Where did participants in the 1773 Boston Tea Party dump the East India Company tea?

Participants in the 1773 Boston Tea Party dumped the East India Company tea into Boston Harbor. The protest took place on December 16, 1773, in Boston, Massachusetts, then part of the Province of Massachusetts Bay.

The protest grew from opposition to the Tea Act, which allowed the British East India Company to sell tea in the American colonies under favorable conditions. Protesters objected to Parliament’s authority to tax the colonies without colonial representation. When three tea ships remained in Boston Harbor, thousands gathered and demanded that the cargo be returned to Britain.

Members of the Sons of Liberty boarded the ships Dartmouth, Eleanor, and Beaver. Disguised in ways later popularly associated with Native Americans, they broke open tea chests and threw the contents overboard. Sources commonly report that about 340 or 342 chests were destroyed, so the exact number varies by account.

The British government responded with the Coercive Acts, called the Intolerable Acts by many colonists. The confrontation intensified the colonial crisis that eventually led to the American Revolutionary War.