Meermin slave mutiny

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.

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.

[3][nb 2] 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.

[16] 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.

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".

[22] According to crew member Harmen Koops,[nb 3] on 18 February 1766,[20] Krause ordered him to bring on deck some assegais (a type of African spear) and some swords for the Malagasy to clean.

[24][nb 5] Krause believed himself to be intellectually superior to the Malagasy,[26] and is reported to have laughed when issuing his order, saying he was sure that others would doubt his wisdom;[13] having set the task, he went below deck for a meal.

[13] 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.

[20] Although the crew who had climbed into the rigging threatened the Malagasy from the fore-mast with hand grenades,[9] "only those that reached the safety of the barricaded [gunroom] ... escaped a brutal death.

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.

[14] On 27 February, a local official named Hentz wrote a letter describing events to Johannes Le Sueur, the VOC magistrate for Stellenbosch, about 146 kilometres (91 mi) to the north-west.

[14][nb 3] Two days later Le Sueur arrived in Soetendaal's Valleij, a little more than six kilometres (4 mi) north-west of Struisbaai, and "installed himself"[14] in the home of farmer Barend Geldenhuijs.

A crew member who had come ashore with the Malagasy and subsequently escaped was taken to Le Sueur, who sent him to report in person to the authorities at Cape Town.

The authorities at Cape Town sent two hoekers, Neptunus and Snelheid, with a party of soldiers under two corporals and a sergeant, to assist in retaking Meermin, but the ships did not arrive until the action was over.

[14] Meanwhile, the surviving crew members were becoming desperate; having observed that the ocean current was setting onshore, and knowing of the arrangements for signal fires, they wrote messages asking for Dutchmen on land to light three fires on the shore to deceive the Malagasy on the ship into believing they were close to home rather than in a "Christian country", and to guard them "should the ship run aground".

[13] Convinced they would be killed if the Malagasy discovered the truth while still on board ship, the crew sealed their messages in bottles and dropped them into the onshore current.

[14] The party from Cape Town had arrived by 6 March, and, while Johannes Le Sueur was overseeing the carpenters' examination of Meermin's boats, he was handed a bottle containing a message signed by Jan de Leeuw.

[46] Although we trust in the Lord to save us we kindly request the finder of this letter to light three fires on the beach and stand guard at these behind the dunes, should the ship run aground, so that the slaves may not become aware that this is a Christian country.

The Malagasy on the ship, seeing the signal fires, cut the anchor cable, allowing Meermin to drift shorewards, where she grounded on a sandbank.

They recovered nearly 300 firearms, gunpowder and musket balls, compasses and five bayonets; they auctioned cables, ropes and other items from the ship on the shore.

[49] On 30 October 1766 the VOC's Council of Justice[25] found Captain Muller and the surviving ship's mate, Daniel Carel Gulik, guilty of culpable negligence and sentenced them to demotion and dismissal from the company; they lost their rank and their pay was docked.

[48] For lack of sufficient evidence it was decided that the remaining mutiny leaders Massavana and Koesaaij should be "put on [Robben Island] until further instructions".

[55] 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.