Mutiny by Slaves from Madagascar in 1766

[Oju]

Slave Ship Meermin 1766

The Meermin Story

This is an extract from a recent Honours thesis by Andrew Alexander under the auspices of the Department of History at the University of Cape Town. The work is based on the Historical research commissioned by the Meermin project and gives an accurate account of what happened in 1766.

Introduction

The Story Begins ... | At Zoetendal’s Valleij ... | Surrender | Limited Bibliography

During February and March of the year 1766, a Dutch slaving vessel, the Meermin, was to be the site of an act of violent resistance, murder and an abortive bid for freedom. Approximately 140 Madagascan slaves revolted against the VOC crew manning the vessel and assume control of the ship; they were subsequently deceived by a Dutch crew desperate for their lives, transported to a region far from the island kingdoms that they regarded as home, and ultimately violently defeated on the coast of a foreign land, a land where many were to remain and die, recaptured by those over whom they had, for a brief moment, won such a devastating victory. Their grasp for liberty thwarted by an almost fantastic mixture of cunning, firepower and luck, they were ultimately to submit to the authority of the cause of their oppression, and to remain in the land from which their attempts at flight had been directed. This land was the Cape Colony, under the hegemony of the VOC in the mid-18th Century; and on its coast, at the southernmost tip of the continent at Cape Agulhas, is the scene of this, one of the most violent, improbable and yet compulsive acts of resistance to occur in the early history of what is today modern South Africa.

[Cape Town in 1763. Iziko, W.Fehr Collection]

Through a rigorous examination of historical sources that detail the events of a particular slave mutiny that occurred off Cape Agulhas in 1766, a narrative will be constructed that will be as faithful as possible to the actual events as they were recorded. From such a narrative, one will be able to examine aspects of slave resistance and mutiny that are illuminated in the light of this particular incident, an examination that may do something to debunk the myths that conceal and distance as much as they may inspire.

What adds significance to this project is the current attempt to uncover the wreckage of the Meermin. Jaco Boshoff, a marine archaeologist, is currently engaged in a project to locate the site where the Meermin may be buried, and then, if successful, to excavate whatever remains of the vessel.

The narrative of the Meermin has been documented several times, with varying degrees of accuracy and completeness. The ship has sometimes been confused with a later vessel, also named the Meermin, which was in operation during the 1780s; thus one account, located in the Readers’ Digest Illustrated History of South Africa, records the events of the uprising and shipwreck, but in a relating illustration makes some confusion with a record that relates to the second Meermin. This account is brief, but fairly accurate in its rendering of the events. However, the ship’s log that is referred to in the illustration belonged to the second Meermin; no logbook has been recovered from the Meermin of 1766, and so no daily log is contained in the historical record. In addition to the brief version of the events contained in the Readers’ Digest, an unpublished narrative has been written by the historian of Dutch rule at the Cape and recently published novelist, Dan Sleigh. This narrative, comprising 16 pages and written in Afrikaans, provides for a detailed and yet concise summation of the mutiny and the subsequent events culminating in the wreck. Sleigh’s account relies primarily on the sources that I have consulted; his narrative is thus founded on the actual historical record, and is the most complete and comprehensive account that is currently in existence.

http://www.meermin.org/

[Oju]

The Story Begins…

< Introduction | At Zoetendal’s Valleij ... | Surrender | Limited Bibliography

The Meermin was not an exceptional vessel, nor was it, by any means, embarking on any particularly unusual or dangerous operation. It was a hoeker, a small, three-masted multipurpose vessel that had been adapted and rigged for slaving expeditions. Outfitted in Amsterdam in 1761, the Meermin had already engaged in a number of slaving expeditions during the years preceding her fatal voyage of 1766. Hence, one may suppose, the complacency of the crew, a complacency that was ultimately to cost half of them their lives.The mutiny and ultimate wreck of the Meermin was enabled, in a number of ways, by sickness. The Gesaghebber(captain), Gerrit Christoffel Muller, was not a well man; he claims, in his plea before the court penned in the minutes for the Council of Justice in 1766, that he had been sick for some time before the mutiny. This appeal to his own lack of well-being as a mitigating factor for his poor performance is apparently his primary justification in his plea for a measure of clemency. Whatever degree of seriousness this sickness may have entailed, it is clear that the Gesaghebber was not in a fit frame of mind or body; and his own lack of willingness or ability to lead his men due to his illness is the first indicator of a slackened atmosphere of discipline aboard the ship, an atmosphere that could be manipulated towards one favouring the success of an open rebellion.It was not only Muller who was suffering in such a manner. On-board illness was certainly a common feature in seafaring expeditions of the 18th Century, and any infection could rapidly spread among the inhabitants of such a small, enclosed space with no natural outlet and little in the way of effective medicinal practice. So it was that the slaves, chained and cooped below deck in conditions of undoubted discomfort that are difficult for the present-day observer to imagine, fell prey to some form of disease. When one takes subsequent events into account, one is tempted to consider the possibility that the slaves may have been faking the symptoms of illness in order to obtain the degree of freedom necessary to stage a mutiny. No matter how convincing such a thesis may appear in the light of the events of the Meermin, it would be difficult to substantiate fully in the lack of definitive evidence. The crew, and in particular the officers under Muller, were obviously convinced that the slaves were ill and in need of some ameliorative treatment. Again one is tempted to conjecture, to suppose the possibility that Muller’s heart was filled with compassion for the large number of those who were sharing a similar condition as that which he was suffering himself. Such suppositions aside, it was decided that the slaves could be freed of their chains in order for them to gain some fresh air and to recover as much as possible; the Malagasy slave route often experienced large losses of slaves en route, and no doubt the officers were determined to preserve as much of what was now Company property as was humanly possible. The slaves were released; the wheels were turning, and the conditions necessary for slave mutiny were as ripe as is perhaps on a slaving vessel of this era.

It was Gesaghebber Muller who authorised the unchaining of the slaves, who were subsequently allowed to walk around on deck. It was his first major blunder, the fatal consequences of which he could not possibly have foreseen at the time. The Company issued fairly strict regulations regarding the securing of slaves on board ship; and while it does allow for slaves to be brought on deck under certain conditions, it stresses that such a practice is to be limited, and that on such occasions that slaves are brought on deck a careful watch must be maintained at all times. The document highlights the propensity for slaves to hurl themselves overboard as the most pressing concern with regard to them being brought above decks; a concerted mutiny is not mentioned, and one can presume that the likelihood of such a fatal turn of events had not impressed itself on the writers of the Madagascar document. Certainly, one would be inclined to view Muller’s decision to free a large number of slaves and allow them free movement on deck as a clear breach of Company principle, hence the harshness of his sentencing. Granted that he, like many Company officials, would have in all likelihood viewed the outbreak of a slave mutiny as a virtual impossibility, his decision to allow such uncircumscribed freedom to recently purchased slaves was perhaps motivated by the combination of an understandable concern for the maintenance of Company property with a lax attitude to the regulations governing slaving conduct, a laxness perhaps shaped by his own deteriorating condition. In fact, there was a precedent to suggest the possibility of violent insurrection; in 1753, a slave mutiny had occurred on the vessel Drie Heuvelen, which was suppressed before the slaves were able to gain control of the ship. The fact that such a rebellion had occurred less than fifteen years previously makes Muller’s conduct appear all the more foolish. One must presume that, as a Company servant, he considered the slaves in his charge as powerless and as mere physical entities incapable of human-motivated action, despite the historical evidence to the contrary. Muller had overstepped the boundaries of acceptable practice; the environment for mutiny had been set, with slaves walking the ship of their captors with greater freedom than one would expect a responsible captain to have granted them.

The atmosphere instigated by the actions of Muller were not of themselves sufficient for mutiny, although it is a matter of fascinating conjecture whether another form of rebellion would have occurred had Commies (Senior Merchant and second in command) Crause not embarked on his disastrous course of action. If there is a man whose actions propels him beyond the sphere of the inept and hurls him headlong into the role of the buffoon, then such a man is Commies Johan Godfried Crause. The Readers’ Digest Illustrated History of South Africa describes Crause as a man who took “Muller’s casual attitude” to “ridiculous lengths”; and while Muller certainly stands out as a captain whose authoritative ineptitude created an atmosphere conducive to mutinous violence, Crause has to be credited with not only allowing such a mutiny to happen, but also, quite literally, with supplying the slaves with the tools they required to turn their dreams of personal liberation into a reality. These tools were, naturally, weapons; and it was Crause who, deciding that the Malagasy weapons obtained (probably as curiosities) at the purchase of the slaves required some maintenance, put forward the idea, in itself no sign of stupidity, that those best qualified to clean Malagasy weapons would be those hailing from Madagascar. The only problem in Crause’s scheme was that the only Malagasies in any kind of reachable distance were the slaves aboard the Meermin, a group who, one would suppose, the Dutch officials may have suspected of harbouring at least some measure of resentment or anger. Perhaps such suspicions never entered the head of Crause, in which case he is a man whose naivety is almost unbelievable; or perhaps he simply did not consider the possibility of violence as one that had the least chance of assuming reality. Whatever his mental processes at the time, one can reasonably assume that his understanding of the slaves mentality was minimal, and that he must have been a man of limited imagination.

It was Tuesday 18 February 1766, the first truly significant date in the course of this unfortunate voyage. Koksmaat (steward) Harmen Koops describes how, with the Gesaghebber’s approval, Commies Crause requested that he bring the weapons up on deck for the slaves to clean. Dan Sleigh explains that some of the slaves had already been put to work on board by Muller, who no doubt saw no reason for them to wait until arriving at the Cape before being assigned to labour; he highlights the fact that Massavana (one of the Malagasy slaves) and some of his contemporaries had been assigned to controlling and maintaining the sails. Thus, in addition to their being allowed on deck, the slaves had been granted considerable freedom of movement on the ship; instead of being herded together under the watchful eye of a VOC officer, as one would have reasonably expected, the slaves were distributed around the vessel and had been allowed what amounts to a free reign. Such a situation certainly indicates a laissez-faire attitude amongst the officers, an attitude indicative of a remarkable detachment from reality and an absolute absence of suspicion that the slaves may take advantage of their radically altered circumstances.

Harmen Koop brought the weapons, which were in the main Malagasy spears, and Muller and Crause assigned five slaves to clean them under the supervision of some sailors. Crucially, some of the senior officers were present while this undoubtedly irregular operation was put under way. Koop describes how Crause had disappeared to have a meal after assigning the slaves to this task, and was only to appear, to his ultimate detriment, when the attack commenced. Muller claimed to have been gazing out over the sea when he was attacked by the slaves, and stabbed severely. Muller’s narrative of the events is of a retiring nature in which he seems to be abrogating responsibility; the sense one gets from his own testimony is of an entirely passive figure, shattered from his reveries by the point of an spear. His ascription of the responsibility for the disastrous cleaning scheme entirely to Crause is equally revealing, for he describes how Crause had wanted the weapons cleaned and had engaged the slaves’ services on his own account. He also reiterates the debilitating nature of his illness, as though he were unable to effectively intervene either in the enactment of this disastrous course of action, or in the violence that followed. All in all, we are being presented with a picture of Muller, reflected as much in his own words as in those of his contemporaries, that is decidedly unflattering. In attempting to rescind any responsibility that may have been his, Muller comes across as someone with a decided lack of control over his own vessel, a passive captain scarcely aware of the goings-on aboard his own ship.

Those of the crew who survived were those who managed to barricade themselves in the Constapelskamer, (at the stern of the vessel where the arms and ammunition was kept) where they were to spend a good few days. As far as one is able to make out, Gesaghebber Muller, Onderstuurman (Mate) Gulik and Adsistent (Junior Merchant) Leij clambered into the chamber through the windows, while a number of others, including Hofmeester (steward) Harmen Koop and the Bottelier (steward) Jan de Leeuw, were to add to their number. Gulik, too, had been wounded; he was cut above the eye, which he must have obtained in what he describes as a particularly violent struggle. Only those who had attained the relative safety of the Constapelskamer survived, and it is clear that several had suffered wounds of varying degrees. The remainder perished.

According to Sleigh, Crause was one of the first to be killed, dropped with an assegai after emerging to attempt to talk with the now-armed slaves. It is difficult to find direct references in the testimonies of Muller, Gulik and Leij as to Crause’s death, but is clear that he perished, along with those members of the crew who were too far from the Constapelskamer to make it to safety. Others who perished include Onderstuurman (mate) Bender and Onderstuurman Albert; it would appear that Gulik was the only member of that rank to survive the attack. The ferocity of the battle itself appears to indicate a tremendous anger and rage on the part of the slaves, who seem to have demonstrated little consideration for the benefit that might be theirs should they preserve the lives of the crew. All members of the crew who did not make it to the place of safety were stabbed and/or thrown overboard. The slaves may have been seizing a most opportune moment for regaining their freedom, but the battle was as much a direct assault on their former overlords as it was a bid for liberty. While it would reinforce a crass stereotype to over-emphasise the bloodthirstiness of the slaves, it is not so impertinent to highlight what was undoubtedly a savage and ferocious battle. The intensity of the anger manifested on the Meermin on 18 February 1766 is certainly difficult to imagine for a contemporary audience not directly acquainted with the brutal realities of the slave trade; and perhaps all that one can do is note the manifestations of what was not a wholly rational and pre-conceived plan of action, but the consequences of a particularly unique set of circumstances that brought to the surface those violent and brutal undercurrents that underpinned the practice of 18th Century VOC-directed slavery in a horrific, and yet at the same time deeply revealing, moment of spontaneous slave resistance. As is often the case, the tensions and social fractures implicit in an unjust institution were illuminated in all their stark actuality through circumstances that allowed the workings of the subconscious to be manifested at the level of exterior behaviour. It will be sufficient to conclude that the violence of the manifestation is itself testimony to the immense tensions and indeed hatreds that girded the slave trade and guided the behaviour of both its promulgators and its victims.

Those crew members who had survived were by now secreted in the Constapelskamer, barricaded against the slaves who had assumed control of their vessel. There is a rather gory interlude, during which the slaves captured sailors who had secreted themselves in the rigging and, after binding them, stabbed most of them to death. Of the five who remained, three were hurled overboard after the slaves, led by Massavana, cast lots to decide their fate. Rijk Meyer, who was able to swim, managed to grab on to a rope dangling from a window of the Constapelskamer, and, avoiding the shots of the slaves, was pulled up to rejoin his fellows.

As one could imagine, the crew were in a rather desperate state regarding food and water supplies. There were now approximately 30 crew members in the Constapelskamer 1, and they were forced to subsist on raw bacon and potatoes and a cask of arak. The situation was beginning to look bleak, not to mention the increasingly obvious evidence of the inability of the slaves to sail the ship; and, after a failed attempt on Wednesday 19th to gain food supplies, things were coming to a head. It was at this stage that the crew began to debate the options open to them, a course of action that, perhaps as much to their surprise as to that of anybody else, was to instigate a series of events culminating in their regaining of their liberty.

The skipper advocated a course of violent resistance. It was now Thursday, and Muller was of the opinion that the crew should arm themselves, break out of the Constapelskamer and retake the vessel. The sailors evidently possessed some arms in their refuge, weapons that must either have been stored there or which the sailors must have been carrying at the time of their dramatic flight to the Constapelskamer. Muller himself, due to his injury, was rather conveniently not in the position to include himself in the planned offensive, as was Gulik. Despite the obvious seriousness of his wound, it is fascinating to note, perhaps too cynically, Muller’s reticence to directly command any offensive against the mutinous slaves who had successfully overrun a vessel under his command. By now, one can begin to observe such behaviour as sadly characteristic of the man. His lack of vigilance and decisive leadership had created an atmosphere on his ship that had resulted in what must be, apart from complete destruction of the vessel, the worst possible disaster that he would have been able to imagine; and now he advocated a plan of violent resistance in which he refused to play a direct role. The ineptitude and, for lack of a better word, passivity of Muller becomes all the more apparent as the narrative continues.

The armed assault was a complete failure. A Bootsman (Bo’sun) Laurens Pieters had volunteered to lead a group of armed sailors in the wake of Muller’s and Gulik’s professed incapacity to do so; and they proceeded out of the Constapelskamer, shooting at any slave within sight. The slaves fought back; Pieters was brought down, followed by another sailor, both of whom were left on the deck; and another sailor, wounded but having managed to retreat with his fellow combatants back to their refuge, died surrounded by his fellows. Twelve sailors had engaged in the mission; the only outcome was that the remnant of the crew was now three men poorer for their exertions.

Faced with the loss of three of their men, the crew of the Meermin were not to be deterred. Instead of retiring, they hit upon an even more outrageous plan. Again with the affirmation of the captain, they placed some gunpowder beyond the Constapelskamer with the intention of igniting it, and thereby terrifying the mutinous slaves into submission. This plan was to meet with a similarly dismal end to that which had preceded it. Sleigh claims that a Bootsman Gulik was burnt in the face, to the extent that he was blind. Gulik’s testimony does refer to his being burned by the fire when the gunpowder was ignited; however, the extent to which he was injured is not altogether clear, or whether any blinding or disfigurement was permanent. It therefore seems likely that Sleigh denoted Gulik with the incorrect rank at this point in his narrative. Certainly, one gets a sense that Gulik was enduring more than his fair share of hardship, and one cannot help but entertain the notion that at this moment he might have considered himself better off lying at the bottom of the sea with his erstwhile contemporaries. He must have expressed his unhappiness with the way events had turned out, for this course of action was ultimately abandoned. Such a heightened atmosphere of tension must have affected the crew, who probably saw their repeated attempts at intimidation as endangering their chances of survival to an even greater extent than the danger to which they had previously been subjected. Needless to say, the failure of both these operations had impressed their true condition on the collective consciousness of the crew and officers. Gunfights and explosions having led to no significant improvement in their condition, the only option remaining was the humiliating, but potentially life-saving course of negotiation.

The crew were in possession of a slave woman who they had conveniently retained when barricading themselves in the Constapelskamer; the Dutch had assigned a number of female slaves to the Constapelskamer when loading the slaves in Madagascar, and it is clear that a number of these had remained under their authority after the uprising. This slave woman was to become the primary instrument of negotiation between the sailors and the mutinous slaves. The crew were evidently not yet willing to enter into negotiations that would accede to the reality of their situation; rather, they initiated proceedings with a perhaps not untypical stream of threats and demands. Their experience with the gunpowder having met with a certain degree of success, a fact that the upper hierarchy as represented by Gulik was only too aware, the sailors demanded the immediate surrender of the slaves. They threatened that, in the absence of such a surrender, they would proceed to blow the ship up with their gunpowder. The evident absurdity of this threat was obviously not lost on the slaves, who had been witness to the crew’s distinct discomfort at the result of their pyrotechnic experiment. Calling their bluff, they answered that they had viewed the fear that the explosion had instilled in the sailors, and were not prepared to do what was requested of them. Nevertheless, for all their bluster and mock bravado, the crew had embarked on a course of action that would ultimately save their lives. The slaves wanted to negotiate; the opportunity for deceit and manipulation was near at hand.

At this stage we are witness to a shift in overt leadership, a shift that will further illuminate the tensions among the officer base. It has been noted that both Gesaghebber Muller and Onderstuurman Gulik had been injured; both were severely incapacitated, to the extent that they were unable to exert any form of capable leadership. Any active contribution to the sailors’ preservation would have to be undertaken by another, a man more capable than his superiors in both body and mind, in securing the confidence of both the crew and the slaves to reach some kind of settlement.

It is thus that Adsistent Olof Leij enters the frame of action as a major player. Sleigh refers to him as a clerk, while certain subsequent references would indicate that he was some kind of Commies, associated with Crause, who had been employed in the capacity of slave purchase and management. He would thus have been already personally acquainted with the slaves; as such, he would have been the most capable candidate in the eyes of the sailors to undertake complex and indeed disastrous negotiations of this nature. The sailors would have been fully aware that this was an operation in which their lives were at stake; they had failed to defeat the mutineers violently, and the slaves had called their rather unconvincing bluff. One of Leij’s skills was that he spoke a smattering of Malagasy, the rudiments of which he must have picked up in the course of his career as a slave procurer. The only possibility for obtaining life and liberty were thus secured in his hands, as he was assigned the unenviable task of negotiating for his and his compatriots lives with those whose possession he had negotiated only a few days previously. This time, he was in a less comfortable position in the negotiation process than that which his previous experience would have enabled him to grow accustomed to.

Leij tends to be a narrator who is rather sparing on the details, and he does not accord significant detail in his testimony to the nature of the negotiations that he conducted with the slaves. What he is clear about, and what is reiterated by other sources, is the demands that the slaves placed on the crew in return for their security. The slaves wanted to be returned to Madagascar, to the shores of the island that they still considered to be their home. This was their demand. The rage that had been unleashed when circumstances enabled it had faded somewhat; and while the slaves must have felt something a little more intense than animosity towards their one-time captors, they now evidently saw the preservation of the enemy’s lives as a tool that they could employ to their benefit. Looking beyond their immediate anger and rage, they saw cooperation with the crew as their best chance of going home, and of reversing the terrible misfortune that had befallen them. Hence their willingness, on witnessing the botched attempts of the sailors to regain the vessel and their subsequent helplessness, to enter into an agreement.

There would no doubt have been a subconscious desire on the part of all the slaves to return to their place of origin and escape the destiny of lifelong servitude that awaited them at their destination; indeed, Sleigh refers to Massavana as possessing a distinct, articulated desire to obtain some means of returning to Madagascar. As one of the identified leaders of the mutiny, Massavana would no doubt have been at the forefront of these negotiations, where he most probably would have articulated the collective desire on the part of the slaves to return to Madagascar. The slaves made a number of demands of Leij; they instructed the crew to return them to their own land, and furthermore they instructed that the entire must bring themselves on deck, carrying with them their entire store of gunpowder, and that the gunpowder be them thrown overboard. Leij relayed this series of demands to Muller; and, exhibiting some measure of decisiveness at last, Muller hit upon the opportunity for deceit that presented itself to him. It had already pressed itself upon the crew that the slaves possessed little in the way of seafaring or navigational skills; and it would not have appeared outrageous to consider the slaves incapable of being able to locate their position within the wide expanse of the ocean. Hence, the possibility to deceive the slaves into thinking they were being taken home, while actually sailing for a place of refuge that would be more hospitable to the Dutch than to the Malagasies was finally given expression, at this juncture, by Muller. Once the sailors were in the position to regain control of their vessel, even though under the orders of the mutineers, they were to set a course of N.W., one that they estimated would take them to a place of refuge beyond Cape Agulhas, in a vicinity of the Cape with a Company presence 2. What they had been unable to accomplish through force, the crew were to secure with deceit.

It would appear that Leij assumed a measure of command over the crew on deck, while nominally under the authority of the leader of the slaves. (As will be examined later, the leader of the mutineers is killed on the beach near Cape Agulhas, where he was shot dead by a commando; he remains nameless in the historical record.) With instructions relayed to him from the Gesaghebber, Leij instructed the Stuurman (helmsman) on the course to set; they set sail in a northwesterly direction, in the hope of coming across some land. Sleigh records that Leij was required to ask the leader of the mutineers for approval for any decision he wished to take on deck; the slaves had evidently instituted a structure of authority on board, and assumed a level of control that stands in stark contrast to that of Muller. It must have been a source of some delight to the slave leaders to so visibly exert such authority over their former captors; but, apart from whatever enjoyment it may have instilled in them, it is clear that they had organised an internal system of authority and order, and were determined to assume control in such a way as to prevent any reversal to their fortunes. Had it not been for their evident ignorance in the field of maritime navigation, one gets the sense that the sailors would not have been able to pull of their ruse so easily. It was, in many ways, largely a matter of a technical expertise lacking among the mutineers that enabled the sailors to undermine their intentions; had such expertise been more evenly balanced, the outcome of the rebellion would have been far different, entailing vastly dissimilar fates for the protagonists of the conflict.

Leij was also gradually replacing Muller as the authority in the sailors’ hierarchy. While accepting Muller’s guidance, particularly in the practice of the deceit (a deceit for which he is ultimately as responsible as is Muller), it was now he who issued directives and who assigned both crew and slaves to their particular tasks. Muller’s authority was gradually being undermined, although not overtly but rather through a cooperative arrangement, a kind of coalition of the willing, stemming more from Muller’s own incapacity to lead than from any attempt on Leij’s part to usurp his authority; and the sailors, who had been subject to Muller’s ineptitude, could very well have appreciated an injection of decisive, capable leadership on the part of Leij.

http://www.meermin.org/

[Oju]

At Zoetendal’s Valleij…

< Introduction | < The Story Begins ... | Surrender | Limited Bibliography

At the beginning of March, Johannes Le Sueur, the Landdrost of the District of Stellenbosch and Drakenstijn, decided to travel to the Soetendaal’s Valleij, a region just east of Cape Agulhas that is close to present-day Struisbaai. His journey was motivated by a letter that had been despatched to him on the 27 of February by a local official named Hentz. The letter detailed a series of events that would have been of the utmost concern to a district magistrate. A ship that bore no flag had moored offshore; officials on shore having been alerted of such a strange occurrence, a commando comprising of local burghers had been assigned to patrol the beach. These vigilant measures were not to have been taken in vain; a large number of slaves 3 came ashore in two light vessels, whereupon they were accosted by the commando who had been alerted to their presence. A battle ensued, in which a number of the slaves were killed; the remainder had been captured, and were being stationed on a neighbouring burgher’s farm.

[Anders Sparrman’s chart of 1783]

Such a report must have been of significant concern to Le Sueur; indeed, one could go so far to say that the import of the letter would have been enough to shock him profoundly. The chief official responsible for maintaining law and order in the district, he was being faced with an event of unprecedented proportions. Details were yet scarce, although it was clear that slaves had successfully instigated a violent uprising and forcefully commandeered a VOC vessel; such information must have resonated with the fears of any colonial official holding such a position as his, where the prospect of violent rebellion was always a very real possibility to the propagators of a system of institutionalised oppression. Not unsurprisingly, Le Sueur considered the matter to require the greatest attention that could be accorded it. He thus decided that it would require nothing less than his personal attention, and made plans to depart for the Soetendaal’s Valleij at the greatest possible speed. It would probably be safe to say that the events that were to unfold over the next two weeks would comprise the most challenging, harrowing and indeed the most strange experience of Le Sueur’s career.

By 2 March he had arrived in the region and installed himself in the home of Barend Geldenhuijs, a local farmer. From Geldenhuijs, he proceeded to the property of another burgher, Wessels Wesselsen, on which the recaptured slaves were being sheltered. At the farm, he observed 18 male slaves, whom he interviewed in order to ascertain the situation that prevailed on board the Meermin and that had enabled these slaves to row to shore from a vessel on which they were supposed to have been secured as prisoners. The details provided by Le Sueur relating to this interview are sketchy, but to the Landdrost newly arrived from Stellenbosch with little idea of the cause for such a strange and dangerous occurrence they would have been disconcertingly revealing. Through an interpreter, he was led to understand that many of the Europeans were ill; a phrase used in the letter translates as “partly dead”, indicating either that a large number had been murdered, as has been observed, or that many were sick to the point that they were approaching death. He also records that, at sight of land, the slaves had forced the European sailors to approach the shore; furthermore, he notes that the slaves gave their total number as 150, of which a significant number had remained on the ship. He further adds that an additional amount of 14 slaves, including women, had been recaptured by the commando; this is to be a recurring feature of Le Sueur’s correspondence, as he periodically records subsequent recapturing of slaves as they occurred sporadically throughout the period that he was to reside at the Soetendaal’s Valleij.

While it is difficult to penetrate Le Sueur’s mental world through his letters (which possess predominantly factual content, and appear to be intended to appease a dissatisfied and distinctly unhappy Cape government), it would be useful at this point to consider what an event such as this would have entailed for him. While mutinies are by no means unheard of in the VOC era, they are certainly rare; and while a slave uprising had occurred in 1753 (referred to above), it had been quelled with relative ease, and little in the way of mutinous violence had occurred in the direct vicinity of the Cape up to this point. Le Sueur was thus faced with a disaster of unprecedented extent, and furthermore a disaster that was yet in the process of unfolding. In addition, he was equipped with only the sketchiest of details regarding the actual condition of the ship and the crew as well as the events that had culminated in the fatal overthrow of a VOC-mandated authority. All he knew was that slaves from Madagascar, who had been bound for the Cape, had risen up, murdered many of the crew and commandeered the vessel; and, to his even greater stupefaction, they had weighed anchor off Cape Agulhas and come ashore. This very fact that the slaves had come ashore must have been something of a mystery to Le Sueur, who would have found it difficult to comprehend the circumstances that would compel mutinous slaves to moor their vessel in the very territory governed by those whose official representatives had negotiated their enforced state of servitude. Of course, it is more a matter of speculation than of actual historical investigation to decipher of what Le Sueur’s internal state would have comprised. Suffice to say that, in the light of his own testimony regarding the gradually unfolding nature of events that were being made known to him, and taking into account the magnitude of the Meermin mutiny and the significance such a disaster must have entailed for a legal official of the VOC, one can surmise that he would have been somewhat daunted by the task that presented itself before him. As subsequent letters demonstrate, his frequent and detailed correspondence with the Cape government, and his repeated requests for assistance and advice, allow one to construct an admittedly sketchy portrait of a senior official who displays a sense of acute discomfort, a man inhabiting a situation in which he is somewhat out of his depth. As shall be demonstrated further, he is very much a spectator to the outrageous events of which he, on the landward side, is chief witness; and one cannot but possess some sympathy for a man confronted with such a gargantuan challenge. Only as days went by and events began to unfold would he begin to grasp more firmly what had brought this strange, violent episode to the shores of his territory; and the circumstances that lead up to his being able to piece together the story of the mutiny are themselves as surprising and unbelievable as any others that have been here recorded.

By 3 March, Le Sueur had arrived at the farm of yet another burgher, Matthijs Rostok, who owned land near the beach of the Soetendaal’s Valleij. The participation and cooperation of the local farmers and white citizenry becomes more and more evident as one progresses through Le Sueur’s correspondence. At this stage it will suffice to say that Le Sueur was relying heavily, if not completely, on local farmers, both for hospitality and for physical aid in the recapture of the landed slaves; and that the rescue operation that he would ultimately oversee was not a VOC-dominated manoeuvre facilitated by officials and workers of the Company, but rather was a cooperative venture heavily reliant on the local farmers for manpower and expertise. When he reached the beach, Le Sueur was able to view the ship for the first time. He estimated the vessel as being anchored one hour off shore and out of any immediate danger. On the beach he found the “barcas” and the “schuit”, the two landing vessels employed by the 70 slaves to come ashore, of which the former was deeply buried in the sand. A sailor, who had been picked up by a commando on the beach, was also brought to Le Sueur; he had come ashore with the slaves, and had managed to escape once they had reached the beach. He claimed that he had the intention to proceed with all speed to the Cape, but that, due to some problems with his legs, he was unable to do this. Having gained all the useful information that he could from him, Le Sueur despatched him to the Cape to report to the governing authorities. With some knowledge as to the nature of the uprising and the condition of those remaining aboard the vessel, Le Sueur was forced to wait on the beach until he could devise some means of approaching the Meermin and, either by negotiation or by force, securing the release of the crew. Significantly, there was no boat suitable enough to mount any kind of naval offensive in the vicinity; and in order to proceed with any definitive plan, one of the Meermin’s own landing vessels, now on the beach, would have to be repaired.

At some stage after the original party of slaves had gone ashore, the slaves who had remained on board decided to try and find out exactly where they were situated. To do this, they constructed a raft from some wood, and sailed to the shore. On their return, they informed the slave body that they were indeed in Madagascar; they had seen a black sheep herder, but he had fled before they had been able to communicate with him. This was a stroke of good luck for the crew; had the slaves been able to catch the sheep herder and attempt to speak with him, they would have come back possessing a vastly different frame of mind. As shall be seen, it was as much sheer luck as it was ingenuity on their part that ultimately enabled them to survive their ordeal and escape a wrath that the slaves, had they known their true situation, would most definitely have exhibited towards them.

At this stage there is a significant gap in the correspondence, with no relevant letter reaching the Cape between 3 March, when he first inspected the beach, and the 7th. In the meantime, the Cape had not been idle in responding to Le Sueur’s missives. A decision was undertaken in the Council of Policy to embark on two actions. Firstly, on March 3 they despatched two hoekers, the Nepthunus and the Snelheijd, with a Sergeant, 2 Corporals and 25 soldiers, to provide naval assistance in the defeat of the mutineers and the recovery of the Meermin. There is little that one can say about this expedition, precisely because by the time these vessels reached the Soetendaal’s Valleij the action was all over. The vessels had struggled to find the precise location of the Meermin’s anchorage, and sailed up and down the coast while Le Sueur was struggling to obtain some means of rescuing the Europeans held captive. By the time the hoekers reached the Soetendaal’s Valleij, all had been resolved, upon which receiving such news they sailed back to the Cape. Where naval power may have provided a different denouement to that which shall ultimately be witnessed, conditions prevented the narrative from assuming this particular shape. As with so much in this account, luck and chance are by no means minor players; arguably, circumstance is the true author of the form that this account ultimately assumes.

The second action undertaken by the Cape was to despatch, by land, three ship’s carpenters led by Philip van den Berg, the head of the ship’s carpenters on the Company Wharf at Cape Town, as well as 2 “stuurlieden”(pilots), a quartermaster and 20 sailors. This party, having left on March 4, was to reach the Soetendaal’s Valleij without the navigational difficulties that were obviously experienced by the Nepthunus and the Snelheijd. While most of this body were to remain spectators to the events that were to follow, the ship’s carpenters were to provide much-needed assistance to Le Sueur, an assistance that would indirectly shape the uprising’s culmination.

On the 7th, Le Sueur resumes his correspondence with the Cape to recount a remarkable series of events that had begun on the 6th. He refers to the carpenters as inspecting the “barcas” and the “schuit” on the 6 March, indicating that they had arrived by this date and were engaging themselves with examining the Meermin’s landing craft with the intention of repairing them in order to invade the vessel by sea. He had descended to the beach to examine these operations, when he was approached by a “Hottentot” (Khoi) carrying a bottle in his hand. Inside the bottle was a letter, signed by the Bottelier Jan de Leeuw on behalf of the crew. Even more unexpectedly, this find was supplemented by another, also a bottle containing a letter, this one signed by Olof Leij. Evidently the letters had been written by these two officers, placed and sealed in the bottles and tossed overboard with the hope that they would be discovered by allies on the coast. The sheer improbability of even one bottle being recovered on the shore in such a fashion must be evident to even the most imaginative observer; the fact that both reached the shore in fairly close proximity to one another, and were both discovered by their intended recipients, is truly remarkable 4. [Original Letter, Cape Archives ]

Both letters were, in effect, pleas for help. However, they did not merely beg for any measure of assistance that those on shore could devise from their own efforts. Rather, both the letters enjoined a particular plan of action that the sailors felt could enable their escape, but that relied for its success on the cooperation of friendly forces on the shore. After briefly detailing the violent uprising and the decision by 70 of the slaves to journey to shore 5, details with which Le Sueur was naturally already acquainted, both letters outline what the crew requires of their landward allies 6. In effect, both letters requested that three fires be lit on the shore; they claim that the “Swarten”, a term commonly used by the Europeans when referring to the slaves (“Neegers” is another commonly employed term used in similar fashion; the racial connotations of both expressions are obvious), do not know about the presence of local farmers in the area, and that if these fires are lit the slaves will bring the Meermin close to shore. Little else, in the way of information or supplication, is provided; and Le Sueur, dumbfounded as he must have been at the improbable means by which he had arrived at this direct communication from the stranded crew, was forced to act on little more than faith. His own letter of March 7 describes his ambivalence towards the sailors’ requests, and of he struggled to interpret a reasonable explanation for an appeal that he no doubt found to be somewhat bizarre. In possession of only the barest of details, knowing that some of the slaves had already come ashore but unaware of the intentions of those who remained aboard or of the motivations of the crew in making this supplication, he was forced to consider his next move in what might be considered an epistemological vacuum. No request for advice from the Cape would be of much benefit; he evidently noted the urgent tone discernable in both letters, and realised that he would have to act quickly and decisively. It is probable that it was this very urgency on the part of the crew as expressed in their writing, an urgency that evokes an atmosphere of such desperation that a plan as outrageous as this could be considered, that ultimately decided Le Sueur’s hand. He decided to light the three fires as requested. Early in the morning on March 7, the fires were lit on the beach where they would be easily visible from the Meermin. Shortly after the fires had achieved a strength and brightness significant enough to be viewed from the vessel, those on the shore witnessed the Meermin being set towards the beach and sailing to a position that Le Sueur estimated to be a musket shot from their vantage point on the shore. It was the first time that the ship had altered position since it had first entered the bay and dropped anchor. Evidently, the lighting of the fires had produced its desired effect; what was not yet clear to Le Sueur and his contemporaries was how and why the ship was moved to a position of such increased vulnerability to attack than that which it had previously occupied.

As events were to turn out, from this moment Le Sueur had to do very little but wait; it is almost as if events garnered their own momentum, a momentum that became possessed of the inevitability and catastrophic destiny of an epic tragedy. After the ship had dropped anchor, those on shore observed some figures on the Meermin chopping down one of the ship’s masts. Whatever surprise this action might have caused was soon to be eclipsed by the events that were to follow. A sailor swam to shore and, on arriving at the beach, was brought to Le Sueur. What this sailor had to tell provides further fascinating detail into the means by which the crew had been able to manipulate the plans of the captors in such a way as to ultimately bring about their downfall. The sailor, who remains nameless in the correspondence but who de Leeuw names Rijk Meyer, claimed that he had been sent ashore by the slaves to ascertain whether their comrades (by which one presumes he meant the slaves who had sailed ashore a few days earlier) might be on shore. However, his intentions went far beyond satisfying the demands of the mutineers. Prior to his departure from the vessel, he had made a secret agreement with the crew that, should he discover friends on the shore who were able to provide assistance, he would provide a signal to his fellows on board to indicate to them that the opportunity for their rescue was near at hand. The means of this signal is not detailed in the correspondence, but de Leeuw and Sleigh describe how Meijer had agreed to wave a handkerchief around his head as a means of signalling his fellow sailors. The irony of this situation is rather striking. Both groups aboard the Meermin, the slaves and the crew, hoped that their compatriots were at hand; and yet while one sense of expectancy was based on an accurate knowledge of circumstances and of the actual location of the Meermin, the other was founded on a misguided fantasy that had been fuelled both by deceit and by a devastating lack of formal knowledge and capability, a lack that had made this very deceit possible. It was ultimately within the sphere of knowledge that the decisive role in the entire affair was played; and it was this strange mixture of accuracy and misjudgement, of a realistic assessment of geography and circumstance and a fantasy that had been fuelled by eager hope and cruel deceit, that charges the entire narrative with a particularly tragic irony.

The signal was given, upon which a canoe was lowered from the Meermin and guided towards the shore. In the canoe were six mutineers and one of the sailors, who were viewed to be rowing towards a high sand dune where, coincidentally, a commando had been posted. The letter details the following events as the inadvertent result of a bungling of orders, albeit a bungling that was largely inevitable. The commando had been ordered to hide in the eventuality of a landing party approaching from the vessel. As the Meermin was now only a short distance from the shore, it would no doubt have been in the interests of the Dutch to conceal their presence and thereby not alert the mutineers to their presence and thus disclose their error to them. Such an eventuality would undoubtedly lead to an aggressive response on their part, giving rise to a sudden desperation, and would likely culminate in a violent finale. Le Sueur does not specifically claim that he had issued this order; but his emphasis on it having been given, particularly in the light of what ensued when it was, by virtue of circumstance, discarded, can be viewed as an attempt on his part to absolve himself of responsibility through emphasising the measures that had been adopted to prevent just such a setback form occurring. As it was, the canoe approached the sand dune at such a rapid rate that the commando was provided with no opportunity to conceal themselves. As a result, they were forced to attack the mutineers as they stepped out of the canoe onto the sand. A short battle ensued that was fierce enough to result in death and injury, as well as to alert both Le Sueur and his cohort on the shore and the sailors and slaves who were still aboard the Meermin. One slave was shot dead, while another was wounded and two were taken prisoner; two were unaccounted for, one of whom had managed in the confusion to swim away and one who simply could not be found and was considered either to have drowned or to have swum back to the ship. No reference is provided as to any deaths or casualties on the part of the commando, and one can therefore presume that all of the European combatants survived the skirmish unscathed. If these brief details are anything to go by, it would seem that the slaves, expecting to find themselves in friendly and familiar territory, were taken by surprise by the commando, despite the fact that the burghers had been unable to conceal themselves. Thus disadvantaged, and coupled with the fact that they would have been significantly outnumbered, it was a brief and sudden defeat that the commando inflicted on the slaves, and one whose ultimate significance they could not have foreseen at the moment that they were thus engaged. In the aftermath of the skirmish, one of the sailors who had come ashore identified the dead slave as none other than the leader of the mutineers. Such a definitive identification is some indication that Massavana was not considered, at least by the crew, to be the leader of the mutineers, although other documentary evidence situates him and Koesaij as highly significant players. Unfortunately, this leader remains nameless in the historical record; thus the coordinator of one of the most significant events in 18th Century South African history has passed into posterity with not so much as an initial. Nevertheless, one could certainly point to this skirmish as the ultimate deciding factor that sealed the fate of the mutineers and enabled the Dutch, both on shore and on the Meermin, to gain the initiative; a fact that must have been all too apparent to the remaining mutineers, who proceeded to give vent to their displeasure.

Le Sueur and his men could now hear sounds of violent conflict carried across the waters from the Meermin lying a short distance away. It must have been clear to them that the skirmish on the beach had alerted the mutineers to their presence, the knowledge of which would have finally enabled them to realise the manner in which they had been deceived. It is difficult to grasp the complete shock and sense of helplessness and defeat with which the mutineers must have reacted on seeing their fellows defeated by a large force of white men, who they would naturally and correctly have associated with their original captors. Until this moment, the slaves still on board were firmly of the belief that they had arrived at their own country; the fact that they had despatched a canoe on the word of a sailor who, it was now evident, had been involved with his fellows in double-crossing them, is testimony to the extent to which they had been deceived. On witnessing the subsequent battle, and possibly the death of their leader as well (it is difficult to ascertain the likelihood of their having been able to witness such detail, but as the ship was certainly close to the beach this is not an eventuality that can be completely discounted), they would have been forcefully confronted with the stark reality of their situation, one that would have effected a radical alteration of consciousness and provoked a sense of collective desperation. What one is witness to here is a profound shift in consciousness that must have taken place in a matter of minutes, one that revealed to the slaves that they had been duped and that they had no means of escape. Faced with such a horrifying, completely unforeseen reality, the slaves did what perhaps one could only have expected of those finding themselves in such a position: they aggressively attacked those responsible for deceiving them so heartlessly, who of course happened to be the crew. A fantasy in which they had placed their hope had been revealed to be a chimera; and the subsequent battle is thus in many respects similar to that in which they had gained control of the vessel, in that its dominant emotive content was the expression of anger and rage, governed by a terrible sense of powerlessness towards the agents of their deceit.

Le Sueur heard the sounds of battle taking place on the Meermin, and describes how the air would be continuously pierced with the sounds of gunfire. It had also become clear to him that the Meermin had become wedged in such a manner that it was no longer capable of movement in any direction. He devised that the ship must have become lodged on a sandbank; this was confirmed by one of the sailors who had made it to shore, who described the vessel as “digt”, or closed, indicating that indeed it had become immobile. The attempt at deceiving the mutineers into coming ashore and into the hands of the Dutch having been thwarted, Le Sueur and his compatriots were left with one advantage, this being the fact that the Meermin was incapable of sailing away beyond their reach. In effect, they had a captive target aboard the ship. Their one exceeding disadvantage, a circumstance that was only too evident to him, was that there existed no able means to board the Meermin due to their lack of adequate sea transportation. Le Sueur and his men had no idea what damage the mutineers might do both to the crew and to the vessel itself now that they had been made aware of their true condition; and his sense of urgency is reflected in his letter of the 7th, in which he asks for advice from the Cape and describes how he is engaged in repairing the “schuit” for the purpose of invading the Meermin. In effect, until such repairs were completed, Le Sueur had little option but to wait and hope for the best.

[Oju]

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Slave Ship Meermin 1766
The Meermin Story

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[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 ta