A slave mutiny on Meermin, one of the Dutch East India Company's fleet of slave ships, took place in February 1766 and lasted for three weeks. Her final voyage was cut short by the mutiny of the Malagasy captives onboard, who had been sold to Dutch East India Company officials on Madagascar to be enslaved by the company in its Cape Colony in southern Africa. During the mutiny half the ship's crew and almost 30 Malagasy captives died.
Meermin set sail from Madagascar on 20 January 1766, heading to the Cape Colony. Two days into the trip, Johann Godfried Krause, the ship's chief merchant, persuaded the captain, Gerrit Cristoffel Muller, to release the Malagasy slaves from their shackles and thus avoid attrition by death and disease in their overcrowded living conditions. The Malagasy were put to working the ship and entertaining the crew. In mid-February, Krause ordered the Malagasy to clean some Madagascan weapons, which they used to seize the ship in an attempt to regain their freedom; Krause was among the first of the crew to be killed, and Muller was stabbed three times but survived.
The crew negotiated a truce, under the terms of which the Malagasy undertook to spare the lives of the surviving crew members. In exchange, it was agreed that Meermin would return to Madagascar, where the Malagasy would be released. Gambling on the Malagasy's ignorance of navigation, the wounded Muller instead ordered his crew to head for the coast of southern Africa. After making landfall at Struisbaai in the Cape Colony, which the Malagasy were assured was their homeland, 50 to 70 of them went ashore. Their intention was to signal to the others still on board Meermin if it was safe for them to follow, but the shore party soon found themselves confronted by a militia of farmers formed in response to Meermin arrival; the farmers had understood that as the ship was flying no flags, it was in distress.
Meermin crew, now led by Krause's assistant Olof Leij, managed to communicate with the militia on shore by means of messages in bottles, and persuaded them to light the signal fires for which the Malagasy still on board were waiting. On seeing the fires, the Malagasy cut the ship's anchor cable and allowed the ship to drift towards the shore, after which she ran aground on an offshore sandbank. The Malagasy could then see the militia on the shore preparing to come to the ship's assistance, and realised that their situation was hopeless; they surrendered and were once again enslaved. Muller, the ship's mate Daniel Carel Gulik and Krause's assistant Olof Leij were tried in the Dutch East India Company's Council of Justice; all three were fired from the company, while Muller and Gulik were also stripped of their rank and wages. The enslaved Malagasy were not tried, but the two surviving leaders of the mutiny, named in Dutch East India Company records as and , were sent to Robben Island for observation, where died three years later; survived there for another 20 years. In 2004, a search was begun for the wreck of Meermin.
Voyage
Between 1658 and 1795, the Dutch East India Company (VOC) purchased and transported approximately 63,000 slaves to the Dutch Cape Colony in southern Africa, now part of South Africa."History of Slavery: The first slaves at the Cape". Rebirth.co.za. 2000. Retrieved 19 February 2012; "Amersfoort 1655". VOCsite.nl. 2012. Retrieved 16 February 2012; "Dutch East India Company, Trade Network, 18th Century" . Hofstra University. 2012. Retrieved 4 February 2012; In Dutch, the company's name was : abbreviated as VOC, the company's initials were used in a monogram which appeared on company materials as a logo."The Dutch East India Company (VOC) 1602–1799" & "VOC-logo" . entoen.nu. Retrieved 13 February 2012. Meermin was a 480-ton square rigged ship of the Dutch -type, with three masts, which was built in 1759 in the Dutch port of Amsterdam for the VOC's African trade."Meermin 1759". VOCsite.nl. 2012. Retrieved 31 January 2012; ; ; . From December 1765 she was working the coastline of Madagascar, under Captain Gerrit Muller and a crew of 56, taking Malagasy men, women and children to be enslaved in the Cape Colony. Carrying about 140 Malagasy, she set sail from "Betisboka Bay" on the north-western coast of Madagascar on ."Slave Ship Mutiny Program Transcript" . Educational Broadcasting Corporation. 2010. Retrieved 21 February 2012; ; ; ; .
Mutiny In 1766 supercargo Johann Krause was probably the most experienced merchant trading in Madagascar, although he had been "guilty of an earlier indiscretion in 1760", on the VOC ship Neptunus. To avoid the loss of profit caused by enslaved Malagasy dying while at sea, Krause convinced Captain Muller, who was in his first command and was unwell at the time, to unshackle some of them and make them work on deck.; Disease was spreading among the Malagasy in the unsanitary conditions below deck, and the ship's surgeon had reported that, while there were no suitable medicines on board, disease was spreading to the crew. Consequently, two days after the ship had left Madagascar, the crew moved a "large party of [Malagasy]" from confinement to make them work, the men made to assist the crew and the women made to provide entertainment by dancing and singing.; ; "Slave Ship Mutiny Program Transcript" . Educational Broadcasting Corporation. 2010. Retrieved 2 February 2012. and some others were set to controlling and taking care of the sails, which has been described as "unheard of, and certainly against all [VOC] regulations". Allowing slaves into secure areas on deck was common practice on most European vessels, and VOC regulations did permit them to be released onto the deck from time to time, under careful supervision. But the chief concern was that they might jump overboard to escape, rather than that they might mutiny, despite a mutiny by the slaves occurring on the VOC ship in 1753. That mutiny was quickly suppressed, but clearly it could happen again, making Captain Muller's agreement to the kind of release that occurred on Meermin "appear all the more foolish"."The Meermin Story: The Story Begins…". Iziko Museums. 2007. Retrieved 4 February 2012; "Heuvelen, Drie 1752". VOCsite.nl. 2012. Retrieved 4 February 2012.
According to crew member Harmen Koops, on , Krause ordered him to bring on deck some assegais (a type of African spear) and some swords for the Malagasy to clean.; "Slave Ship Mutiny Program Transcript" . Educational Broadcasting Corporation. 2010. Retrieved 2 February 2012. The assegais had been acquired on Madagascar along with the Malagasy, some of whom were experienced in the use of this weapon.; ; ; "Slave Ship Mutiny Program Transcript" . Educational Broadcasting Corporation. 2010. Retrieved 29 January 2012. Krause believed himself to be intellectually superior to the Malagasy, and is reported to have laughed when issuing his order, saying he was sure that others would doubt his wisdom; having set the task, he went below deck for a meal. When the Malagasy had cleaned the weapons and were ordered to return them, they attacked the ship's crew, killing all who were left on deck, including Krause, who had returned when the attack began.; Also killed in this fight were two of the ship's mates, Bender and Albert, leaving only Daniel Carel Gulik surviving of that rank. Some of the surviving crew climbed into the rigging, and others, including Gulik, Koops, Jan de Leeuw, and Krause's assistant Olof Leij, withdrew to the , or gunroom, which was below decks at the stern of the ship, near the rudder."The Meermin Story: The Story Begins…". Iziko Museums. 2007. Retrieved 4 February 2012; ; "Slave Ship Mutiny Program Transcript" . Educational Broadcasting Corporation. 2010. Retrieved 29 January 2012; Huystee, Marit van (ed., 1994), The Batavia Journal of François Palsaert, Western Australian Maritime Museum, p. 55. Captain Muller, who stated that he had been "gazing out over the sea" at the time of the attack, was taken by surprise and stabbed three times by ."The Meermin Story: The Story Begins…". Iziko Museums. 2007. Retrieved 4 February 2012; Muller escaped to his cabin and soon climbed down from a window, via the rudder, to join the others in the gunroom. Crew member Rijk Meyer, who had been thrown overboard with others from the rigging, managed to swim around the ship to a rope hanging from the gunroom window, and was pulled to safety by his shipmates. Although the crew who had climbed into the rigging threatened the Malagasy from the fore-mast with hand grenades, "only those that reached the safety of the barricaded [gunroom] ... escaped a brutal death." With Krause dead and Muller wounded, Olof Leij was left in charge of the remaining crew below deck.
The mutiny began under the de facto leadership of three men: the primary leader's name is unknown, but the names of the others were recorded as and . , a man of 26, had been enslaved by "the king of Toulier", now Toliara, through an elaborate deception. Although Krause had presented the Malagasy with an opportunity to mutiny by allowing them on deck and handing them familiar weapons, the mutiny had been premeditated and organised by the Malagasy, who intended to kill all Europeans on board the ship, and to return to Madagascar. According to , the Malagasy had "planned for a long time to become masters of the ship [and their] aim was to go back to [their] own country". It may be that the Malagasy had originally intended to sail the ship themselves, as did the slaves involved in a later mutiny on the VOC ship De Zon, in 1775; but they found that they could not control the ship, and the Meermin drifted for three days.
Truces and betrayal
The crew members on the fore-mast initially reached an agreement with the Malagasy: the crew's lives were to be spared on condition that they sailed Meermin back to Madagascar; but this truce broke down; the crewmen were killed and their bodies thrown overboard. The crew in the gunroom were short of food and drink; Muller decided that they should attempt to regain control of Meermin. Neither Muller nor Gulik took part in the attack, as both were wounded; command was instead transferred to boatswain Laurens Pieters; twelve crewmen armed themselves and exited the gunroom shooting as they went. Pieters and another man were surprised and killed as they stepped on deck; the rest retreated back to the gunroom, where another crewman, who had been severely wounded, later died.
On the third day, the survivors set off a small explosion just outside it, using gunpowder, in which Gulik was injured again. Their hope was to frighten the Malagasy into submission, and a Malagasy woman who had been taken hostage was instructed to tell the other Malagasy that, if they did not surrender, the crew would blow up the ship. The Malagasy correctly pointed out that doing so would kill the crew as well, and again demanded that they be returned to Madagascar. Leij agreed, but Captain Muller ordered the crew to sail the ship towards Cape Agulhas, the southernmost point of Africa. Muller's assessment was that the Malagasy had little skill in seafaring and navigation and therefore would be unlikely to notice the deception,"The Meermin Story: The Story Begins…". Iziko Museums. 2007. Retrieved 4 February 2012; . which proved to be the case. After three or four days' sailing they sighted land,; . the VOC settlement of Struisbaai.