The
Meermin was an 18th-century Dutch
cargo ship of the
hoeker type, one of many built and owned by the
Dutch East India Company. She was laid down in 1759 and fitted out as a
slave ship before her maiden voyage in 1761, and her career was cut short by a mutiny of her cargo of
Malagasy people. They had been sold to Dutch East India Company officials on
Madagascar, to be used as company
slaves in its
Cape Colony in southern Africa. 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. As of 2013, archaeologists are searching for the
Meermins remains.