When considering the context of the American Slave trade in Cereno the first thing to keep in mind is that Cereno's ship, the San Dominick, is a slave ship.Cereno describes his ship as having a few hundred slaves on board when it embarked on its journey.e allows his slaves to remain above deck. The fact that the slaves still revolt-and gladly, as Melville is careful to emphasize-shows that this attempt to mitigate the slaves' inescapably miserable condition does not work. One cannot be a happy slave in Melville's story.