The Tea Acts was another British law passed by Parliament on May 10, 1773. It was a follow up act of the Townshend Acts, which had set up new import taxes on British goods like paint, paper, lead, glass, and tea. After the Townshend Act received much hatred from the colonists, Britain did away with all of the taxes except for one - the tax on tea. It was Lord North’s decision to keep the tax on tea. It was his attempt to save the East India Company, one of Britain’s largest money makers, from going bankrupt. In order to replenish the East India Company, they had to sell their supply of around seventeen million pounds of tea. Soon after the Tea Act was passed, Britain sent over many shiploads of tea.
As tea-filled ships arrived in colonial America’s harbors, colonists were not as thrilled as Lord North may have thought. In fact, colonists saw this new act as a complete scam. They thought that it was another unfair tax put on the colonies but in disguise. Colonial citizens refused to buy the cheap tea and the ships were sent back to Britain fully loaded. Of course Lord North was not happy about this and sent the ships back to America, ordering that the ships shall not come back until they are completely unloaded of their goods. Some colonists in Boston did what they were told and unloaded the goods, just not in the way Britain had intended.
A group of patriots disguised as Mohawk Indians boarded the three ships. Using their tomahawks, they chopped into 342 crates of tea and dumped nearly 92,000 pounds of tea into the Boston Harbor. The amount of tea that was wasted in this event is equivalent to $1,700,000 today. This event became known as the Boston Tea Party.