The Dangers of Guarding the Tea Ships

There’s so much Boston Tea Party content being posted that I can’t keep up, especially as I’m putting the finishing touches on my two new presentations in the next two days.

But here’s one item that caught my eye in the artist Cortney Skinner’s feed.

On 9 Dec 1773, the Boston News-Letter published the following bits of local news about the people’s response to the tea ships:

Upon Capt. [James] Bruce’s Arrival on Friday last, he was directed to carry his Ship to the same Wharf where Capt. [James] Hall lay, whereby the Watch, voted by the People, may the more easily take Care of both Vessels:

Twenty-five Men have watched each Night since the 29th ult. sometimes with Arms.—

A List of the Commanders each respective Night has been sent, but cannot be inserted unless it is at the Request of the Gentlemen themselves—which, when signified to us, we shall readily comply with.

Capt. Bruce had no Tea on board excepting the Teas shipped by the East-India Company.—Capt. Shepard who arrived on Saturday had no Tea on board.

Capt. [Hezekiah] Coffin in a Brig who has some of the East-India Company’s Tea on board, is arrived at Nantasket. . . .

Last Tuesday Evening, being very dark, and rainy,…one of the Watch of the Tea-Vessels, accidentally fell from the Wharf, into the Dock, but the Tide being down and the Place muddy, he was taken up without Hurt.

In this article, dock means, as Dr. Samuel Johnson wrote, “A place where water is let in or out at pleasure, where ships are built or laid up.”

On that same Tuesday night a shipwright named Stephen Ingels fell off Ballard’s Wharf in the North End and drowned, leaving “a poor Widow and two or three Children,” so I know I shouldn’t laugh at the man falling off Griffin’s Wharf while protecting the town from tea. But I’m getting a little punchy.

Two Chests of Tea Unaccounted for?

This morning I’m speaking about the Boston Tea Party at a teachers’ workshop hosted by the Massachusetts Historical Society.

And, as I’ve written over the past couple of days, I’ll be speaking about other aspects of the Tea Party around the 250th anniversary in December.

That’s got me thinking about one small mystery of the event highlighted by Charles Bahne in a posting back in 2009.

All the Boston newspapers in 1773 reported that persons unknown had destroyed 342 chests of tea, and that number went into American histories and textbooks. But the East India Company asked the British government to compensate it for the loss of only 340 chests.

More specifically, the locals believed each ship carried 114 chests, but the East India Company tallied only 112 on the Beaver. That was the last of the three ships to arrive at Griffin’s Wharf, mooring on 15 December.

The East India Company accountants had no reason to undercount the chests. And counting goods was their job, after all.

In contrast, the men destroying the tea didn’t need a numerical total at the end of the night—they just needed to know there were no chests left in the holds.

So the simplest explanation is that the locals simply assumed that if there were 114 chests on each of the first two ships, there must be 114 chests on the third, and didn’t bother to confirm that.

But are there other possibilities? Might the Beaver have carried 114 chests of tea across the Atlantic, but then something happened to cause two of those chests not to be listed in the East India Company’s losses? I can imagine two possible scenarios:

• Two chests were slipped off the Beaver during the days it was quarantined for smallpox in the harbor, and the company chose to say nothing about those.
• The Beaver’s captain, Hezekiah Coffin, carried two chests of tea on his own account, not property of the East India Company. The Bostonians dumping tea took those as well, and therefore counted 114. Coffin kept his mouth shut.

As I said, the simplest explanation is that the East India Company figure was accurate and complete, and the local figure was based on an erroneous assumption. But this little mystery opens the door to speculation.