In the evening hours of December 16, 1773, a band of American Patriots boarded British merchant ships docked in Boston Harbor. The ships were carrying tea for the British East India company. One of them, the Dartmouth, had been there twenty days already. By law, it had to be unloaded—with force by customs agents, if necessary. Since November 30, watchful Patriots at the water’s edge had made clear they would not allow that to happen. They were incensed at the Tea Act, passed by Parliament earlier that year, which granted the East India Company the privilege of importing tea directly to the continent for the first time ever, imposing a direct tax on the import. That tax would be used to fund the salaries of colonial administrators, subverting a longstanding policy under which officials were paid by the elected colonial assemblies.
In the other major cities—New York, Philadelphia, and Charleston—Patriots had been successful in sending the tea ships back to England, but Governor Thomas Hutchinson had kept Massachusetts at a standstill. He could not unload the tea without a riot, and he was unwilling to call down the force that would be necessary to compel submission. Yet he would not allow the ships to be sent back without the tea making its way into the Boston economy.
On December 16—the deadline at which customs would have had to impound the cargo—thousands of citizens gathered at the Old South Meeting House to discuss the situation. When the proceedings reached an impasse, Samuel Adams—a key leader of the Sons of Liberty, one of the most important militant Patriot forces—despaired: “This meeting can do no more to save the country.” (An interesting choice of words.) A small contingent of the men donned Mohawk war costumes and boarded the ships, pouring their cargo into Boston Harbor.
The romantic retelling of this story in our history books sometimes undersells the scale of the events. It was hardly a few men in headdresses dumping a few crates of tea into the water. By some accounts, there were as many as 130 men in the raiding party. The destroyed tea—342 chests weighing about 270 pounds each—would be worth about $1.7 million today. The Tea Party was heavy with symbolism, yes, but it was also a clear and consequential act of rebellion.
[I have a great t-shirt celebrating the original tea party, and part of the reason I love it so is because it has the three ships’ names on the back of it. They have always gotten lost in the bigger, more exciting picture. The fact that I can now remember the Dartmouth, the Eleanor and the Beaver gives me much satisfaction in my dotage, as well as proof that the money spent on brain supplements is working. And now you know them, too. ~ Beege]
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