16 December 1773
The Boston Tea Party
The Tea Act of May 1773 lets the East India Company ship tea straight to America through its own agents, with the Townshend duty still attached. The cheaper tea undercuts both the smugglers and the colonial merchants.
Seven ships carry the tea: four to Boston and one each to New York, Philadelphia and Charleston. In Charleston the tea is landed and seized by customs. In Boston Governor Hutchinson refuses to let the Dartmouth leave without paying the duty.
On the night of 16 December, after a meeting of several thousand at the Old South Meeting House, men disguised as Mohawks board the Dartmouth, the Eleanor and the Beaver at Griffin’s Wharf. They throw about 340 chests of tea, valued by the company at £9,659, into the harbour. The tea ships for New York and Philadelphia are later turned back.
The Destruction of Tea at Boston Harbor, lithograph by Nathaniel Currier, 1846Wikimedia Commons, Nathaniel Currier, Public domain (Boston Tea Party Currier colored.jpg)
Americans throwing the tea into Boston harbour, engraving by W. D. Cooper, 1789Wikimedia Commons, W. D. Cooper, Public domain (1773 BostonTeaParty Cooper.jpg)
Sources
- Robert Middlekauff, The Glorious Cause (2005).
- Gordon S. Wood, The American Revolution: A History (2002).
- Benjamin L. Carp, Defiance of the Patriots (2010).
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