The Birmingham age-herald., 1902-10-30
FIVE OLD MONITORS LAST
 SURVIVORS OF THEIR KIND
From the Ph.ladelphla Press.


 wEa I'VE old monitors, last survivors of their ponderou and death dealing race. lie in the bacl channel of the League Island Navy Yar( awaiting the day, not far distant, wher they will be placed. figuratively, on tn, block and sold to the highest bidder and within sight of their present hon. ored resting place in the graveyard oi others of their type.
 The monitors in their prime marked ar epoch in naval construction and maya warfare. Should no saving hand rescue them from the awaiting fate, there will disappear with them the type of war yes. sel which evoked a whole worlds praise All are of historical interest, one, the Montauk, supremely so, for on a rough carpenters bench, behind it's drowning turret there once was laid the body of a man on whom was called down a nations maledietions-John Wilkes Booth, assas- sin of Abraham Lincoln. The government however finds the monitors of no use today-they are expensive to maintain and so the government will sell them as old junk to the highest bidder.
 The date of the sale has not been de- cided upon. but from Washington comes the information that these five, the Ma hant, Cononicus, Jason, Lehigh and Mon- tauk. have been condemned, and the ad- vertisng for bids is merely a matter of a few days. The Jason and the Lehigh were built by John Ericsson at Chester and the Montauk by the same builder al Brooklyn. All of them saw active service and on the turrets and armored sides of all can still be discerned the indent of Confederate shells.
 Her deck, once red with heroes blood
 Where knelt the vanquished foe. When winds were hurrying OCT the flood
 And waves were white below.
 No more shall feel the victor's tread,
 Or know the conquered knee;
 The harpies of the shore shall pluck
 The eagle of the sea.
 Any one who visits a little dock beside the towering Girard Point grain eleva- tors can see the fate of the monitors at the navy yard. Here are the Mahopac, the Manhattan and a few keel plates of the Catskill Twenty men and boiler are the agents of destruction.
 The Manhattan, the Mohapac and Cat skill were sold several months ago to a firm which makes the utilization of old iron and other metals a keen business study. They were lowed to Girard Point wharf, where a score of men, armed with sledge hammers and chisels, saws and pneumatic drills, boarded the ves- sels. First was torn off all the wood work-the yellow pine. oakum scanned deck planking, the temporary cabin, the hunks and lockers. Then the drills and men with hammers and chisels began cutting off the rivets which held togeth- CT the ten sheets of one-inch wrought iron in coming tower and turret and the eight sheaths in her side armor. Once the rivets out, the sheaths are stripped off like the skin from a banana
 Piece by piece the monitor is destroyed The iron is assembled here, the wood there. A crape places the iron on a freight car and it is taken off to the foundry to be cut by giant shears into great chunks and then cast into a fur mace. Out of the product may be made plowshears and pruning hooks, or just as probably armor sheathing for some of the great battleships of the new navy. About a thousand tons of iron are se- cured from each monitor
 The massive guns. four feet thick at the breech, are carted up the state. Charges of dynamite, three pounds, two