Remembering the Brig Beaver: Pembroke’s Place in the Boston Tea Party

Saturday December 9th, 2023

11:00am

The Pembroke Historical Society will partner with the Boston Tea Party Ships & Museum, and Revolution 250 near the Brick Kiln Yard Historic Site to celebrate Pembroke’s connection to the Boston Tea Party.

The Brick Kiln shipyard was located in Pembroke from 1730-1848. It consisted of two separate yards, often with three or four vessels under simultaneous construction, side by side. The Boston Tea Party ship Beaver was built there as well as many other noteworthy vessels. Captain Benjamin Turner is the first shipbuilder on record to work at this site. Many noted shipbuilders served as his apprentices, including Ichabod Thomas. Thomas is remembered especially for building one of the ships involved in the Boston Tea Party (December 16, 1773). Thomas built the Beaver, at the Brick Kiln Yard. Commissioned by the prominent Rotch family of Nantucket, it measured 85 feet in length, with an almost 24 foot beam, and a draft of only nine feet, to accommodate Nantucket’s shallow harbor.

This event is free and open to the public, and will include several speakers from various organizations associated with planning the 250th Anniversary events to commemorate the Boston Tea Party, including the grand-scale reenactment which will take place in Boston on December 16, 2023. At the conclusion of the speaker series, the Pembroke Historical Society will present the Boston Tea Party Ships & Museum with loose leaf tea collected from locals and patrons, to be dumped into Boston harbor from the replica of the Brig Beaver during the 250th Anniversary reenactment of the Boston Tea Party!

(Parking for this event is located at 100 Schoosett Street, Pembroke, MA)