15:32.263S 167:10.779E

 

In late 1942 the requisitioned cruise liner the SS President Coolidge, with 5000 American soldiers onboard, hit two mines on the way in to Luganville here in Vanuatu.   The US Navy at the time had some decidedly odd ideas about secrecy and had not warned the Captain that they had laid a minefield across the main channel into the port.  As a result the ship ploughed straight in to the midst of the danger zone, was holed and started sinking.  Believe it or not this was the second vessel they managed to sink in this way having already accounted for the USS Tucker (a destroyer) in the same way just 6 months earlier.  The Captain of the Coolidge, realising the severity of the situation drove the ship straight onto the reef at the side of the channel where all but two of the passengers and crew managed to escape ashore in the 90 minutes before the ship rolled over and sank.

 

Fifty-five years later the wreck is still lying on her side where she settled just off the reef and is the largest accessible wreck in the world.  We have spent the last week doing some extraordinary dives onto and into her.  This has involved some really exciting stuff, including a number of dives right inside the depths of the hull which was awesome......dark, confined and really rather scary!  Think of "The Poseidon Adventure" with the lights out!  The ship remains full of lots of the equipment that was accompanying the soldiers with weapons, helmets, gasmasks and the like, scattered everywhere.  Even now the medical supplies (with some drugs still sealed in their little glass phials) litter the old Doctor's surgery.  Despite much being salvaged (or pinched) over the years there is lots of ammunition lying around everything from 9mm, through .50 and even 105mm.  In the cargo holds there are Willys jeeps, artillery, and big GM trucks all stacked like discarded toys where they fell as
the ship rolled onto its side. One dive took us right down into the engine room which at 47m is a long way down and a long way inside!  We visited the huge turbines and saw all the gauges with the engine controls (telegraphs) still set to "Finish with Engines" as they were left when she was going down.  I have to point out that Lucy showed a great deal more interest in the engine room of the Coolidge than she has ever shown in the Savoir Vivre's trusty diesel.

 

Before anyone panics we have not just been poking around by ourselves in there.  We been diving with a great Aussie guide who
knows his way around really well which is reassuring as you could get very lost.  I did have one Winnie the Pooh moment trying to fit through
an opening which was a little too small for my slender frame!  Fortunately there was another way around so I lived to tell the tale!  Finally to end the week we did the deep one.......right down to the stern where you can clearly read the ships name embossed around her hull.  At 67m underwater, this is way deeper than either of us has ever been before and probably ever will again! 

 

For a country that most people have never heard of Vanuatu has been full of wonderful surprises, the people, the culture, the wildlife and this week for us, has again been amongst the highlights of our trip.

 

We have got some interesting pictures but they will have to wait until we get to a decent internet link.