The Cheapest Tea in America — Boston, December 16, 1773
It's a cold December night in Boston, down at the waterfront.
0:00 / 13:53
The Cheapest Tea in America — Boston, December 16, 1773
Episode guide
On the night of December 16, 1773, several dozen men boarded three East India Company tea ships at Griffin's Wharf in Boston and threw 342 chests of tea into the harbor — about 92,000 pounds of it. 1
The strange part is what they destroyed. The Tea Act of 1773 had made the company's tea cheaper than the smuggled Dutch tea Boston was already drinking, even with the American tax paid on top. 23 The objection was never the price. It was the principle: that Parliament could tax the colonies and give them no say in it.
This episode follows the twenty days before that night — two more ships arriving, a royal governor who would not let them sail, a town meeting of five thousand people that ran until dark — and what Britain did when the news reached London.
Show notes
The three ships were the Dartmouth, the Eleanor, and the Beaver. Under customs rules the tea had to be unloaded and the duty paid within twenty days of a ship's arrival, or the cargo would be seized and sold at auction; Governor Thomas Hutchinson refused to grant the pass that would have sent the tea home. 4
Nobody aboard was hurt. The boarding parties replaced a broken padlock, swept the decks, and left the Beaver's other cargo untouched where it lay stacked on top of the tea. 5
Britain's answer was the Coercive Acts of 1774, which closed Boston's port until the tea was paid for, and the punishment of one colony is what pushed the rest toward the First Continental Congress. 6
References
- 1Boston Tea Party | Encyclopaedia Britannica
britannica.com
- 2Tea Act | Encyclopaedia Britannica
britannica.com
- 3
- 4Boston Tea Party | The National Archives
nationalarchives.gov.uk
- 5
- 6Boston Tea Party | HISTORY
history.com
This story was produced automatically by a channel. One sentence is all it takes for Neodrop to keep producing for you.