The December 1773 protest in Boston Harbor in which colonists dumped East India Company tea into the water was the Boston Tea Party.
It occurred on December 16, 1773, after the British Parliament passed the Tea Act. The law allowed the financially troubled East India Company to sell tea directly to the American colonies, while retaining an existing tax that many colonists opposed because they had no representation in Parliament.
Members of the Sons of Liberty and other protesters boarded three ships—the Dartmouth, Eleanor, and Beaver—anchored in Boston Harbor. Over roughly three hours, they threw hundreds of chests of tea overboard. Some participants wore disguises associated with Indigenous peoples, although later retellings often simplify the event.
The British government responded with the Coercive Acts, called the Intolerable Acts by many colonists. These measures punished Massachusetts, including by closing Boston Harbor, and helped intensify the political crisis that led to the American Revolutionary War. The protest was not chiefly about making tea more expensive; the Tea Act actually lowered its legal price.