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Slave Ship Meermin 1766
The Meermin Story
Surrender | The Story Begins ... | < At Zoetendal’s Valleij ... | Limited Bibliography
[Cape Town as the Malagassy slaves would have seen it]
As it turned out, Le Sueur’s concerns turned out to have been misplaced. The rapidly escalating situation aboard the Meermin was defused not by any effort on his part, but rather by the initiative of the sailors, who were in a position more ably suited to an active engagement with the mutinous slaves, and who were further motivated due to their experiencing the rather intense pressure of the slaves’ anger more keenly than their allies on shore. Le Sueur was to play a role in this epic event’s conclusion in much the same way as he had been during the entire account, acting as little more than a spectator bound by the whims of chance and circumstance.
By the 9th, the “schuit”, which had been worked on continuously by van den Berg and the two carpenters, was deemed to be in a suitable enough condition to attempt an invasion of the Meermin. Had such an invasion occurred, it would undoubtedly have made for some gripping reading; but circumstances were such as to provide the historian with a rather more staid finale. While Le Sueur was overseeing the readying of the “schuit”, the Commies and the Onderstuurman, together with some other members of the crew, approached the shore in yet another canoe, albeit one that bore what would be a more successful delegation than that borne across these same waters two days previously. By Commies one can presume Le Sueur is referring to Leij, as Crause was obviously in a state that precluded him from including himself in such an activity, and because various documents seem to indicate Leij as the Commies 7; while Muller, in his testimony, claims that Gulik went ashore at this point with Leij and a “scheeps jongetje”, indicating that it was Gulik and Leij who were in the canoe. The news brought by these men must have come as a tremendous relief, for one gets the impression from his frantic letters that had events adopted a more dangerous course Le Sueur would have made a reluctant hero. The slaves had viewed the readying of the “schuit”, and could foresee the intentions of those on the beach; realising that the end of their wild bid for freedom was near at hand, a more rational spirit assumed shape where rage had previously prevailed, and the slaves handed themselves over willingly to the sailors. On grasping the proximity of their approaching defeat, the slaves would have abandoned their violent tactics as much in the interest of self-preservation as from any sudden loss of resolve. The imminence of their recapture must have impressed upon them the magnitude of their actions, as well as the extent of the retribution that they could reasonably expect the Dutch to consider suitable for the violence and immense losses perpetrated by them on VOC personnel and property. In such a frame of mind, it is likely that the slaves decided that minimal further resistance would be in their best interests, and surrendered themselves in the hope of a degree of future clemency.
With the surrender of the slaves, Le Sueur’s agitation would finally have been eased. For two traumatic weeks he had been casting around, anxiously seeking guidance from Cape officials and desperately seeking to obtain some means of reaching the vessel so as to prevent what could easily have erupted into a wholesale massacre. As it was, direct intervention on his part had not been necessary; the uprising had fizzled out, in a relatively bloodless settlement for which he must have been entirely grateful. Not a man who appears given to a love of excitement or adventure, he had been relieved of undertaking any violent invasion, with the negotiated surrender providing a neat and tidy conclusion to what is otherwise a fantastic and yet a sordid affair. All that now remained was the mopping-up operation; an exercise that was to prove something of an additional challenge, albeit one that lacked the imminent sense of violent disaster that had characterised those that had preceded it.
The slaves had surrendered on 9 March, and the foremost task that confronted the Dutch was to transport them to shore and secure them in an adequate location. While the “schuit” had been repaired, it was deemed not suitable because the weather had turned and the sea was becoming increasingly rough. In fact, the Stuurman had attempted to reach the Meermin, but the boat had become swamped and he was pulled back by a rope that connected the boat with the beach. It was put forward, most probably by the ship’s carpenters, that this boat would only be able to be repaired thoroughly in a dry dock which, given the remoteness of the Soetendaal’s Valleij and its lack of formal infrastructure, would have proved to be an impossible task. The “barcas”, as has been mentioned, was buried so deeply as to be irrecoverable in the limited time required for the transport of the slaves, and the canoes that had been brought to shore were far too small to be adequate for the transportation of such a large congregation of people. A compromise had to be devised; and so it was that the burghers, who had played such a prominent and, in the eyes of the Dutch, exemplary role in facilitating Le Sueur’s efforts, were engaged in another cooperative venture. Without any suitable boats, it was decided that the only option would be to assist the slaves through the surf manually, and so bring them safely on to the beach. Volunteers were asked for, and the detachment that was thus formed comprised in large part of local farmers. Apart from other important considerations, this willingness demonstrates that many of the local farmers were thus able to swim; an operation such as this would have required a degree of familiarity with the sea and with the movements of waves and currents, and the farmers who volunteered must have been capable of some dexterity within the water.
A rope was anchored to the shore, and the volunteers swam with it out to the ship where they passed it to the crew. Many of the slaves were unable to swim, hence the need for a large volunteer contingent to ferry them to shore. The ship, of course, was not far from the shore, and furthermore it was low tide; both circumstances considerably eased the process and limited the danger of drowning or injury. The crew helped the slaves one by one into the water, where volunteers assisted them, carrying them if necessary when slaves were completely unable to swim, and drew themselves and their human cargo to the shore by means of the rope that linked the Meermin with the beach. One could metaphorically conceive of this rope as a lifeline or an umbilical cord, an image of the rebirth of the crew as they prepared to step ashore after close to three harrowing weeks of captivity and imminent death; but one can equally suppose, not unreasonably, that few of the participants in this venture were given to meditations of the symbolic at this point in time.
Le Sueur totals the number of slaves recovered as 53, comprising both genders and including a number of children, who are described as being carried on the backs of the volunteers to the beach. A fire was stoked for them on the beach, and they were brought refreshments; such a description cannot but conjure up images of a dignified tea party, perhaps an organised reunion, in which the guests of honour happen to be responsible for the deliberate murder of a good number of colleagues of the hosts. What is evident from this good treatment is the importance that Le Sueur and Muller (who had come ashore, together with his crew, after the slaves had been successfully transferred to the beach) placed on preserving the strength, and hence future profitability, of what was now once again Company property. Now that the slaves had effectively been disempowered of any further means of resistance, they could now be considered as the physical objects of labour for which they had been purchased. The brief flame of personal agency, which had impressed on the crew all too clearly the humanity of the Malagasy slaves, had been extinguished; from this moment, one learns little about their fate. They were divided into two groups and allocated to separate farmers for temporary accommodation; in the meantime, three wagons were organised for their transport to the Cape. By the 12th of March, the slaves had been sent back to Cape Town.
Now that disaster had been averted and the traumas of the past two weeks had been brought to a satisfactory conclusion, Le Sueur and the Cape authorities were anxious to piece together what had been occurring on the vessel while such a great deal of drama had been taking place on shore. This they were able to do, although to a limited extent, now that the crew had been recovered. Both Muller and Leij had reached shore safely, where the former was noted by Le Sueur to be visibly wounded, indicating that his injuries had been of a serious enough nature as to be unable to heal sufficiently while he had been on the Meermin. These senior officers now safely on shore and able to enjoy an environment of greater comfort than that which they had been forced to endure for the previous three weeks, they immediately despatched a brief report to the Cape, providing some much-desired detail as to the cause of their misfortune and to the rile they had played in securing the surrender of the slaves and their release.
Perhaps nor surprisingly, Muller and Leij provide little detail about the mutiny itself, and absolutely nothing regarding the environment on board ship that had enabled such a rebellion to take place. This glaring omission surely has something to do with their own culpability, particularly on the part of Muller, in enabling the uprising to be realised. Maybe they had agreed to bide their time, hoping to devise some explanation or excuse that would cohere with the events and that would have minimised any retributive action that the Cape officials may have entertained as suitable punishment. In the end such intentions, if they existed, did not pay off in any satisfactory fashion.
On sighting land on the 25th of February, the slaves demanded that the anchor be dropped, making clear their intentions to proceed ashore. The crew had been hoping to reach a region where there was a greater chance of decisive intervention by VOC forces, such as Table Bay or False Bay; as it was, they were forced to anchor just off what they recognised to be Cape Agulhas, near a region that they must have inferred was populated in the main by farmers. It was not ideal, but the slaves were determined; furthermore, the sailors realised that a chance whereby they might be relieved had indeed presented itself to them, and they thus reinforced the mutineers’ notion that this was indeed the coast of Madagascar. So it was that 70 slaves went ashore, to meet ultimately with imprisonment and death; the crew, except for the sailor who was forced to accompany the expedition and was ultimately picked up by a commando, remained on board under the watchful eye of the mutineers. The agitation of both slaves and crew was further aggravated when one of the anchor ropes broke, impressing upon them the danger of shipwreck. A further plan was evidently necessary in order to save their lives and, say Muller and Leij in their report, the ship’s goods, although one suspects that they inserted this concern for the merchandise in order to ingratiate themselves with the Company officials who they would be reading their report, and that they were in fact a great deal more preoccupied with the former concern than they were with the latter. The growing desperation of their situation gave them cause to devise a plan of unusual proportions; they decided to attempt some means of communicating with any potential who may be on the shore, requesting that they light three fires in the hope that it would convince the mutineers that their fellows were safe and content, encamped on the shore, and so motivating them to bring to bring the ship to a distance close enough to the shore for the crew to attempt some means of escape. As has been noted, de Leeuw and Leij wrote separate letters that detailed the same request, the letters were inserted in bottles and the bottles were thrown overboard in the hope that they would be carried to shore and discovered by a party able to intervene on their behalf. In effect, the crew were engaging in a massive act of faith.
A faith evidently not misplaced, for on the 7th they observed three fires on the beach. Probably as much to their astonishment as to their relief, they realised that allies were indeed positioned on the shore, and that they had found at least one of the bottles and thereby been alerted to their situation. Perhaps fearing that some unforeseen eventuality may yet scare the slaves into removing the vessel from the region, or perhaps simply desperate enough, now that they had proof of the close proximity of friendly forces, to regain their liberty as soon as possible, they cut the anchor rope and set the vessel towards the beach. Out of fear that the ship would lose its balance in what must have been an increasingly rough and turgid sea, they also proceeded to chop down on of the masts in the hope that it would rectify any instability in the vessel’s motion. As it turned out, they were unable to save the Meermin by this dramatic attempt; the ship became lodged in a sandbank, and would ultimately be irrecoverable.
Of course, the slaves were now able to view the coast in far greater detail than they had been able to do previously; and, after their leader had met with such an ignominious and for them tragic death, they realised their error and attacked the crew. The rest has been described. The crew having negotiated the surrender of the slaves, they were brought to shore and transported back to the Cape. Muller and Leij add that seven members of the remaining crew were either ill or wounded, a number that one can presume to include both Muller and Gulik.
On the 30th of October 1766, Muller and Gulik were tried for negligence and for neglecting to follow correct instructions and procedures for slaving expeditions. Both were demoted, which entailed being deprived of rank and wages. Muller was forbidden from serving in the VOC for the remainder of his life, and was banned from the Cape, while both were to be put on the first ship returning to the Netherlands where they would serve for their passage. Furthermore, both were to lose one month’s wages and were to pay the costs of the case. The severity of the sentence, particularly in the case of Muller, bears testimony to the significance that the Company officials gave to the disaster. Although neither Muller nor Gulik had been directly responsible for the loss of the Meermin, they were deemed culpable for enabling a situation to arise whereby the Company lost a good number of sailors, a portion of recently purchased slaves and, perhaps most important from a fiscal and commercial perspective, a vessel that would cost a great deal of time and money to replace. Muller’s career in the seafaring world of the VOC was effectively over, and it remains a matter of conjecture as to the employment that he undertook after his return to the Netherlands. It is possible that he would have served on a vessel flying under a different flag, although it is equally probable that he opted for another means of supporting himself, one that would have been less likely to cause similar grievous injuries to those that he suffered in 1766. Whatever it was that he did, one cannot help but consider it unlikely that he ever opted to partake in a slaving expedition again; or, in the remote chance that he did, that he was sure to keep himself well and active, avoiding any chance of contracting an illness such as that which instigated the events that had so nearly cost him his life.
The slaves were not criminally charged; and, with the exception of Massavana and Koesaaij, it would appear that they were merely absorbed into the Company slave population at Cape Town. Massavana and Koesaaij were despatched to Robben Island, there to be observed in the hope, so the records say, of shedding further light on the matter. The Dutch authorities evidently did not possess enough in the way of direct evidence to convict these two slaves in a criminal court, and so they settled on surveying their behaviour and attempting thereby to attain some clarity as to their role in the mutiny. These two figures remain something of a mystery, as representatives of this group of mutinous slaves, the primary agents and ultimate victims of this tragedy, who are yet difficult to penetrate by means of the historical record.
http://www.meermin.org/