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Historical Tea Chests
Perhaps the most historical of all tea chests is the Robinson
Half Chest, displayed at the Boston Tea Party Ships &
Museum. It was found half buried in the sand near the
shore by a teenager called John Robinson the morning
after the historic ‘Boston Tea Party’. It stayed in his family
for generations until it was bought by a gentleman from
Texas. The Boston Museum purchased it from the Texan
gentleman’s family and brought it back ‘home’.
A Few Unusual Uses of the Tea Chest
An Instrument of Escape:
Flight
Lieutenant Dominic Bruce of the Royal
Air Force used a tea chest to escape
from Colditz Castle, Germany, during
WWII. The new Commandant had
asked the prisoners to pack all their
extra belongings into assorted boxes, including tea chests,
which would then be placed in the storeroom. Leiutenent
Bruce, being small built, fitted himself into a Red Cross
tea chest! With the help of a file and a twenty metre
length of ‘rope’ made with bedsheets, he made his escape
from the third floor storeroom that night. The guards
found the ‘rope’ dangling from the window and a message
in German inscribed on the side of the empty tea chest.
It said, “The air in Colditz no longer pleases me. Auf
wiedersehen!”
Although he was caught a week later, this escape made
the Lieutenant famous as the ‘Medium Sized Man’ and
the escape itself came to be known as the ‘Tea Chest
Escape’. It featured in the BBC television series of the
1970s called ‘Colditz’, in which David McCallum (who
famously portrayed Ilya Kuriakan in the U.N.C.L.E.
series) played the role of Flight Lieutenant Simon Carter,
the fictional Dominic Bruce.
AMusical Instrument:
An upright broomstick with one
or more strings attached, fitted into or alongside an empty
tea chest becomes a musical instrument called a Tea
Chest Bass! The chest works like a resonator. As the pole
is moved it stretches the string and alters the tone,
sounding at least four different notes.This instrument was
used by bands playing Skiffle music (a combination of
American folk music, jazz and blues) since the 1920s, to
give the bass note to their music.
In the 1950s and 60s, Skiffle became popular in Britain
and among the well-known British Skiffle groups was
The Quarry Men, whose members included John
Lennon, George Harrison, and Paul McCartney…later
to become famous as The Beatles.
Interestingly, a Macneil & Barry tea planter actually
played with The Beatles! Ron Aston, a member of the
Margherita based planters’ band,
TheMudguards
, played
the drums for The Beatles (then known as ‘The Silver
Beetles’) in the UK before he joined Tea.
The tea chest bass was, appropriately enough, played by
quite a few tea planters, most of whom were based on our
Company’s estates. In the late 1950s,
The Borgang River
Boys
was a very popular planters’ band on the North
Bank.The band comprised Hamish Pirie,Mike Dawkins,
Tom Saltau, Peter Swer and Jeff Tomlin. The tea chest
bass was one of the instruments they used.
Peter Baxter (Bordubi T.E.), Jimmy Pariat (Koomsong T.E.)
and Eric Singh (Dirok T.E.), along with Terence Morris of
Pengeree T.E. formed a band called
PB4
in the 1960s. Peter
Baxter played the saxophone, Jimmy Pariat the guitar,
Terence Morris played percussion and the clarinet, while
Eric Singh became quite an expert on the Tea Chest Bass
made for him in the factory.
Alan Leonard of the
Broken Pekoes
, a Mangaldai-based
planters’ band, played the Tea Chest Bass too. The band
comprised him, Sanbah
Pariat, David Ojha, George
Barry and David March.
There exists a picture of an
elderly lady playing the Tea
Chest Bass…and the chest
has ‘Bishnauth Tea Company
Limited, 4 Mangoe Lane,
Calcutta’ stenciled on it!
AModel of a Castle:
In the ‘Room of Good Fortune’ in
Drogo Castle, Exeter, England, one can admire the large
model of the castle, made from old tea chests.The Castle
itself was designed by Edwin Lutyens, one of the greatest
architects of the 20th century, responsible for designing
most of the colonial structures in Delhi.
Homes for Owls:
The barn owl, whose numbers have
been declining significantly not only in Britain but all
over Europe due to the loss of nest sites, have been given
new homes as part of a wildlife project in several parts of
England. Old tea chests have been transformed into
homes for pairs of breeding barn owls. An entrance hole
is cut and a tray fitted in front of this to provide an
exercise area for young owls.
“There is a great deal of poetry and fine sentiment in a
chest of tea,” said RalphWaldo Emerson. Actually, there’s
so much more!
54 JANUARY 2015
The Robinson Half Chest
Colditz Castle and (inset) the Red Cross Tea Chest
Tea Chest Model of Drogo Castle
The Barn Owl at Home
The Borgang River Boys
PB4 at Tingri Club