Source A: Excerpt from a report in the Boston Gazette. December 20, 1773.
A number of brave and resolute men, determined to do all in their power to save their country from the ruin which their enemies had plotted, in less than four hours, emptied every chest of tea on board the three ships commanded by captains Hall, Bruce, and Coffin, amounting to 342 chests, into the sea ! ! without the least damage done to the ships or any other property. The masters and owners are well pleas’d that their ships are thus clear’d; and the people are almost universally congratulating each other on this happy event.
Source B: Excerpt from a letter by British official, Lord Dartmouth, the Secretary-of-State for the Colonies to Thomas Hutchinson, governor of Massachusetts. February 12, 1773.
How fatally and effectually they (the colonists) have now shut the door against all possibility of present relief for any of the things they complain of, and how utterly vain it must be to expect that Parliament will ever give it to them till there appears to be a change in their temper and conduct.