USAT Liberty wreck

How did a 1918 cargo ship, torpedoed in 1942, slide into the sea at Tulamben in 1963?

The Liberty is a 125 m, 13,130-ton cargo ship launched on June 19, 1918 at the Federal Shipbuilding yard in Kearny, New Jersey. A US Army transport, it served during World War I, then in the merchant navy, before the army took it back in 1940. On January 11, 1942, loaded with rubber and railway parts, it was torpedoed by the Japanese submarine I-66 about ten miles southwest of the Lombok Strait. Taken in tow by two destroyers, the American Paul Jones and the Dutch Van Ghent, it took on too much water to reach a port: it was beached at Tulamben, where its cargo was salvaged.

It sat on the pebbles for twenty years. In 1963, the eruption of Mount Agung, the volcano that towers over the coast, shook the beach: the ship slid into the water and settled on the slope, about thirty meters from shore, where it still lies. The black pebbles on the beach come from the same eruption.

What can you see on the USAT Liberty wreck?

The wreck lies on its side, parallel to the beach, bow to the west and stern to the east. The shallow bow section starts at 5 m: spread plates, beams, a gutted structure where coral has covered everything. Toward the middle, between 12 and 20 m, the open holds and the remains of the superstructure shelter bumphead parrotfish at night and balls of trevally by day. The stern, the most intact part, drops to around 28 m with its rudder and a gun that is still recognizable. Everywhere, sea fans and soft corals have taken over the plates, to the point that you have to look for the metal.

When and how should you shore dive the Liberty?

Everything is done on foot. You gear up at the dive center, the porters carry the tanks to the beach, you walk in over pebbles that roll under your fins, and the wreck is right there after about twenty meters of finning. The first dive is at dawn, when the water is flat and the bumphead parrotfish leave the wreck; the second can go to the stern, the third to the Coral Garden or the Drop-off, a few hundred meters away; at night, the same nooks fill with shrimp, crabs and sleeping fish. With a hundred divers on some days, respecting the wreck matters: no leaning on the plates, no fin kicks in the holds, nothing taken up.

What else can you dive in Tulamben besides the Liberty?

Tulamben is more than the Liberty. Two hundred meters to the east, the Coral Garden, between 4 and 25 m, is a garden of hard corals and underwater statues, with clownfish, morays and ghost pipefish. Farther on, the Drop-off, a lava wall that plunges beyond 60 m, offers giant sea fans and passing pelagics. The village keeps you shore diving for three or four days, and the coast's dive centers add Amed, Seraya and, by boat, the sites of Jemeluk Bay.