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Nantucket's Role in the Boston Tea Party BY EDOUARD A. STACKPOLE
WHEN THE HISTORIC EVENT known as the "Boston Tea Party" was observed on December 16, 1973, marking the 200th anniversary of the dumping of cargoes of tea into Boston harbor, it also marked an occasion of considerable importance to Nan tucket, as two of the three vessels involved in the episode had a direct connection with this island. But another factor insofar as Nantucket was concerned should not be ignored — the role of the young Nantucket merchant Francis Rotch and the effect on this island's commercial relations with London, our chief customer for whale oil and candles. Early in the summer of 1773 William Rotch, Sr., at his Counting House on Main Street Square, signed the bills of lading consigning two cargoes of sperm oil to merchants in London. The two vessels carrying the oil were the Beaver, of Nantucket, and the Dartmouth, of Bedford. Both were brigs — the Beaver having been built at the Briggs shipyard on the North River in Massachusetts, for William Rotch, and the Dartmouth constructed for the Rotch firm at (New) Bedford — the first large vessel built at this embryo port. Arriving in London early in August the two brigs had no sooner discharged their casks of oil when they sought return cargoes, taking aboard a variety of English goods. But the British India Company, faced with an over-supply of tea, engaged, by governmental sanction, the charter of several vessels to bring the surplus tea to Colonial ports. The Beaver and Dartmouth became two of four vessels engaged to carry chests of tea to Boston, the others being the ship Eleanor, owned by John Rowe of Boston and the ship William owned by the Clarke firm of that city. The tea-laden vessels did not leave London as a fleet but dropped down the Thames one by one, spending the usual delays in the English Channel, and finally leaving the shores of Eng land behind in mid-October. Before they reached Boston, how ever, the ship Hayley, owned by John Hancock, sailed into that harbor, and Captain James Scott brought the news that ships carrying the obnoxious tea had sailed from London, four bound for Boston and one each for New York, Philadelphia and Charles ton. Aboard the Hayley was Jonathan Clarke, one of the Boston merchants to whom the tea was consigned — the others being Elisha and Thomas Hutchinson, sons of Governor Hutchinson, of Massachusetts, and the firm of Faneuil & Winslow. Tea was not an obnoxious commodity in Boston and the Colonies. In fact there was a large quantity regularly smuggled into the Colonial ports, but what was detestable was the tax which went along with the sale of the tea to the Colonial Amer icans. Having been forced to repeal the hated tax measure known
