Boston Tea Party: Frequently Asked Questions

It is well known that patriots Samuel Adams, Josiah Quincy and John Hancock were present at the December 16, 1773 meeting at the Old South Meeting House preceding the dumping of the tea. However, the men who actually destroyed the tea at Griffin’s Wharf are less well-known. Most of the estimated 200 Boston Tea Party participants remained anonymous for many years for fear of punishment. ...

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Also in 1773, Parliament granted a monopoly on tea shipments to the East India Company, then nearly bankrupt. The Company, which did business only with Loyalist merchants, undercut other merchants, even smugglers. John Hancock, one of the country's richest men and most threatened by the new tea policy, helped instigate the Boston Tea Party (December 17) when 150 men, dressed as Mohawk Indians, dumped the tea cargo of three ships into Boston harbor. ...

2 chests of Bohea tea were destroyed at the Boston Tea Party. Bohea was a term used for black tea in the 18th century tea trade. Bohea tea came from the Wuyi Mountains in Fujian Province, China. Despite the fact that the importer of the tea was the East India Tea Company, the tea that was cast overboard in the Boston Tea Party was not from India, as many have mistakenly assumed.

The three tea ships Beaver, Dartmouth and Eleanor were docked at what was known as Griffin’s Wharf in 1773, just a few blocks away from the Old South Meeting House. Griffin’s Wharf no longer exists today due to massive landfill projects in the 19th century that dramatically changed Boston’s wharves and shoreline. The site is no longer underwater, but a historical marker on the corner of Congress and Purchase streets shows where Griffin’s Wharf once stood.

Benjamin Labaree's The Boston Tea Party (N.Y.: Oxford University Press, 1964) states that 342 chests holding over 90,000 pounds of tea worth 9,000 British pounds were thrown off the ships Dartmouth, Eleanor, and Beaver on December 16, 1773. The Salada Tea Company estimated that the figure was more like 20,000 pounds of tea. They base this on the fact that the type of chest would have been a "half chest" holding about 65 pounds of tea each.

Although many 19th century images of the Boston Tea Party portray the participants decked out in full feather headdresses and leather hides, this is not at all accurate when compared with the few reminiscences from eyewitness accounts. The Massachusetts Gazette reported in its December 23, 1773 issue that “a number of brave and resolute men, dressed in the Indian manner, approached near the door of the [Old South Meeting House], and gave a war-whoop, which rang through the house, and was answered by some in the galleries.” According to eyewitnesses ...

The Old South Meeting House was built as a Puritan meeting house, or church, but it was also the largest building in all of colonial Boston. It was used for many large public meetings that were too big for Faneuil Hall, the official town meeting place for Boston. On December 16, 1773, a crowd of over 5, 000 met at Old South to protest the Tea Act and decide what should be done about three shiploads of East India Company tea sitting at Griffin’s Wharf.