The anniversary of the Boston Tea Party is approaching and I’ve noticed two recent citations referring to 10,000 pounds of Darjeeling tea being thrown overboard in Boston on the evening of December 16, 1773, and a mention that some of the tea was in brick form. Both references are not true.
All the East India Company tea aboard the ships Beaver, Dartmouth, and Eleanor was produced in China, not India. Tea would not be cultivated in India, or Sri Lanka, until the 19th century. And, it was all loose tea because the colonists had no taste for tea bricks and tea bags were still 150 years in the future.
Benjamin Woods Labaree’s The Boston Tea Party says the three tea ships contained 342 chests of Bohea, 15 of Congou, 10 of Souchong (all black teas), 60 of Singlo, and 15 of Hyson (both green teas).
It may surprise you to know that green tea accounted for about 22% of the shipments’ total volume and 30% of the value.
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| East India Tea Auction, London |
One-third of the tea exported from China in the 18th century was green tea, with spring-picked Hyson being one the favorites. The first tea plucked in the spring is always the finest, which the Chinese designated yu-tsien or before the rains tea. The English traders who bought the tea in China thought the Mandarin name of this tea sounded like the name of a wealthy East India Company director in London named Phillip Hyson, and forevermore the young spring tea took on Mr. Hyson’s more pronounceable moniker.
Singlo green tea was picked later in the season and the leaves were a bit larger. It tended to spoil sooner than other teas and was not widely known in the colonies. It was only included in the ill-fated shipment because the East India Company had quite a bit of stock that needed to be liquidated before it became undrinkable.
But the bulk of the tea that westerners consumed was common black tea known as Bohea (boo-hee), a corruption of the name for the Wuyi mountains south of Shanghai. The ungraded tea was so popular, that the word Bohea became the slang term for tea.
John Adams diary entry from December 17, 1773 reads in part:
Last Night 3 Cargoes of Bohea Tea were emptied into the Sea. This is the most magnificent Movement of all. There is a Dignity, a Majesty, a Sublimity, in this last Effort of the Patriots, that I greatly admire.
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| Thomas Mellville, grandfather of Herman Mellville (author of Moby Dick), helped toss tea overboard in Boston Harbor. |
One London publication described Bohea as “infusing a dark and dull brownish red color which, on standing, deposits a black sediment. The liquor is sometimes faint, frequently smoky, but always unpleasant. The superior form of Bohea is known as Congou.”
Seventy percent of the tea imported by the East India Company was Congou (kung-foo.) It brewed a deep transparent red liquor with a strong and pleasant bitter flavor. The addition of milk surely added to the enjoyment of this beverage.
Souchong black tea was similar to Congou but generally, the leaves were larger and gave off the aroma of smoke, similar to Lapsang Souchong teas today.
Certainly, all the teas tossed overboard would disappoint a modern tea drinker because they were way past their prime. The Boston teas were plucked in 1770 and 1771, transported by ship to London warehouses where they sat for a couple of years, and finally placed aboard ships bound for the colonies in October 1773.
Forget taxation! The colonists should have been more offended by the slight regard King George showed toward their good tastes!
Tea Maestro Bruce Richardson is the Tea Master for the Boston Tea Party Ships and Museum, opening in Boston Harbor on June 24, 2012.