considered what to do. He feared privateers and knew firsthand their trick of feigning distress, then striking. But he also knew that maritime commerce, and the prosperity that came with it, couldn’t exist without courtesy and trust. “One ship may be in want of something that another can spare,” wrote Delano later. Besides, the ship could be an ally and might even help him with his own troubles.
Delano ordered the ship’s boat to be loaded with fish, water, bread, and pumpkins and hoisted out quickly, since it looked as if the wind was pushing the Tryal toward the ledge. He had recently learned from a Captain Barney, master of the Nantucket whaler Mars , of yet another plot by some of his “convict men” to steal his boat and make for the island. This time, though, unlike at Juan Fernández, he had men he could trust with him, including his first midshipman, Nathaniel Luther, and his brother William. He left William in charge of the ship and climbed into the boat with Luther.
Santa María sits fifty miles off a wide coastal gulf into which flows the Bio Bio River down from the Andes, the natural border separating Chile’s tamed north from its wild south. Over the centuries Spain had tried to turn Santa María into a defensive garrison, an outpost against pirates, contrabandists, freebooters, unauthorized whalers and sealers, and rival empires. 3 But the island was still mostly uninhabited in 1805. In the opening scenes of Benito Cereno Melville paints the place gray on gray: “Everything was mute and calm; everything gray.… The sky seemed a gray surtout. Flights of troubled gray fowl, kith and kin with flights of troubled gray vapors.… Shadows present, foreshadowing deeper shadows to come.” But as Delano made his way toward the Tryal the sun was breaking through the early mist, revealing a blue sky that would last the day long. 4
* * *
The West Africans could have tried to stay ahead of their dwindling food and water by reducing the number of people on board their ship. Yet they needed the remaining crew alive if they were going to make it to Senegal. And as far as surviving documents suggest, they didn’t turn on one another. Rather, in the weeks prior to the encounter with the Perseverance , the rebels sank into stillness. During calm days, the late summer sun waxed warm as the vessel rocked listlessly in the water and its yardarms creaked in their slings. Power slid into impotence. After the frenzied uprising and the rush of executions, followed by the heavy work needed to empty the cargo hold during the storm, there was nothing to do. Until the sight of the Perseverance rousted the rebels out of their resignation.
Witnesses say it was Babo and Mori who came up with the plan. Had they tried to flee, the Perseverance probably wouldn’t have pursued. The West Africans, though, didn’t know that. They could have immediately fought. Benito Cerreño later testified that, upon coming on Delano’s ship, the rebels picked up their knives and broad axes and made ready. Instead, Babo and Mori thought of the idea of deceiving the boarding party, of acting as if they were still slaves. Mori warned Cerreño that he would be listening to his every word and watching his every move. If Cerreño gave “any indication about what had happened on the ship,” as the Spanish report on the incident later said, “they would kill him on the spot, along with all the rest of the crew and passengers.”
Babo, Mori, and possibly others on board the Tryal were lettered men, probably educated in qur’anic schools. They knew how to read the sky, at least enough to keep the calendar, and how to write in their own language. Legal contracts like the kind they had made Cerreño sign in exchange for his life were well established in Islam by 1805, as they were in Christianity. Mori knew enough Spanish to communicate with Cerreño. And Babo was held in high respect by the other West Africans, suggesting that he could
Delano ordered the ship’s boat to be loaded with fish, water, bread, and pumpkins and hoisted out quickly, since it looked as if the wind was pushing the Tryal toward the ledge. He had recently learned from a Captain Barney, master of the Nantucket whaler Mars , of yet another plot by some of his “convict men” to steal his boat and make for the island. This time, though, unlike at Juan Fernández, he had men he could trust with him, including his first midshipman, Nathaniel Luther, and his brother William. He left William in charge of the ship and climbed into the boat with Luther.
Santa María sits fifty miles off a wide coastal gulf into which flows the Bio Bio River down from the Andes, the natural border separating Chile’s tamed north from its wild south. Over the centuries Spain had tried to turn Santa María into a defensive garrison, an outpost against pirates, contrabandists, freebooters, unauthorized whalers and sealers, and rival empires. 3 But the island was still mostly uninhabited in 1805. In the opening scenes of Benito Cereno Melville paints the place gray on gray: “Everything was mute and calm; everything gray.… The sky seemed a gray surtout. Flights of troubled gray fowl, kith and kin with flights of troubled gray vapors.… Shadows present, foreshadowing deeper shadows to come.” But as Delano made his way toward the Tryal the sun was breaking through the early mist, revealing a blue sky that would last the day long. 4
* * *
The West Africans could have tried to stay ahead of their dwindling food and water by reducing the number of people on board their ship. Yet they needed the remaining crew alive if they were going to make it to Senegal. And as far as surviving documents suggest, they didn’t turn on one another. Rather, in the weeks prior to the encounter with the Perseverance , the rebels sank into stillness. During calm days, the late summer sun waxed warm as the vessel rocked listlessly in the water and its yardarms creaked in their slings. Power slid into impotence. After the frenzied uprising and the rush of executions, followed by the heavy work needed to empty the cargo hold during the storm, there was nothing to do. Until the sight of the Perseverance rousted the rebels out of their resignation.
Witnesses say it was Babo and Mori who came up with the plan. Had they tried to flee, the Perseverance probably wouldn’t have pursued. The West Africans, though, didn’t know that. They could have immediately fought. Benito Cerreño later testified that, upon coming on Delano’s ship, the rebels picked up their knives and broad axes and made ready. Instead, Babo and Mori thought of the idea of deceiving the boarding party, of acting as if they were still slaves. Mori warned Cerreño that he would be listening to his every word and watching his every move. If Cerreño gave “any indication about what had happened on the ship,” as the Spanish report on the incident later said, “they would kill him on the spot, along with all the rest of the crew and passengers.”
Babo, Mori, and possibly others on board the Tryal were lettered men, probably educated in qur’anic schools. They knew how to read the sky, at least enough to keep the calendar, and how to write in their own language. Legal contracts like the kind they had made Cerreño sign in exchange for his life were well established in Islam by 1805, as they were in Christianity. Mori knew enough Spanish to communicate with Cerreño. And Babo was held in high respect by the other West Africans, suggesting that he could
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