Ask the Chatbot Games & Quizzes History & Society Science & Tech Biographies Animals & Nature Geography & Travel Arts & Culture ProCon Money Videos
How much tea was dumped during the Boston Tea Party?
Introduction References & Edit History Related Topics
Images
Illustration showing colonists aboard ships dumping tea crates into Boston Harbor as crowds gather on the dock.
Britannica AI Icon
Adding us as a Preferred Source tells Google you trust our content, so our articles show up more often in your Google Search, Discover feed, and AI Overviews.
verifiedCite
While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions.
Select Citation Style
Feedback
Corrections? Updates? Omissions? Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login).
Thank you for your feedback

Our editors will review what you’ve submitted and determine whether to revise the article.

External Websites
Illustration showing colonists aboard ships dumping tea crates into Boston Harbor as crowds gather on the dock.
Boston Tea Party In the Boston Tea Party of 1773, a group of American colonists disguised as Indigenous people destroyed tea to protest a British tea tax.

How much tea was dumped during the Boston Tea Party?

Written and fact-checked by
Britannica Editors
Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree....
Britannica Editors
Last updated
•History

The Boston Tea Party saw the disposal of 342 chests of tea into Boston Harbor. On the night of December 16, 1773, a group of about 60 men, encouraged by a large crowd of Bostonians, donned blankets and Native American headdresses, marched to the wharf, boarded ships belonging to the East India Company, and dumped the tea chests, valued at £18,000 (the equivalent of almost $3 million today), into the water.

The protest was sparked by the Tea Act of 1773, a legislative maneuver by the British ministry of Lord North to make English tea marketable in the American colonies. In retaliation for the Boston Tea Party, Parliament passed the series of punitive measures known in the colonies as the Intolerable Acts, including the Boston Port Bill, which shut off the city’s sea trade pending payment for the destroyed tea.

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica