Bookable
The Tea Act
On 10 May 1773 Parliament passed the Tea Act, which allowed the East India Company to sell tea directly in the American colonies while keeping the Townshend duty on tea. In Boston, three ships carrying the company’s tea, the Dartmouth, the Eleanor and the Beaver, became the focus of protest.
The night of 16 December 1773
On 16 December 1773 between 5,000 and 7,000 people gathered at the Old South Meeting House, where Samuel Adams led the meeting. That evening the Sons of Liberty boarded the three ships and threw 340 or 342 chests of tea, more than 92,000 pounds of it, into Boston Harbor.
The ships and museum today
Parliament answered with the Intolerable Acts of 1774, which closed the port of Boston, and in April 1775 the fighting at Lexington and Concord began the Revolutionary War. Today the museum on the Congress Street Bridge retells the story with live re-enactments, interactive exhibits and two replica ships of the period, the Eleanor and the Beaver.
