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.

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.

[18] The ship began her maiden voyage at Texel, an island off the coast of what is now the Netherlands, on 21 January 1761, with a crew of 62 under the command of Captain Hendrik Worms; she arrived at the Cape of Good Hope on 15 June.

[21] From December 1765, Meermin was working the coastline of Madagascar, collecting Malagasy men, women and children for use as slaves in the Cape Colony, under Captain Gerrit Muller and a crew of 56.

[23][Fn 4] Two days into the voyage a "large party of [Malagasy]"[25] was allowed on deck, the men to assist the crew, and the women to provide entertainment by dancing and singing.

[32] Meermin eventually grounded on a sandbank, by which time a militia consisting of local farmers and burghers had been formed onshore, who had observed that the ship was flying no flags, which they recognised as a distress signal.

Jaco Boshoff of Iziko Museums, who is in charge of the research, retrieved Meermin's plans from the Netherlands, to help identify this wreck among the numerous ships reputed to have run aground in the Struisbaai area.