| Show BUY A battleship BATTLE SNIP london april 13 there arc two or three firms on the banks of the thames is that ot buying battleships and breaking them up annually sells off a abo government whole stock of castoff cast off bulwarks bulwa during tho lust ten years it haa disposed of about one hundred and seventy ot for a total price of about ISO pounds the highest recorded price given within recent years is the pounds paid massis oppenheim Eppen heim for the agamemnon tho battleship which was only alio llio other day put up for auction inco this it is announced that the admiralty hao decided to offer forty obsolete vessels in the same way more including the inflexible ajax and neptune in twenty years a goes on to tho condemned list her guns machinery and other fitting become obsolete a the government says she must after several go leave fat f at in judgment on her the ship in formally condemned just like a convicted murderer slie 9 to bo to the place where bhe built portsmouth chatham devonport or wherever it nuy have be enand there prepared lor execution off her equipment and her men are paid ktores removed and slie then pasc sto the the executioner that is to say the chip breaking finn which has bought her aien tows her slowly and steadily to their yarda ya rda which arc chiefly in alic her execution is the exact of her construction tho engines and boilers the last fittings to be on tho ship aro the first to be removed then hing else is dismantled in tho order of building and by droane of cranes conveyed to the old iron yards the last of UM ship night be anid to be ahe explosion ot her body by dynamite which red nices her to a shapeless mass sho then becomes so many tons of told iron end eo many stacks of umber her plains are sold to iron founders for and manufacture remanufacture re her other fittings are classified and forwarded to rolling enols and steel furn acee according to the quality of abo metal the iron of a warship of course varies in value from 2 pounds to 3 pounds 10 Bhai inga a ton as P W ws informed by abo directors bof the ehrp company the moat aro the ship platea the least palpable theold iron the warship therefore contributes contri bules after its death to any and every kind or iron manufacture from a kitchen range to a railway timber h a decreasing quality on 1 modern warships everything of importance being metal eave tho decks and leow fittings such door but in the days the wood used to be employed for a variety of pur ono firm castle bought one hundred and twenty warship from alio navy in eight acara and paid a quarter ot A million pounds for one ot the vessels was 11 M S hood this ship was actually sold and broken up before she had the cast 1 was built in the le dway and left eliat river until ehe made her voyage to execution there was never a sadder first voyage but wor c than this was alio case of the bulwark was not even launched but waa broken up in the very stocks in which she was built seeing that a in the first instance costs upwards ot halt a million pounds and when hold seldom so high a figure ae pounds it will bo seen what tin enormous gulf liea between the value of a new and lan obsolete vessel the recently sold agamemnon for instance coat cruiser cost 1 pounds when new from to eells for from pounds to pound when obsolete other of ve asels such as gun boale torpedoes and destroyers sell in like proportion until wo get down to the steam cauer one of which was recently sold for 15 one of the chief uses of warship timber is for wood no wood burns eo well and ship timber logs are famous for beautifully colored flames another great for ships timber is for railway blocks brewers also find that poles constructed from warship wood support beer barrels in damp cellars where any other wood would certainly rot so they aro large purchasers from tho chip brcak ars castle also possess a fleet of sixty barges constructed alie wood of old warships which aro let out tat rente varying from forty to eighty pounds a year positive army of breakers has to be requisitioned when a vessel is to be broken up at a normal rate of work it twelve months to reduce a ship to scrap iron und wood |
