greater balance of his career. He made his Broadway debut on 12 September 1876, at the Fifth Avenue Theater, as Alfred Evelyn in Lord Lytton's "Money" and was an instant success. Two months later, at the same venue, Coghlan played Orlando opposite Fanny Davenport's Rosalind in Shakespeare's As You Like It.[7] The next season Coghlan was engaged as the leading man at the Union Square Theater, where he played Jean Remind during the successful run of Augustus R. Cazauran's The Celebrated Case. He returned to London in 1881 to play Col. Woods, U.S.A. in the long-running "The Colonel" produced at the Prince of Wales. On 13 December 1890 Coughlan was declared bankrupt[8] He had liabilities of £315.[9] The pinnacle of Coghlan's near twenty-five-year career in America came on 2 December 1898, at the Fifth Avenue Theater in his own adaptation of the Dumas' play Kean titled The Royal Box, in which he played the part of the actor Clarence. This great success was tempered the following year by the failure of his play "Citizen Pierre", in which he made his last New York performance. During his career Coghlan had played opposite his sister, Rose Coghlan, and in support of Lillie Langtry and Minnie Maddern Fiske. His last appearance on the stage was at Houston, Texas, on 28 October 1899, as Clarence in "The Royal Box".[5][6]

Following his death, in 1901, Coghlan's sister, Rose, appeared at Denver, Colorado's, Elitch Theatre in the world premiere of Coghlan's Fortune's Bridge. Rose stated that "my particular reason for coming to Denver was to produce my brother's play -- the one he finished just before his death. It's called Fortune's Bridge, but he didn't give it the name." Rose explained that the manuscript was sent to a typist and at the end her brother signed it and added his Canadian address: "Charles Coghlan, Fortune's Bridge." Apparently the typist moved it to the head of the first page and typed, "Fortune's Bridge, by Charles Coghlan." Rose stated "the name seemed to fit the play so well I allowed it to stand."[10]

Actress Louisa Elizabeth Thorn, a native of London, England,[11] was apparently Charles Coghlan's common-law wife for twenty-five years or more and the mother of his daughter Gertrude Coghlan.[5] When in 1893 Coghlan married nineteen-year-old Kühne Beveridge,[12] a promising sculptor and aspiring actress from a prominent Illinois family, questions arose about his former marital status.[13] Rose Coghlan soon came to her brother's defense stating she had known for years that Louisa and Charles never legally married.[14] Not long afterwards though, Rose decided to dissolve the business partnership she had with her brother.[15] Upon learning of her father's marriage, an upset Gertrude Coghlan reportedly told the press, "I am Charles Coghlan's adopted daughter and not related to him in any way."[16] Perhaps as an attempt to save his daughter the stigma of an illegitimate birth, Coghlan later supported Gertrude's claim that she was adopted, just not legally through the courts.[17] Within a year of his marriage Coghlan would return to Louisa leaving Beveridge to seek an absolute divorce on the grounds of desertion.[18][19] A few years later Gertrude joined her father's company playing Juliet in the Broadway production of the Royal Box and afterwards on the road.[20] Gertrude Coghlan, who took to the stage at age sixteen, would go on to have a theatrical career spanning nearly fifty years.[5][21] The stage actor and director, Charles F. Coghlan (1896–1971), was often thought to be Coghlan's son, in fact he was his nephew, the son of the mezzo-soprano singer Elizabeth "Eily" Coghlan. She died in April 1900 at the age of thirty-six leaving Charles to be adopted by her sister, Rose Coghlan. Charles' father, according to his mother's New York Times obituary, was Sydney Battam or Bratton, a London banker. At the time of his wife's death, Battam was living in London with their twelve-year-old daughter, while four-year-old Charles was with his mother in America.[22][23] At least one family researcher has made the claim that Charles F. Coghlan was the illegitimate son of Rose Coghlan and her one-time lover the future King Edward VII of England.[24]

Charles Francis Coghlan died in Galveston, Texas, on 27 November 1899, after a month's illness. He had originally come to the city with his company to perform "The Royal Box", but his illness prevented him from ever taking the stage. His body was temporarily placed in a metal casket and stored in a vault at a local cemetery to await further family instructions.[5] At first it was decided his remains would be interred on his farm in Fortune Bridge near the eastern tip of Prince Edward Island. Coghlan had sometime earlier purchased the property as a summer home and for his eventual retirement.[1][5] Several days after his death, it was announced through the press that his remains would be returned to New York for cremation.[25] Nearly a year later the disposition of the body had yet to be decided and, in the interim, his casket was swept away from its resting place by a storm surge generated from the deadly Galveston Hurricane of 1900.[26] The New York Actors Club had, for several years, a standing reward for anyone who recovered Coghlan's coffin. In January 1904 a metal coffin was found in a marsh;[27] at first it was thought to have been Coghlan's; however it proved to be the remains of a New York man.[28] Coghlan's coffin/remains was eventually found in January 1907[29] by a group of hunters who discovered it partially submerged in a marsh some nine miles from Galveston along the east coast of mainland Texas.[30][31]

Years after his death and the recovery of his body, a story arose that Coghlan's metal casket had been recovered in 1907, not far from his Prince Edward Island proper, by a group of Canadian fishermen in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, after drifting some two thousand miles along the East Coast of North America. Over the years some clever skeptic of this story referred to Coghlan's casket as the "homing coffin".[32][33] The earliest published version of the story comes from Coghlan's fellow actor Johnston Forbes-Robertson's 1925 book, A Player under Three Reigns. It was repeated in a 1929 Ripley's Believe It or Not! column.[34][35][36] The 1907 news reports of the recovery of his coffin/remains do not tell of the disposition of his remains; he was certainly not reburied on Prince Edward Island.[37]