Meermin slave mutiny

The Meermin slave mutiny took place in February 1766 and lasted for three weeks. Meermin was one of the Dutch East India Company's fleet of slave ships. Her final voyage was cut short by the mutiny of her cargo of Malagasy people, who had been sold to Dutch East India Company officials on Madagascar to be used as company slaves in its Cape Colony in southern Africa. During the mutiny half the ship's crew and almost 30 Malagasy lost their lives.

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 subsequently 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. But 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, 50–70 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's arrival; the farmers had understood that as the ship was flying no flags, it was in distress.

Meermin's 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 shackled. Captain Muller, 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 slaves were not tried, but the two surviving leaders of the mutiny, named in Dutch East India Company records as Massavana and Koesaaij, were sent to Robben Island for observation, where Massavana died three years later; Koesaaij survived there for another 20 years. In 2004 an ongoing search was begun for Meermin's remains.

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