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Ship of the Month - cont'd. 10. the bulwark. At various times, the McCARTHY and INGALLS sported distinctive markings on the catwalk bulwark, these usually being combinations of sham­ rocks and the ship's name in fancy lettering. When the catwalk was added, the McCarthy appears to have kept her original upper pilothouse, with its entrance in its rear face, although new windows seem to have been fitted. The INGALLS, on the other hand, appears to have had an entirely new pilothouse built, or at least had the old one given a major rebuild, for she henceforth had much larger pilothouse windows, toge­ ther with a door on either side. It may also have been about this time that the McCARTHY and INGALLS (as well as the MEAD) were converted to burn oil fuel instead of coal. The shipping registers show no dates for any such conversions, but we know that they took place because, in their latter years of operation, the McCARTHY auto car­ riers, after delivering cargoes of cars from Detroit to the Ranahan-McCarthy terminal at Buffalo, often would cross over to Port Colborne to take on oil bunkers which, at that time we more economically obtained in Canada than in the United States. Things started to turn bad for the McCarthy auto carriers in the late 1950s, as the fleet's major client, the Chrysler Corporation, was manufacturing increasing numbers of autos away from Detroit. What cars were shipped from Detroit were increasingly handled by the railroads with their over-length, three-level railcars designed specifically to transport automobiles. To make matters worse, T. J. McCarthy, Sr., passed away at Detroit late in 1961. There was not enough auto-carrying business left to support two fleets, the Nicholson Transit Company normally carrying autos up the lakes from Detroit, and McCarthy carrying them down to the ports of Lake Erie. In fact, both of the fleets went out of active business in the 1960s. The Nicholson auto carriers were sold in 1961, most of these venerable steamers going to the scrapyard. The last auto-carrying by McCarthy boats was done in 1963, al­ though the T. J. McCarthy Steamship Company did not file articles of disso­ lution until 1977, and all corporate matters were not concluded until early in 1979. By that time, however, the flight-decked auto carriers were long gone. The last to have operated is believed to have been the tragically-historical steamer MATAAFA, (a) PENNSYLVANIA (99), which the McCarthy interests had acquired from the Nicholson Transit Company in 1961, and which was sold for scrapping in 1964. She was sent overseas for scrapping by Marine Salvage Ltd., of Port Colborne, and she was broken up in 1965 at Hamburg, Germany, by Eisen und Metall A. G. GEORGE W. MEAD was dismantled in 1965 by the Acme Scrap and Iron Company at Ashtabula, Ohio. GEORGE H. INGALLS and T. J. McCARTHY lay idle at Detroit through the 1964 and 1965 seasons, and in October of 1965, they were sold to Hudson Waterways Inc., for use as tonnage to trade in to the U. S. Maritime Administration new vessels. "MarAd" sold the McCARTHY late in 1965 to Acme Scrap and Iron Company, of Ashtabula, and early in 1966, it sold the INGALLS to Marine Sal­ vage Ltd., Port Colborne. In 1966, Acme resold the McCarthy to Marine Salvage, and so both steamers then were owned by the same scrap dealer. Marine Salvage operated not only as a broker, handling the sale for overseas scrapping of many superannuated lake vessels, but it also was an active shipbreaker for many years, dismantling a large number of ships at its yard in Ramey's Bend (part of the old third Welland Canal) at Humberstone, below present Welland Canal Lock 8. Marine Salvage decided to dismantle the T. J. McCARTHY and GEORGE H. INGALLS at its own yard, and on June 28, 1966, both steamers were towed away from their Detroit lay-up berths by the McQueen Marine tugs AMHERSTBURG and ATOMIC, which took them down the Detroit River and across Lake Erie to Port Colborne, where they arrived on July 1st. T. J. McCARTHY was taken directly