Major-General John Pine Coffin (1778 – 1830) was an English army officer and colonial administrator who served as Governor of St. Helena 1821–23.

[1] On the formation of the Royal Staff Corps (for engineer and other departmental duties under the quartermaster-general), he was appointed to a company therein, but the year after was promoted to major and removed to the permanent staff of the quartermaster-general's department, in which capacity he was in Dublin at the time of Emmet's insurrection, and continued to serve in Ireland until 1806, afterwards accompanying Lord Cathcart to the Isle of Rugen and in the expedition against Copenhagen in 1807.

[1] In 1808 he was sent to the Mediterranean as deputy quartermaster-general with the rank of lieutenant-colonel, and was employed with the expedition to the Bay of Naples, which ended in the capture of Ischia and Procida.

In 1810 he organised the flotilla of gunboats equipped for the defence of the Straits of Messina, when Murat's army was encamped on the opposite shore; and in 1813 he commanded the troops of a battalion of the 10th foot on board the Thames, 32 guns, under Captain afterwards Admiral Sir Charles Napier, and the Furieuse, 36 (18-pounders), under Captain William Mounsey, sent to attack the Isle of Ponza, which was captured by the frigates sailing right into the harbour, under a heavy cross-fire from the shore-batteries, and landing the troops without losing a man.

[1] After the renewal of hostilities in 1815, when the Austrian and Piedmontese armies of occupation, a hundred thousand strong, entered France,[b] Coffin was attached, in the capacity of British military commissioner with the rank of brigadier-general, to the Austro-Sardinians, who crossed Mont Cenis, and remained with them until they quitted French territory, in accordance with the Treaty of Paris.