Three main events of the Boston Tea Party were: 1. The arrival in Boston of three ships, "Beaver, Dartmouth, and Eleanor" with 340 chests of tea belonging to British East India Company tea. The tax on tea, implemented with the passing of the 1767 Townshend Revenue Act, had to be paid twenty days after the arrival of the tea. The deadline to pay the tax was December 17, 1773. 2. The night before the deadline, December 16th, The Sons of Liberty, a Patriot political organization, disguised as Mohawk Indians, destroyed and dumped the tea into the Boston Harbor as a protest against the tax on tea and the monopoly of British East India Company on all tea exportation to the colonies. 3. The Boston Tea Party was a triggering event for the start of the war and a principal reason why the American Revolutionary War started in Massachusetts.