# Revolts at sea  
One of the first acts of resistance by Africans was to revolt in the coastal slave pens and on board ships. Over 530 such revolts and conspiracies have been documented, but the true number may be over 1,000. People from Senegambia, the most heavily Muslim of the areas affected by the transatlantic slave trade made up 6 per cent of the deportees; they accounted for 115 , or 22.6 per cent, of the uprisings. Tellingly, the rate of resistance in Senegambia was highest between 1761 and 1776, when events in northern Senegal resulted in large numbers of Muslims being captured and deported. ${ }^{1}$ Their enslavement by Christians may have been a further reason for them to rebel onshore and at sea.  
A ship revolt that almost succeeded - and inspired Herman Melville, who turned it into the novel Benito Cereno - was led by Muslims on the Tryal, which was taking them from Santiago, Chile to Lima, Peru. They rose on 27 December 1804 - a week after they boarded the ship - on the eve of Laylat al-Qadr, rendered variously in English as 'the Night of Power' or 'the Night of Destiny', the most sacred day of the holy month of Ramadan. The Tryals captives planned to sail back to Senegal and they had the captain sign a 'contract' to that effect. He testified that 'they knew how to write in their language'. The ship was eventually taken over after a fierce battle (Grandin, 2014, pp. 171-181).  
One successful revolt organized by Muslims occurred on the San Juan Nepomuceno in 1800. The captives, described as 'mostly Negros and Moors from Senegal' forced the first officer to take the ship from Montevideo, Uruguay to Saint-Louis, Senegal, where they arrived several months later. Following this odyssey, the viceroy of Peru recommended that the Spanish Crown bar Muslims from the Americas because they 'spread very perverse ideas among their own kind. And there are so many of them in this realm' (Grandin, 2014, pp. 182-185). The 'rebelliousness' of the Muslims was nothing new; it had been noted and denounced for centuries.  
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