Amasa Delano At The Lima Mint, 1805

American Numismatic Society - Last weekend I finished reading Greg Grandin's The Empire of Necessity: Slavery, Freedom, and Deception in the New World (2015), which is an elaborate retelling of the true history that inspired Herman Melville's famed novella "Benito Cereno." Originally serialized in Putnam's Monthly in the fall of 1855, Melville's story is a fictionalized account of an 1805 encounter between a New England sealing vessel and a Spanish ship that had been taken over by the slaves it was carrying near Santa María Island off the coast of Chile.

The drama of the historical episode and Melville's story derives from the fact the American captain Amasa Delano boarded the disordered Spanish vessel without knowing that the slaves had seized it. He spent most of a day rendering aid and touring the ship with its captain, Benito Cerreño and his 'personal slave' Mori, who never left his ostensible master's side. Although some strange behavior arouses suspicion, it is not until he was departing that the ruse was revealed when the Spanish captain desperately leapt from his ship into Delano's departing long boat screaming about the rebellion. Although it quickly cut its lines in an attempt to escape, Delano dispatched two heavily-armed boats that violently retook the vessel from its captors, killing both slaves and some of the surviving Spanish crew in the process.

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