What was advertised in a colonial American newspaper 250 years ago this week?
“The SONS OF LIBERTY will meet on THURSDAY Night … till the Arrival and Departure of the TEA SHIP.”
It was a call to action. An advertisement in the March 17, 1774, edition of the New-York Journal proclaimed, “NOTICE IS HEREBY GIVEN, That the SONS OF LIBERTY will meet on THURSDAY Night, at 7 o’Clock, in every Week, at the House of Mr. JASPER DRAKE, till the Arrival and Departure of the TEA SHIP.” That advertisement ran in the column next to an anonymous address “TO THE PUBLICK” that anticipated “the TEA-SHIP, which has been long expected, is near at hand.” The address asserted, “Our sister colonies have gloriously defended the common cause of this country,” referring to the destruction of several shipments of tea in Boston the previous December and colonizers in Philadelphia had managed to prevent the Polly from landing its tea there. In turn, the address called on colonizers in New York “to stand our ground, and as the day of tryal is now come, that we shall convince the whole American world that we are not slack and indolent, nor in the least degree unworthy, of being registered as a genuine sister province.” It was a call to match the resolve and resistance already demonstrated in Boston and Philadelphia.
The “TEA SHIP” in these advertisements referred to the Nancy. As James R. Fichter explains in Tea: Consumption, Politics, and Revolution, 1773-1776, the consignees of the tea aboard the Nancy “hoped to land and store this tea (but not sell it), which was initially acceptable to local Patriots.”[1] But that was in November. On December 1, 1773, even before the Boston Tea Party, the consignees “gave up their role in the tea and asked Governor Tryon to take over.” The governor initially intended to land and store the tea, emboldened by support from British troops, but reconsidered that plan when Patriots in New York decided they could no longer endorse that plan and, especially, after the colony received word about the destruction of the tea in Boston. That news encouraged Patriots in their position while convincing Tryon that “‘the Peace of Society’ and ‘good Order,’ trumped landing the tea, and the best he could hope for was an outcome like at Philadelphia (where the ship was turned around).” The governor engineered a plan for the Nancy to land at Sandy Hook, outside New York City’s customs area, where it could be resupplied to return to Boston while evading any legal obligation to unload its cargo. Yes, as Fichter notes, the governor “could not formally condone smuggling around His Majesty’s customs, even if it would maintain order. So Tryon made no official announcement.” Instead, he made sure that Patriots overheard conversations about this plan when they gathered at one of the coffeehouses in the city.
In the meantime, the Nancy continued making its way across the Atlantic, sheltering in Antiqua in February 1774 following a storm. The ship made then its way to British mainland North America, arriving at Sandy Hook on April 18, a month after the Sons of Liberty advertised their weekly meetings at Drake’s house. Conveniently, the governor was away from the city at the time. Local Patriots observed the Nancy receiving supplies for its return to London, intervening only to prevent sailors who did not wish to continue on a ship further damaged in another storm from coming ashore. The Nancy needed a crew to return to London without lingering in the waters near New York or inciting any sort of disorder that the carefully orchestrated plan had avoided so far. As the Son of Liberty’s advertisement in the New-York Journal demonstrates, tea remained a flashpoint for resistance after the Boston Tea Party. They achieved their goal of the “Arrival and Departure of the TEA SHIP.”
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[1] For quotations and a more extensive overview of the Nancy, see James R. Fichter, Tea: Consumption, Politics, and Revolution, 1773-1776 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2023), 88-93.