TThhee SSoouutthh PPaacciiffiicc’’ss GGrreeaatteesstt SShhiippwwrreecckk -- SSSS PPrreessiiddeenntt CCoooolliiddggee Michael McFadyen A Short History of the SS President Coolidge This edition: First Edition – November 2003 Copyright Michael McFadyen 46 Gannon Street TEMPE NSW 2044 AUSTRALIA Internet Web Site: members.ozemail.com.au/~diving Email Address:
[email protected] Comments, corrections and suggestions welcome! Cover Photo: MV Malabar aground on Long Bay, 1931 TThhee SSoouutthh PPaacciiffiicc’’ss GGrreeaatteesstt SShhiippwwrreecckk -- SSSS PPrreessiiddeenntt CCoooolliiddggee A short history of the Dollar Steamship Line, Newport News Shipbuilding Drydock Company, American President Line and the SS President Coolidge. Michael McFadyen A Short History of the SS President Coolidge Page i Foreword For more than 15 years I have dived a considerable number of the shipwrecks of the Pacific Ocean. Apart from the shipwrecks in my home State of New South Wales, the first wreck that I dived in the Pacific was the SS President Coolidge. My interest in this ship led me to find out more about its history and how it came to be sunk. A lot of the information that was available in dive publications and on film was, I soon discovered, incorrect. After amassing a great deal of information, I decided to share my knowledge, so I wrote articles for DIVE Log Australasia about the ship. In the mid-1990s, with the expansion of the use of the World Wide Web, I set up my own Web Site (Michael McFadyen’s Scuba Diving – members.ozemail.com.au/~diving) and published the articles there. Since my first visit to dive the Coolidge in 1991, I have returned to Espiritu Santo in 1995, 1999, 2000, and 2002 and have done in excess of 60 dives there.