At about seven o’clock, the Patriots reached the ships. They were quiet so as not to attract attention from the British warships anchored in the harbor. On the dock, nearly one thousand onlookers had gathered, standing stone silent.
The Patriots split into three groups, one for each of the three ships. Once on board, the crew scurried belowdecks. Using pulleys and ropes, the Patriots hoisted the huge chests of tea, each weighing around 320 pounds, up from the cargo area and onto the deck. They split open the chests with axes, slashed through the tough canvas bags, and dumped the tea leaves overboard.
Since the tide was out, the water in the harbor was only a few feet deep. After a while, the tea began to pile up, so a handful of teenage boys were sent into the harbor to stir the leaves into the water.
The men hardly spoke as they worked. “No noise was heard except the occasional clink of the hatchet,” wrote sixteen-year-old Samuel Cooper in one of only four known accounts by participants. “Before ten o’clock that night the entire cargo of the three vessels were deposited in the docks.”
The Boston Tea Party in progress
The men swept the decks clean so that not a single leaf remained. They even took off their shoes and shook any leaves from them. Not without regret, though. As Samuel Cooper wrote, “Many a wishful eye was directed to the piles of tea, which lay in the docks.” One Patriot made the mistake of hiding a fistful of tea in the lining of his coat. The coat was ripped from his body and tossed into the muddy water.
No tea meant no tea.
As the Patriots made their way from the ships back onto the wharf, one of them pulled out a musical instrument called a fife and played a tune. The men were exhausted and exuberant.
This afternoon, Charles, Uncle George, Father, and I went to a meeting about the ships with their unwelcome cargoes of tea. When the crowd of nearly 5,000 people heard that the governor still refused to send the ships back to England, they grew angry. I heard one man shout, “Boston Harbor is a teapot tonight!”
Afterward, as we walked home behind Father and Uncle George, Charles whispered to me, “I’m going to help toss that tea off those ships tonight.”
“I am, too,” I told him. He started to protest, but I said, “I may be just a child, but I’m going, and that’s that!”
December 17, 1773, after midnight!
Just after dusk last night, Cousin Charles and I met in the stable. I dressed in breeches to be disguised as a boy and for freer movement. Charles and I darkened our faces with soot from the fireplace so that we’d be hard to see and recognize. It was full dark when we joined the group headed to Griffin’s Wharf.
“March quietly,” came the murmured order.
I froze with fear when I saw why: British Royal Navy warships were patrolling the harbor.
Nearly one thousand silent souls stood at the shoreline. “They’re here for our protection,” said Charles. “The British soldiers won’t trouble an innocent crowd.”
At the dock we split into three groups, one for each boat. As Charles and I boarded the Dartmouth, a strong voice said to the captain, “Go belowdecks, sir. We will do you no harm.” My knees shook, and Charles nudged me. ’Twas Uncle George who spoke to the captain!
We set to work as quietly as shadows. I heard only the creaks of ropes and pulleys hoisting the chests of tea out of the ship’s hold and then dull thuds as the chests were lowered onto the deck. Men broke open the chests with axes, slashed the canvas bags inside, and tossed the tea overboard in a blizzard of leaves. Men in canoes below beat down the floating tea so that it sank. It was my job to sweep tea off the ship’s deck. I swept until my arms ached and my hands were blistered. We had been told, “Not one tea leaf is to be left anywhere. Every bit of tea is to be destroyed.”
By ten o’clock, all was over. I handed my broom to one of the Dartmouth’s crew, found Charles, and walked down the gangplank from the ship back onto the wharf. We joined the others marching back to town. We trudged home and went to the stable. I was glad to be in the serene presence of Mercury as we brushed the tea leaves off our coats and scrubbed the soot from our faces. I’ve never been so exhausted—or so elated. I have truly joined the fight for justice!
As day broke over Boston, tea leaves still blanketed the harbor and their aroma hung in the air. Though no Patriots spoke directly of the act, the mood in Boston was joyous.
Loyalists, of course, were not so happy, least of all Governor Hutchinson. He called the events of December 16 the “boldest stroke that had been struck in America.”
News of the “destruction of the tea” spread quickly to the colonists, thanks to the horseback-riding heroics of Paul Revere. He was sent by the Sons of Liberty to tell as many colonists as possible about what had happened in Boston. Never one to shy away from a challenge, Revere took off from Boston the day after the Tea Party and rode to New York, where he arrived on December 21. All along the two-hundred-mile journey, he stopped at inns and taverns to tell the locals there about
