Tea Party Museum

Photo Courtesy of Lorenzo Deagle

John Brewer, Professor of Humanities and Social Sciences at the California Institute of Technology, stated in his publication Reenactment and Neo-Realism that, “reenactment, it seems to me, is not going to get much beyond a site of modern fantasy and nostalgia (pleasant as this may be), unless it can begin to address the issues of the relationship between historical and poetic truth.”[1]  The romanticizing, of the past is not only a hindrance to the field of Living History and its application as a tool of historic education, it also promotes escapism from reality and a nostalgic interpretation of historic events.  For-profit historic tourism has often served as a bastion from which historically themed vacations and entertainment is marketed to the general public, such historical fetishism exists at The Boston Tea Party Ships and Museum, located in the heart of Boston.

Photo Courtesy of Lorenzo Deagle

Photo Courtesy of Lorenzo Deagle

Boston Tea Party Ships and Museum, is a historic attraction located on the Congress Street Bridge in the heart of Boston, which promotes a first-person interactive experience revolving around The Boston Tea Party, a historical event of vital importance with regard to the escalation of political and social conflict in eighteenth century Boston which would culminate in the outbreak of the American Revolution.  The Boston Tea Party of December `6, 1773 is one of many examples of political protest which exacerbated British/Colonial relations with the Mother Country. The Boston Tea Party resulted in the destruction of three-hundred and forty-two chests of East India Trading Company Tea in response to the May 1773 Tea Act, which made such cargo liable to a government tax on all tea purchased and distributed in Great Britain’s North American colonies.[2]  In an event which will lead to the dismissal of Massachusetts’s last civilian Royal Governor, Thomas Hutchinson, the establishment of full military rule under British General Thomas Gage, and the closure of Boston Harbor, The Boston Tea Party has often been viewed as a catalyst which would lead to war and eventual independence from Great Britain.  However, this event has also been popularized and commodified by private businesses involved in Boston’s tourist trade, including Historic Tours of America Inc., a for-profit tourist organization, which operators of The Boston Tea Party Ships and Museum.[3]

Photo Courtesy of Lorenzo Deagle

 Lasting one hour and fifteen minutes, the tour offered at The Boston Tea Party Ships and Museum, beginnings by employing first-person living history interpretation and audience participation in a colonial meetinghouse setting where guests are involved in events leading to the Boston Tea Party.[4]  Rather than approaching the use of living history with caution in an effort to avoid cloaking this historic event in romanticism, The Boston Tea Party Ships and Museum revels in the promotion of what Brewer refers to as “poetic truth,” or the use of historical information and events for entertainment purposes.[5] Following the introduction in the meetinghouse, guests are then escorted to one of two replica eighteenth-century ships, intended to serve as a recreation of the storming of Griffin’s Wharf and the boarding of the Dartmouth, Eleanor and Beaver, the three ships containing East India Trading Company Tea, where guests are then encouraged to imitate the destruction of the ships’ cargo of tea by throwing Styrofoam tea chests over the sides of the ships.[6]

Photo Courtesy of Lorenzo Deagle

Furthermore, the second half of the tour is dominated by traditional museum exhibits including a display containing the John Robinson Half Chest, an empty tea chest recovered from the Boston Harbor following The Boston Tea Party, and technology-based exhibits including a hologram debate between a Loyalist named Catherine and a Patriot named Sarah.[7]  The tour then ends with a slightly abrupt conclusion involving the viewing a multi-sensory patriotic film entitled “Let It Begin Here,” which depicts the events leading to the Battle of Lexington.[8] 

Overall, while the tour itself was stimulating the dramatic nature of the tour and the theatrical attributes of the entire experience detracted from the accuracy and objectivity of the historical events depicted.  Much as Brewer has scrutinized historic reenactment as a form of fetishism where, “what is important is not the truth of the enactment but its psychological effect.”[9]  The Boston Tea Party Ships and Museum, while governed by profit making through historic entertainment, has resulted in the dissemination to the public at large of dramatized and oversimplified historical information.

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[1] John Brewer, “Reenactment and Neo-Realism,” in Historical Reenactment, ed. Iain McCalman and Paul A. Pickering (London, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 88.  

[2] Robert J. Allison, The Boston Tea Party (NE Remembers). (Boston: Commonwealth Editions, 2007), 1, 42.

[3] Ibid., ix-x.

[4] Historic Tours of America. “Museum Experience,” Boston Tea Party Ships and Museum, http://www.bostonteapartyship.com (accessed November 6, 2015).

[5] Brewer, “Reenactment and Neo-Realism,” 88.

[6] Historic Tours of America. “Boston Tea Party Ships and Museum,” (Guided Tour of the Tourist Attraction, 306 Congress St., Boston, MA, November 6, 2015).

[7] Ibid.

[8] Historic Tours of America. “Museum Experience,” Boston Tea Party Ships and Museum, http://www.bostonteapartyship.com (accessed November 6, 2015).

[9] Brewer, “Reenactment and Neo-Realism,” 81.