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The SS President Coolidge

We also dove on the wreck of the SS President Coolidge.  This 650 foot long 21,000-ton luxury liner spent the decade of the Thirties in service carrying passengers and cargo for the American President Lines (APL) between San Francisco and ports in the Far East. When the war came she was quickly converted to a troopship. In October of 1942 she left San Francisco with 4800 Army Infantry troops destined to relieve the battle weary First Marine Division at Guadalcanal. The ship also carried an enormous amount of military ordnance, and much needed medical supplies, including 519 pounds of quinine, the reserve supply of the entire South Pacific area. (Malaria ran rampant in the New Hebrides then and now and also in the Solomon’s.)

            When she arrived in Luganville, New Hebrides, the SS President Coolidge steamed right into a minefield laid by the Navy weeks earlier. She hit two mines and sustained massive holes. Surmising that the vessel would very soon sink, the Captain tried to run her aground. He partially succeeded and hit a reef. The crew and troops abandoned ship in less than two hours. Out of over 5,000 men, all but two escaped. The big liner heaved to port and sunk, her bow in 70 feet of water and her stern hung out in 240 feet of water.

            The Navy court-maritialed the Captain for disregarding instructions about how to enter the harbor without crossing the minefield. The Captain and all of his officers denied receiving instructions about the safe entry to the harbor. At the time, the President Coolidge was under a bareboat charter controlled by the War Shipping Administration. She was a merchant marine vessel with a civilian merchant marine crew. She was not a military vessel nor was she under the control of the Navy. Ultimately the Navy acquitted the Captain, obviously resolving the issue of whether he received information that the harbor was mined in his favor.

            The ship now rates as the second largest accessible ship for recreational scuba divers in the world. M-1 rifles, helmets, canteens, and artillery shells are strewn around the promenade deck. The ship gives one quite an eerie feeling.  She lays silently, her metal slowly yielding to the sea.  Her sailing days were full of glory; her sinking was the result of an egregious error. Today, however, the President Coolidge provides Vanuatu with one of its top tourist attractions. 

The President Coolidge as a luxury liner

The President Coolidge as she slowly began to roll to port.  

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