The Boston Tea Party

The Boston Tea Party was a protest against the lifting of an import duty from the British East Company. In May 1773 Parliament removed the duty on tea entering Britain and permitted the company to be its own export of tea to the colonies.

On the evening of December 16, 1773, three vessels lay at anchor in Boston Harbor. On that day, a huge meeting attended by some 5,000 people tried to persuade the colonial governor, Thomas Hutchinson, to send the tea back to Great Britain; they failed.

Shortly after 6 pm, some sixty men dressed as Mohawk Indians boarded the three ships containing East India Company tea at Griffin’s Wharf. The “Indians” tossed 342 chests of tea – valued at £18, 000 into the water.

Hundred of silent onlookers at the wharf saw the Indians organized into three groups, swiftly and systematically break open the tea chests and pour their contents into the sea.

Eighteen months later the colonists were locked in military combat with Great Britain. Britain’s harsh response to the Tea Party helps reinvigorate the Revolutionary movement and was the principal reason for the convening of the First Continental Congress in 1774. Thus, the Boston Tea Party was a major factor in the movement that eventually produced the American Revolution.
The Boston Tea Party