They came like torches in the night, swarming over the sides of the three ships anchored in Griffin Harbor: the Dartmouth, Eleanor, and Beaver. Their faces were painted black, red, and copper from lamp soot and paint, bodies wrapped in blankets or wearing “old frocks, red woollen caps, gowns, and all manner of like devices.”
Axes pecked away at locks. Three hundred and forty wooden crates were cracked, scalped, and gutted, their 92,000 pounds of black powdered innards thrown into the water, turning it dark. After three hours, it was over. The only piece of personal property destroyed during the exercise was a padlock belonging to one of the captains, and this was replaced the next day.
The Boston Tea Party — which occurred 250 years ago this Dec. 16 — may not have been the spark that ignited the American Revolution, but it set the pieces up for the great conflict. Because of the tea’s destruction, Parliament retaliated throughout 1774 with the Coercive Acts.
The Boston Port Bill (March 25) closed Boston Harbor to any and all trade; the Massachusetts Government Act (May 20) replaced the elected delegates of the Massachusetts Council with the king’s appointees, gave the royal governor the power to select sheriffs and sheriffs the power to select juries, and restricted town meetings; the Impartial Administration of Justice Act (May 20) empowered the royal governor to move trials out of Massachusetts as far as Britain, depriving the colonists of impartial trials by jury (a right that
