Vanuatu
SS President Coolidge
Walk off a beach into a 200-metre sunken liner, hit by her own navy's mines.
You wade in from the shore, swim fifty metres, and the seabed falls away onto the hull of an ocean liner lying on her side in blue water. Corridors run into darkness below you. Somewhere inside, a porcelain lady and her unicorn still preside over the first-class smoking room.
Launched in 1931, the President Coolidge carried a gymnasium, a theatre, a ballroom and two swimming pools before the war stripped her into a troop transport. On 26 October 1942, entering Santo's Segond Channel with more than 5,000 troops aboard, she struck two of her own navy's mines; her captain drove her at the shore, and in the hour before she slid under, all but two men walked, climbed or swam to safety. Those two dead make her a war loss as well as a dive, and she is treated with that respect. The 200-metre wreck now lies between 21 and 70 metres on a slope beginning a short swim off the beach, inside the marine reserve declared over these waters in 1983. Ten to fifteen dives barely cover her holds, promenades and cargo; the deepest rooms belong to technical divers, and every route is planned to certification and conditions.
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Solo
Join a local operator and let your certification and recent experience set the route; the upper decks alone repay a week of diving.
Couple
Book a series of progressively deeper dives and end each afternoon comparing which corridor, artefact or shaft of light stayed with you.
Friends
Split across skill levels, beginners on the exterior and trained divers deeper, and agree before descending that nobody follows the group past their limit.
- She was a 1931 luxury liner with a gymnasium, theatre, ballroom and two swimming pools before war made her a troopship.
- She struck two of her own navy's mines on 26 October 1942 with over 5,000 troops aboard, and all but two reached shore.
- The 200-metre wreck lies between 21 and 70 metres a short swim off the beach, and ten to fifteen dives barely cover her.
- The Lady and the Unicorn, a bas-relief from the first-class smoking room, still waits inside for divers.
Bombua Beach House, two kilometres from the wreck, plates lobster from local waters and poulet fish for the surface interval.
In Luganville, Lapita Lodge prepares traditional bunia or laplap for groups who ask ahead, the island's earth-oven cooking after a day inside a liner.
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