The wreck of the Meermin

The Meermin was a 480-ton square-rigged ship of the Dutch hoeker-type, with three masts, which was built in 1759. In February 1766 The Meermin (Mermaid) sailed from Madagascar to the Cape with a cargo of slaves.

The slaves staged a mutiny on board that lasted for three weeks. During the mutiny, half the ship’s crew and almost 30 Malagasy captives died.

The ship’s chief merchant had persuaded the captain to release the Malagasy slaves from their shackles. He believed that doing this would avoid attrition by death and disease in their unsanitary crowded living conditions.

 The slaves were put to work on the ship. They were given the job of cleaning some weapons which they then used to sieze the ship to escape.

The crew negotiated a truce. The crew was to be spared on the assurance that the ship would return to Madagascar. Of course, the ship headed for the Cape. When the Meermin got to Struisbaai the slaves believed they were close to Madagascar and about 50 of them disembarked and went ashore. They were hoping to clear the way for the rest of the slaves to follow. The slaves however found they had been tricked and they faced a militia of farmers formed in response to Meermin‘s arrival.

The farmers had understood that as the ship was flying no flags, it was in distress. The crew managed to get a message to the farmers by sending messages in bottles. They were instructed to light fires which were to trick the slaves again into believing it was safe to go ashore. When the fires were lit the Malagasy cut the anchor cable which caused the ship to drift to shore and she ran aground on a sandbank

.The slaves saw they had been fooled and they surrendered. The crew was fired from the company and stripped of their rank and wages. The VOC authorities salvaged as much as possible from the beached Meermin. The VOC recovered nearly 300 firearms, gunpowder, musket balls, compasses, and five bayonets from the ship, they auctioned cables, ropes, and other items from the on the shore.  The hull was too expensive to salvage. The Meermin was ultimately left to break up where she grounded.

The two surviving leaders of the mutiny, named in Dutch East India Company records as Massavana and Koesaaij were sent to Robben Island, where Massavana died three years later; Koesaaij survived there for another 20 years.

Between 1658 and 1799 the Dutch East India Company bought and transported approximately 63,000 enslaved people to its Cape Colony.