On the evening of December 16 the largest meeting yet brought perhaps eight thousand people to Boston’s Old South Church. At a signal from Adams a group of about fifty men thinly disguised as Indians stormed the wharf where the Dartmouth lay, moored next to its recently arrived sister ships, the Eleanor and the Beaver, which also carried tea. Quite evidently the band of raiders included some longshoremen, for they knew the business of unloading a ship. They brought the casks of tea from hold to deck, opened them, and dumped the leaves out upon the bay. It was a long night’s work, for by
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