Podcast Summary:
This podcast blends tales (today about the Boston Tea Party), fiction, and real-world exploration. Here’s the rundown:
Epic Rippers: Stories that f*&k. Raw, adventure travel stories. These non-fiction audio journals offer life lessons and stirring thoughts.
Sips and Shorts: Stories and interviews about drinks from around the world that have shaped culture and society.
The Library: Dive into “The Coin Chronicles,” an exclusive fantasy audiobook series. Each episode reveals a chapter of this epic saga of Gods, humans, and the coin that rules them.
Episode 43 Notes: Boston Tea Party
A story of graft and shady political dealings where the only ones to benefit were the rich and powerful. They lusted after Eleanor’s golden chest. Her chest would make them tons of money. But, that was only if everyone played their part.
Unfortunately, for the politicians and corrupt businessman involved, a tiny group of lower class citizens would not play their part. Instead, they would do something that changed the entire course of the world forever.
Transcript of Podcast:
*Note – This is the full episode and containers spoilers. You can always listen to the podcast above.
What Started The Boston Tea Party?
Eleanor’s chest swelled in all the ways that Elihu had wanted it to swell. Eleanor was sitting next to her two sisters and they were all in trouble. It was a good thing they had each other, because the water was freezing this time of year. A person could die if they were exposed to it for too long. And all Eleanor could do was look on as the men approached and began climbing on top of her.
Months ago and a thousand miles away Elihu didn’t know that his attempt to save Eleanor, was actually going to cost her everything. He was with Lord North, a noble born member of the British Parliament.
“There are ways we can help,” Lord North said. “We can make sure that you are taken care of.”
“I’m listening.” Said Elihu. And he was. They were in trouble, although few were speaking about it. A culture shift and instability in India were causing problems. They were bleeding money. Hemorrhaging it like a leaking boat.
“I’d just need some support from you. A little help to make sure things go smoothly.” Lord North continued.
Elihu understood. Politicians were always the same. Their business was lubing the wheels of economic growth. They were grifters, a nasty part of society, but necessary. “Consider it done.”
And with a handshake and a head nod, the two men parted ways. Lord North had work to do in Parliament. Elihu had money to make.
The year was 1773 and there was a new territory ready to be carved up. Money could be made and Lord North was almost frothing at the mouth with the possibility. This territory was resource rich and expansive. But, it was still in its infancy, and the British Empire was a global power on a level that a puny state like the 12 colonies couldn’t fathom.
And Lord North wasn’t entirely wrong. But, some of the greatest accomplishments in the world were made by people who were too ignorant to know the limitations of their abilities. They stretched and achieved what no one thought possible.
People like George, a shoemaker, which placed him in the lower class of society. He was a nobody. A cobbler. And he was currently taking part in his weekly ritual. It was his Thursday activity. That was the only day he’d permit himself to spend a penny and sit around sipping that hot, strong beverage with people he was nowhere near as smart as.
Thirty-one year old George was a hard worker and life wasn’t easy for him. Making ends meet meant working long hours, and he often went back to his bed in a cramped boarding house with his body aching. His fingers and back always hurt worst of all. Some days his fingers were so swollen and sore that he could barely bend them. It’s for this reason, that he took great joy in his Thursday afternoon ritual.
His guilty pleasure involved visiting a house about halfway between his shoe shop and the boarding house he slept at. He was there to get a thought for his penny in addition to a hot drink. Especially in the winter time, like right now, in December, he appreciated the hot drink. It helped warm his hands, which were stiff from a full day’s work.
But, the conversation was good too, mostly because it involved a bunch of really smart people. George went to listen to intellectual discourses. These houses were modeled after their European counterparts, even including the same drinks they drank there. Intellectuals would gather and talk in caffeine fueled rants about all of the world’s problems and how to solve them.
But, the thing was…they actually were solving those problems. It wasn’t hyperbole.
Because this was when 12 colonies were all that existed to represent a country. Hell, there wasn’t even a country yet. This small smattering of cities was trying to figure out its identity, to itself and to its big brother – the British government.
They were battling things that Britain would not understand. They were starving to death, struggling with poverty, pushing Westward in a slow, dying grind of rattlesnake bites and dysentary. They were leaving their blood on the land and marking it as their own. They were marking themselves as something distinct from their brothers.
This is why their brothers, men like Lord North, born into riches and always at the top of the system, could never understand the life of someone like George. They weren’t thinking about George. George was the man that shined their shoes when they talked about million dollar deals. George was a nobody.
And he knew it. But, he didn’t care. Because George, like each one of us, was uniquely positioned in history. He was part of something that can elevate a human to something beyond him or herself.
That’s what he was starting to realize when he sat at the house today, sipping his hot drink, and listening to the angry, intellectual discord about a new tax passed on to them via the British Parliament, spearheaded by a man named Lord North. In fact, drinking the drink he was, seemed like an act of defiance in and of itself.
In many ways it was.
It was not British. Not at all. So, it was a middle finger to their increased tax, to their pirating of wealth and treatment of these individuals in this new country as slaves to the empire, not as partners.
This drink made its way to New York from the Dutch. It was European. It was elevated and sophisticated. It was enlightenment and intellectual freedom. It stood for everything that the British weren’t giving them. Plus, on top of that psychological domination, was the pain they inflicted with money.
The British didn’t care about the petty squabbles and words of these people. They could always just crush them with their superior military might. They cared about money and power. That was the language they spoke. So, buying this hot drink spoke to the British in a way they understood. It said, “we’re not going to give you any more of our money.”
And the British listened. Then they acted. They increased taxes. Which only made these people angrier.
Which made them gather in secret and drink another hot drink besides tea, which reinforced this other drink as a symbol of rebellion, intellectual freedom, and change.
Boston Tea Party Tensions
Tea was a drink of the sophisticated. The wealthy. The status quo. The followers. The elite.
This other drink was rebellion and led it part to the Boston Tea Party. This drink had a deep, rich complexity to it. It went to your brain in ways that tea never could.
And this was the real reason George was at the house today drinking this hot drink on Thursday, like he did every Thursday. But, what had made the last few Thursday different than the ones prior was that he was meeting with a small group of others who had, had enough of taxation without representation.
George had no right to be in that room besides the fact that he had the courage to stand up for freedom, when others, more wealthy and nobler people, wouldn’t.
For this, he was enlisted as a boatswain. That was his role. Everyone involved on December 16 had a role. That was part of why it worked so well. Flawless execution. Each person had a job and they all did their jobs. Together, they achieved total destruction.
On December 16, 1773, on a chilly day, with the freezing water surrounding them, George and others climbed on top of Eleanor and her two sisters, who were floating in the Boston Harbor. They moved with intention and efficiency because they had a very clear purpose.
They operated in unison, grabbing the chests on board and methodically dumping all of the tea inside into the harbor. More dissenters were below using oars to ensure that all of the tea was pushed below the surface of the water and ruined.
Their orders were clear. Destroy every ounce of tea on board.
They took Eleanor’s chest, all of her chests in fact, and dumped all of the contents into the water This ensured that men tied to the India Tea Company, men like Elihu Yale, one of the major donors to Yale University and the one to give his namesake to the school, and corrupt politicians like Lord North, who had brokered the tea tax act lost all their money and knew that these 12 colonies were done being pushed around by the rich and powerful.
And when Captain O’Connor tried to pocket some tea in a vain attempt to keep it safe, as a way to resist the attack, George tore his coat pocket in order to get the tea. No tea would survive because this was a statement to Britain and King George.
342 chests in total spread across three boats.
Over 100,000 pounds of tea.
All destroyed.
Worth over $1.5 million in today’s prices.
But, it was never about the money for the Sons of Liberty. It was the stand, the intellectual aspect of it. Which was no doubt talked about in circles at houses through Boston and other places in the new world.
And we all know what happened after the Boston Tea Party and how it became the first act of rebellion that started a revolution and created a brand new country build on principles that no other country had ever been built on.
We’re here to talk about the drink, not tea, that was a catalyst for the destruction of all that tea. And a man, George Hewes, a simple cobbler, who is an embodiment of America. A poor immigrant who came to the shores of North America with a dream and hope. Who lived with conviction and, despite his humble life, would be involved in The Boston Tea Party, The Boston Massacre, and several other important events in the American Revolution.
Coffee.
What Was The Boston Tea Party?
An inadvertent catalyst to the Boston Tea Party and the American Revolution, hence, the founding of America.
Over a period of three decades leading up to the American Revolution, the colonies thirst for coffee was growing. Demand for coffee was expanding and demand for tea was shrinking.
That’s part of the reason for the tea tax.
That’s also why the Americans didn’t care as much about destroying all that tea in the harbor.
They were coffee drinkers.
The British thought they were doing something that was hurting the colonies, punishing them, and keeping them in line, but the British were too far from their subjects.
They’d spent too much time in their comfortable mansions, in their little bubbles, surrounded by people that did not represent the vast majority of people. Had they been more in touch with reality, they would have seen that Americans were drinking coffee to differentiate themselves from the British.
They wanted nothing to do with them.
They wanted to be different.
The choice to destroy the tea in the harbor had more to do with getting the courage to fight back than it did with losing a way of life that was distinctly British.
Yet, the hubris of the wealth is that everyone wants what they have. They thought they were worth replicating.
And poor Eleanor paid the price, sitting in the harbor with her sisters, the two other boats carrying tea from the India tea trade to the colonies.
With all that being said, I’m not saying there is anything wrong with tea. But, I am saying I love coffee. Even more so now that I know it represents America.