No tea, no party: Remembering New Bedford’s role in the Boston Tea Party, 250 years later

On Sunday, Nov. 28, 1773, a wooden ship with three towering masts dropped anchor in Boston Harbor, but did not dare dock in the colonial port. The six-year-old Dartmouth, the first ship ever assembled in a barely-settled backwater then known as Bedford Village, was on course to alter history. Stuffed in her cargo hold was “enough political dynamite to explode an empire” — 114 chests of British tea.

Not long after her anchor splashed into icy cold water, The Dartmouth welcomed aboard 22-year-old Francis Rotch, one of the ship’s owners. Francis was the youngest son of the family credited with founding New Bedford and building it into the “whaling capital of the world.” When his boots thumped onto the deck, the young merchant entered the epicenter of America’s founding. Francis would spend the next 18 days buzzing between Boston’s Old South Meeting House, the mansion of Massachusetts Gov. Thomas Hutchinson, and the planks of his trapped ship. The ordeal would culminate with a parade of angry Bostonians looting his Dartmouth and two other ships. 

That raid on Francis’ cargo took place on Dec. 16, 1773 — exactly 250 years ago this week. It would later be known as the “catalyst for Revolution,” or the Boston Tea Party.

Though a conflict over taxation had been long-brewing in the American colonies, the Rotch family’s decision to carry hundreds of chests of taxable tea from England to Boston stirred colonists to take their boldest action yet against imperial rule. William Rotch, Francis’ elder brother, owned another ship boarded during the Tea Party, The Beaver. But William still lived on Nantucket Island, while Francis had moved ashore to Bedford Village, the fledgling settlement that the mighty Rotch family — whalers, merchants, and boat builders — hoped to establish as the new base of their international fleet. 

And so it was that young Francis dispatched to Boston, where word of the massive tea shipment was drawing ire long before his vessel appeared over the horizon. And so it was that the Rotches, the pacifist Quakers, added the fodder of rebellion to the crucible of American patriotism. 

Over 100 men boarded Francis’ 80-foot ship, the largest of the three tea-laden vessels. The men were dressed as Native Americans, with smeared-on lamp soot disguising their faces, and spent between two and four hours tossing the massively valuable tea shipment into the harbor. (The destroyed tea was valued at around 3,700 pounds sterling; a home cost about 250 pounds at the time.) Among the raiders was Henry Perkins, a Dartmouth resident. In the chaos, Perkins might have not known, nor really cared, that two of the ships he was sacking belonged to near neighbors.

But Perkins, like much of the soon-born nation, would forever remember that night and perpetually invoke its rebellious spirit. On Perkins’ gravestone he had etched: “A soldier of the Revolution. He was a participant in the famous Boston tea-party.”

The United States was not yet imagined by Perkins or any of the mutineers that night. But their boisterous self-determination helped create an American mythos that led Thomas Paine to declare in 1776: “The cause of America is in a great measure the cause of all mankind.”

Before America could chase this lofty ideal, it needed an arena in which to define itself. Or, as the historian Edouard Stackpole wrote: “If there had been no tea there would have been no party.”

The run-up to revolution

The city of New Bedford was born nearly in tandem with the ship Dartmouth, young siblings blinking awake on the eve of a revolution. In 1765, eight years before the Tea Party, Joseph Rotch, father of Francis and William, purchased some acres on the Acushnet River’s western edge. Joseph wanted to buy land on the opposite shore, in present-day Fairhaven. But after being denied sufficient waterfront access for his business ambitions, he made do with several parcels on the more remote side. 

The Dartmouth was the very first ship built in the remote Bedford Village, in 1767, only two years after the Rotches came ashore. “Under a grove of Button Wood trees that stood by the river bank, near the spot where now is Hazard’s wharf, the keel of the first ship was laid,” wrote Leonard Ellis in his “History of New Bedford.” “This vessel, built and owned by Francis Rotch, the son of Joseph, was named the Dartmouth and placed in the merchant service.”

Around the time Francis’ ship first floated, Bedford Village was a rapidly growing hamlet within the township of Dartmouth; that larger town boasted 772 dwelling houses, 525 horses, 797 oxen, 1,965 cows and heifers, and 21 persons held as slaves — “or, as the record reads, ‘servants for life,’” Ellis wrote. 

New Bedford’s famed abolitionist history does extend back to the pre-Revolution days. “There’s also a community of free blacks in New Bedford at this time,” says Jonathan Lane, the coordinator of Revolution 250, a nonprofit dedicated to commemorating revolutionary history. The Rotches were themselves leading the anti-slavery effort within the Quaker community by the 1760s. But slavery, the “great contradiction” of the nation’s founding, was also present in New Bedford. And Massachusetts did not abolish slavery until 1783.

As the Rotches transformed Bedford Village into a seat for their global empire, many radical ideas — abolitionism, women’s suffrage — would find safe harbor among the diverse workers and languages that crisscrossed the docks and taverns. And the once-forested banks of the Acushnet River would soon overtake Nantucket as the primary port for the Rotches’ private armada of whaling and merchant vessels: the new whaling capital of the world. “You can lay the success of New Bedford right at their feet,” says Lane. “It comes directly from the Rotches.”

Francis’ ship Dartmouth was making an early voyage in the family’s — and the city’s — rise to prominence when she arrived in London in August 1773 alongside his brother’s Beaver. Both were stuffed with casks of whale oil, the sales of which could be measured by the ton. 

As the Rotch ships were snaking their way up the Thames, warehouses of the East India Company were overflowing with surplus tea, a beverage for which American colonists had a voracious appetite. “It is difficult… to understand the hold of the tea habit on the colonists,” wrote Arthur Schlesinger Sr., a 20th century historian. Though Americans drank copious amounts of tea — total American imports weighed more than one million pounds — more than 90% was smuggled tax-free, mostly through New York and Philadelphia. 

The colonies relied on smuggled tea because of their intense opposition to taxation by the crown. Only a few years before, wide-ranging boycotts had pressured the monarchy to repeal the taxes in the Townshend Acts, a remarkable policy shift won by angered colonial subjects. However, a sole tax remained on tea: “There must always be one tax to keep up the right [to tax],” wrote King George III. The tea tax provoked the last, most bitter fight on the principle of “taxation without representation” — already a rallying cry in the American colonies. More soldiers and customs agents started popping up in the colonies to enshrine George III’s right to tax. 

Some tea was still imported and taxed through official channels. But a final straw for the Americans came in May 1773, when Parliament granted the East India Company the right to distribute its own tea, rather than sell it to merchants in American cities. By cutting out American middlemen, Parliament and the East India Company hoped to better compete against the smuggled tea and collect more tax revenue — all without sacrificing their own profit. With this threat to “the honest gains of our own Merchants,” colonists began calling for a total boycott on the tea.

So somewhere along the bustling London wharves, a ship owned by John Hancock, called The Hayley, proudly refused to accept any shipments of the “obnoxious tea.” The Rotches, however, were of a different mind: “The Rotch family’s principal concern was its business affairs,” wrote Joseph McDevitt in his book, “The House of Rotch.” They accepted the shipment and loaded tea onto their two ships. In total, seven tea-bearing ships set out from London to the colonies around the same time: four were bound for Boston, and one each to New York, Philadelphia, and Charleston, South Carolina. 

Before The Hayley departed, someone in its crew must have caught wind of the Rotches’ agreement. John Hancock’s boat sped down the Thames and arrived in Boston 11 days before The Dartmouth. Word spread from Boston down to Charleston, and opposition flamed against the approaching tea.

When Francis Rotch left little Bedford Village to meet his ship, he entered the crosshairs of revolution.

The loudest tea party ever held

As soon as The Dartmouth entered Boston Harbor, a timer started. 

British law stated that if taxes were not paid within 20 days on imported goods, then all contents of a vessel — and even the vessel itself — could be seized by Parliament. If The Dartmouth didn’t pay the tea tax by Dec. 17, British soldiers could take over the ship and bring its contents onshore.

But the crew of The Dartmouth knew not to come to the docks. “Threats of tar and feathers; threats of burning the vessels; threats of destroying the tea — all were real hazards,” wrote the historian Stackpole. But the tea had nowhere else to go: it was consigned to merchants in Boston. 

For two consecutive nights after arrival, as the ship idled offshore, town meetings converged in Boston to address the situation. Both Francis Rotch and James Hall, captain of The Dartmouth, attended.

The meeting came to a consensus and issued a warning to Rotch: “not to enter this tea, and that the doing of it will be at his peril.” The colonists assigned 25 armed men to board the ship and ensure that no one would try to unload the shipment. Rotch promised that he would attempt to return the tea to London.

But the colonial governor of Massachusetts, Thomas Hutchinson, issued a counter-proclamation. He would not permit the ship to leave the harbor until taxes were paid. If the ship did try to leave, it would be met by British gunboats. 

Rotch was stuck. The frustrated 22-year-old sought legal counsel. He hired John Adams and Samuel Salter Blowers, the same lawyers who had defended the soldiers involved in the Boston Massacre. Adams, the future U.S. president, advised Rotch to either pay the tea tax or wait out the colonists until the deadline. To Adams, the threat of British gunboats was the most severe and to be avoided at all costs. 

Gov. Hutchinson also tried to persuade Rotch, offering his soldiers as armed guards to unload the tea. But Rotch refused. When he was later deposed in London, Rotch explained that he “dared not accept said offer, apprehending that if he had his life would have been in danger.”

Meanwhile, the armed colonists who guarded The Dartmouth ordered Captain James Hall to relocate the ship to the waters off Griffin’s Wharf in Boston. Hall sensed a threat too, and later testified that he believed “violence would have been used against him if he had refused to obey.” So on the morning of Dec. 1, he hauled up the anchor and moved The Dartmouth to within sight distance of the wharf, colonial guards keeping watch over him all the way.

Soon after, other tea-bearing ships from London arrived. On Dec. 3, The Eleanor cast its anchor beside The Dartmouth, and on Dec. 7, The Beaver, the ship belonging to William Rotch, came into port. (The Beaver had a particularly rough voyage: it had suffered an outbreak of smallpox that required it to be fumigated upon arrival.) A fourth ship bringing tea toward Boston never arrived — it wrecked off the coast of Cape Cod, and a convoy of wagons was sent to retrieve the sailors and what merchandise could be recovered, including the very first streetlights that were ever installed in Boston. 

Three ships headed for the ports of New York, Philadelphia, and Charleston avoided the dramatic stand-off occurring in Boston. In New York and Philadelphia, the ships were not permitted to enter the harbors; they returned to London. In South Carolina, Charleston patriots seized the tea and wouldn’t allow it to be sold. According to Lane, of Revolution 250, patriots stashed the tea in a basement and two years later sold it to fund their war effort. 

On advice of his lawyers, Rotch tried to wait out the angry colonists. But as the deadline neared, the temperature among the colonists was rising. “The minds of the public are greatly irritated at the delay of Mr. Rotch,” fumed an editorial in the Boston Gazette on Dec. 13. 

Another town meeting convened on Dec. 14, this time led by Samuel Adams. Rotch was ordered to attend, and the gathered colonists instructed him to get the ship out of the harbor. To do so, Rotch went to the Collector of Customs and sought the proper papers. Several colonists “accompanied” Rotch to oversee his efforts. 

Rotch was told to come back the next day. So, the morning of Dec. 16, he returned. But the answer remained the same: the ship could not leave unless the taxes were paid. Rotch made a last-ditch plea to Gov. Hutchinson directly, journeying by coach “through the rain-filled winter night” to the governor’s out-of-town house in Milton, Stackpole wrote. 

The patriots waited for his return at the Old South Meeting House. Accounts differ of how many people crammed into aisles and galleys. But somewhere between 5,000 and 7,000 souls — or more than a third of Boston’s entire population — turned out to see how the crisis would resolve. By all accounts, it was the largest political gathering Boston had ever seen. Some had even journeyed from up to 20 miles away.

Candles offered their dim light to the thronging mass until Rotch eventually returned out of the storm at around 6 p.m. He reported the governor’s denial, and the mood became incensed. Later captured in John Adams’ diary: “There was no other Alternative but to destroy it [the tea] or let it be landed.”

Samuel Adams called for silence, and shouted into the room: “This meeting can do nothing more to save the country.” This was a signal to the patriots, who exploded into action. Somewhere in the upper gallery, a rally cry sounded: “Boston Harbor a tea-pot this night!” 

Colonists were at the wharves “within minutes,” according to McDevitt’s book “House of Rotch” — and among them was Henry Perkins, of Dartmouth. Over several hours the jubilant destruction drew nearly a thousand onlookers. 

In all the fracas, none of the ships were destroyed or even damaged. “There can be no question but that the manner in which Francis Rotch conducted himself was the decisive factor” in the ship’s survival, Stackpole wrote. 

A new nation

The Rotch name isn’t often remembered like John or Samuel Adams, John Hancock, or George III. During nights of feverish negotiations, Francis was not caught up with principles like the rule of law or new ideas like liberty. He sought to protect his investment and escape the escalating tension between the world’s largest empire and its agitated subjects who, over the next few years, would dream up and fight for a new nation. 

After the tea finished bobbing and sinking into Boston Harbor, Francis boarded The Dartmouth and went back to London to seek compensation for his lost cargo. A Privy Council found his actions “without reproach,” and he was reimbursed. 

But Francis Rotch did not learn much from the ordeal. In spring 1774, he accepted another shipment of East India Company tea bound for Boston. When it arrived in July, another band of patriots — dressed as natives like in the original Tea Party — boarded his ship and again destroyed the tea.

But the events of Dec. 16, 1773 — the famous Tea Party — had set off a chain reaction. Parliament passed laws, known as the Intolerable Acts to colonists, that effectively shut down the port of Boston. Patriots responded by forming the first Continental Congress. In April 1775, fighting broke out at Lexington and Concord. 

The story of the ship Dartmouth ended before the nation it helped conceive was born. In late 1774, it was lost at sea. 

But another Rotch ship marked the United States’ entrance on the world stage. In 1783, after the Revolutionary War’s end, a ship named for the family’s new home, The Bedford, sailed into London. “This is the first vessel which has displayed the thirteen rebellious stripes of America in any British port,” read one contemporary account. “The ship Bedford… is American built, manned wholly by American seamen, wears the rebel colors.”

Through The Bedford, America had arrived. 

Email Colin Hogan at chogan@newbedfordlight.org

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