SS President Coolidge

The SS President Coolidge was completed in 1931 as a luxury ocean liner for the Dollar Steamship Lines, equipped with two salt-water swimming pools, a gymnasium, a beauty salon, and a soda fountain, among the most advanced passenger facilities of its era, before being converted to a troopship in early 1942 and painted haze grey as it joined the Allied war effort in the South West Pacific.

On 26 October 1942, the heavily laden Coolidge entered Espiritu Santo harbour without knowing the precise location of the Allied minefield that protected it, struck two mines in quick succession near the engine room and stern, and sank within approximately ninety minutes with the loss of two lives among the 5,340 troops and crew aboard, an extraordinary survival rate attributed to Captain Henry Nelson's decision to beach the ship and the orderly discipline of the evacuation.

The wreck rests on its port side in depths ranging from 21 metres at the bow to 73 metres at the stern, with a gradual downward slope that requires careful depth monitoring during penetration dives, and has been largely intact since the 1983 Vanuatu government declaration prohibiting salvage operations, preserving a remarkably complete snapshot of both a luxury pre-war liner and a wartime troopship.

Divers entering through the bow at approximately 21 metres encounter the cargo holds now filled with the accumulated debris of wartime supply: military vehicles including Jeeps and trucks, steel helmets, munitions, and personal effects that have become encrusted with coral and colonised by reef fish, sea turtles, and moray eels that use the wreck as a habitat.

The engines, turbo-generators, and propulsion motors occupy the central section of the wreck and are accessible to experienced divers with appropriate training, while the stern section at maximum depth of 73 metres requires technical diving certification and careful decompression planning, making the Coolidge suitable for a range of diving abilities from recreational open-water divers exploring the bow to technical divers penetrating the engine room.

Since 1983 the wreck has been legally protected under Vanuatu law, and no salvage or recovery of artefacts is permitted, a policy that has kept the site remarkably intact compared to other accessible shipwrecks of comparable size and historical significance.

The wreck has two formally recognised dive sites associated with it: the main site accessed from the beach at the USS Coolidge landing, and the deeper stern section accessed by boat from Luganville, with operators typically combining both in a two-tank dive day.

One of the largest and most accessible shipwrecks in the world, combining the scale of a full-sized ocean liner with depths suitable for recreational divers at the bow.

The site offers two distinct experiences in one dive: the preserved luxury fittings of a 1930s ocean liner and the military cargo of a WWII troopship.

Legal protection since 1983 has preserved the wreck in exceptional condition, with no salvage permitted under Vanuatu law.