After sailing both ships to Concepcion on the Chilean coast, Delano was accused by Cereno of attempting piracy of his ship.
In response, Delano offered his crew a reward for recapturing the ship, which they did. Cereno explained to Delano that due to terrible storms the ship had lost much of its white crew, but hours later, when Delano went to leave the Tryal to return to his ship, Cereno frantically jumped overboard into Delano's boat and informed him that the slaves had revolted and had been in the charge of the ship the entire time Delano was onboard. Recognizing that the ship was in trouble, Delano offered assistance to the captain of the other vessel, Benito Cereno. According to Delano, he and his ship Perseverance encountered the slave ship Tryal at the island of Santa Maria, off the coast of Chile.
Captain Amasa Delano retold the event in his narrative of his voyages and travels, published in 1817, a work Melville picked up in the late 1840s. Based on a true incident that occurred off the coast of South America in 1805, the story first appeared in three installations in Putnam's Magazine at the end of 1855. Herman Melville's "Benito Cereno" is a long, enigmatic, sometimes ponderous tale that remains one of the most studied short stories of the U.
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