No, that was just the PR.
The real problem was the colonists already had plenty of tea in their warehouses and this additional shipment would cause a surplus severely damaging to their investment.
Of course, another entrepreneur went out in the morning and gathered all the waterproof chests from the harbor into his own warehouse. I don't know if any is left, but I understand for 200 years you could get a cup of tea in Boston with at least some original Boston Harbor tea content, if you were willing to pay the price.
The above information was revealed by the Smithsonian Institution in a series of exposés in Smithsonian Magazine during 1975. I sympathise with a patriotic letter writer who wrote, "I know all this must be true because you have all the documentation, but do you really have to bring all this up just before the bicentenial?"
Now the fact that PR spin from a commercial venture was a major contributor to starting a "war or liberation" - that would never happen in our enlightened era, would it?
