Two hundred fifty years ago, on December 16, 1773, a band of around 120 colonists dumped 342 chests of East India Company tea from three ships into Boston Harbor.

Boston’s Sons of Liberty were responding to the British Parliament’s passage of the Tea Act of 1773 when they planned the Boston Tea Party.  With a name like the Tea Act, it’s fair to think that the law was all about raising taxes on tea.

The truth is that tea imports to the American Colonies had been taxed by the Crown since the passing of the 1767  Townshend Revenue Act, along with taxes on other commodities like paper, paint, oil and glass.

The difference is that all of those other import taxes were lifted in 1770, except for tea, a pointed reminder of King George’s control over his far-off subjects.

The ships that were boarded by the Sons of Liberty, the Beaver, the Dartmouth and the Eleanor, were built and owned by Americans.

Two of the ships were primarily whaling vessels. After delivering valuable shipments of sperm whale oil and brain matter to London in 1773, the ships were loaded with tea en route to the American Colonies.

The 92,000 pounds of tea were worth, at the time, the equivalent of about $1.9 million today.

The Boston Tea Party was carried out by a group that included just nine men over 40 and 16 participants under the age of 20.

In response, in 1774, the British Parliament passed a series of four laws called the Intolerable Acts, including closing the port of Boston until damages were paid, annulled colonial self-government in Massachusetts and expanded the Quartering Act.

These “Intolerable Acts,”  led to the formation of the first Continental Congress, triggered further protests and eventually led to the American Revolution.

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