Boston Tea Party Ships & Museum

Experience the Boston Tea Party through live reenactments, interactive exhibits, and authentic ship replicas at this immersive museum.

Planning your visit

On 16 December 1773, colonists boarded three ships in Boston harbour and threw 342 chests of East India Company tea into the water in protest at taxation without representation. Britain responded with the Coercive Acts, the colonies responded to those, and the American Revolution followed within eighteen months.

The museum is built around reconstructed ships moored on Fort Point Channel — the Beaver and the Eleanor — which visitors board. The experience is live-acted throughout: visitors are assigned identities, attend a reenacted meeting at the Old South Meeting House, and throw replica tea chests overboard themselves.

Whether that works depends on tolerance for costumed participation, but it is well done and children respond to it.

The museum holds one of two surviving tea chests from the night, authenticated and displayed, which grounds the theatre in an actual object.

A tea room serves the five blends dumped in the harbour.

Bookable options are interactive tour tickets. Current availability is listed below.