Boston Lost On Tea

It is now common knowledge that trouble has been brewing between our country and the British for a while. Brexit was a shock for all of us but more shocks were to come, firstly, the election of our new President.

This new Presidency has clamped down on imports from most countries, his idea, to create work here. This, of course, exempts Britain, stating our special relationship with them. However, the British are now taking advantage of this and putting an extra tax on their goods; this appears to be linked to the struggle they're having trading with Europe after Brexit. Because of the President's limited trading partners, it appears that the British feel they can get away with it. However, it seems things are changing, I've watched the unrest in Charleston and New York when boats tried to unload tea at their docks, the latest item to be heavily taxed, their merchants were sensible, they sent the tea back.

Then, we received news that three ships were coming in loaded with tea but unlike Charleston and New York, the Boston merchants were insisting the boats are unloaded when they arrive and the tea be paid for. People were outraged, the clashes between the merchants and the protestors have been mostly peaceful, but the local police knew that this wouldn't necessarily continue if a solution couldn't be found.

The three boats docked at the end of November; meetings have been ongoing since, between the Captains of the boats, the merchants and the protestors. It's been one stalemate after another, nobody wants to give way it seems and they aren't talking to the media; we've tried to get interviews with the sons and the nephew of Governor Thomas Hutchinson, both merchants calling for the tea to be unloaded but they won't comment. We did get a short statement from Samuel Adams, the leader of the protestors; he said that they wouldn't let the tea be unloaded under any circumstance.

It was several hours after the latest meeting had finished last night that we realised something was happening. We spotted movement in the darkness around the boats; the cameras were able to show us what was much harder to see by sight alone. It was evident that it was a large group of people dressed in dark clothing they were boarding the boats. As we watched, all we could see were the odd scuffle and loud splashes. We attempted to take the cameras closer and zoom in but the angles just showed us dark figures moving about the boats. We watched for several hours and gradually a crowd gathered; they appeared to be mostly made up of protestors. They must have heard that something was happening and it wasn't long before they got very vocal. There was no sign of the Captains and most of the crew of the boats; they were tucked up in a local five-star hotel. There appeared to be just a skeleton crew on each boat, this, of course, was the norm, there wasn't seen to be any threat, so no need to put on any extra crew. By the time news got to the rest of the crew, all the tea on the boats was gone; the people we could see on the boats had gradually thrown all the tea over the side. It appears that over forty-five tons of tea have been destroyed overnight across the three boats, worth about $1,000,000. It's heightened tensions between our two countries. Who would have thought that this would have been possible after so many years of peace between us? It's difficult to see what the future now holds.