Three ships carried the tea destroyed during the Boston Tea Party in 1773.
The ships were the Dartmouth, Eleanor, and Beaver, all associated with the British East India Company. On the night of December 16, 1773, participants boarded the vessels and threw tea chests into Boston Harbor in protest against British taxation and the company’s special trading privileges.
The action followed weeks of public meetings and a standoff over whether the tea should be unloaded and taxed. The protesters avoided damaging other cargo and focused on the tea. Historical sources commonly report that 342 chests were destroyed, although some shipping records support a total of 340.
The Boston Tea Party was not the beginning of the American Revolution by itself. Parliament responded with the Coercive Acts, called the Intolerable Acts by many colonists, which restricted Massachusetts self-government and intensified resistance across the colonies.