After injuring his hand, a silversmith's apprentice in Boston becomes a messenger for the Sons of Liberty in the days before the American Revolution.

Boston in 1773 is an inhospitable place for the two teenagers whose lives are about to intersect there.

In an attempt to save his family's oak tree home, Maximilian uses Nathaniel Chipmunk's time machine to try and prevent Farmer Tanner from selling the property to a developer, but finds himself more than two centuries in the past, in the middle of the Boston Tea Party, instead.

While on a school field trip, Joey and Tank encounter a ghostly captain aboard a historical ship and, upon their return that night, travel through time and become involved in the Boston Tea Party.