The original three British ships that provided the dance floor for the Boston Tea Party were moored at Griffin’s Wharf, which was later buried in landfill during the expansion of the city. The best estimate of the location is near the present-day corner of Atlantic Avenue and Congress Street, near South Station.

Not far from that spot, the newly renovated Boston Tea Party Museum (Congress Street Bridge, www.bostonteapartyship.com), scheduled to open in summer 2011, will feature replicas of the three original ships—the Beaver, the Dartmouth, and the Eleanor—along with other artifacts to bring alive the cold night of December 16, 1773, when 342 chests of British tea were broken open and hurled into the harbor, the tipping point for the American Revolution.

Among the items on display is the so-called “Robinson Tea Chest,” which was recovered by a participant the day after the event, and one of only two original tea chests known to survive.