Meermin (VOC ship)
An 18th-century Dutch hoeker
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| History | |
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 Dutch Republic
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| Name: | Meermin |
| Owner: |
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| Builder: | Dutch East India Company |
| Laid down: | 1759 |
| Commissioned: | 1761 |
| Maiden voyage: | Texel–Cape Colony |
| Fate: | Grounded off Struisbaai, southern Africa, 1766; broke up in situ |
| General characteristics | |
| Type: | Hoeker |
| Tonnage: | 480 |
| Length: | 102 ft 2 in (31.14 m) |
| Beam: | 29 ft 9 in (9.07 m) |
| Draught: | 11 ft 9 in (3.58 m) |
| Sail plan: | Full rigged |
Meermin (Dutch pronunciation: [ˈmeːrmɪn]) was an 18th-century Dutch cargo ship of the hoeker type, one of many built and owned by the Dutch East India Company. She was laid down in 1759 and fitted out as a slave ship before her maiden voyage in 1761, and her career was cut short by a mutiny of her cargo of Malagasy people. They had been sold to Dutch East India Company officials on Madagascar, to be used as company slaves in its Cape Colony in southern Africa. Half her crew and almost 30 Malagasy lost their lives in the mutiny; the mutineers deliberately allowed the ship to drift aground off Struisbaai, now in South Africa, in March 1766, and she broke up in situ. As of 2013, archaeologists are searching for the Meermin's remains.
Meermin was laid down in 1759 in a shipyard belonging to the Dutch East India Company (Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie, abbreviated to "VOC") in the port of Amsterdam in the Netherlands.Meermin was a 480-ton Dutch hoeker, square rigged with three masts.
The hoeker originated in the 15th century as a type of fishing vessel with one or two masts in response to the growing Dutch trade in herring, and was known in English as a hoy. Equipped with guns, hoekers were employed as defensive escorts for fishing fleets, or Buisconvoyers, in the Second Anglo-Dutch War of the 1660s. They came to be used more widely in trade with the Dutch East Indies via the Cape of Good Hope in southern Africa, as their rounded sterns proved to be more resistant to warping and than square sterns, which were prone to "catastrophic leaking when exposed to strong sun." Larger than most hoekers, the Meermin was unusual for her type in that she was built of oak and had a beakhead, a feature not normally present in smaller merchant vessels.
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