Million Dollar Point

When the Pacific war ended, Espiritu Santo held one of the largest American bases on earth, and shipping mountains of used equipment home made no economic sense. The story told on Santo — supported by what lies on the seabed — is that the US offered the lot to the Anglo-French authorities at a token price, the local administration stalled in the expectation of getting it free, and the Americans answered by building a ramp and driving the inventory into the sea: bulldozers, six-wheeled trucks, jeeps, cranes, forklifts, sheet steel, engines, and crate upon crate of stores, with Coca-Cola bottles beyond counting. The name records the estimated value of what went over. Today the point is a shore dive down a slope of interlocked machinery, axles and tracks fused by coral into a single sardonic monument to logistics. Two later shipwrecks lie among the debris, casualties of salvage attempts on the very metal being thrown away.

How she sank: US forces deliberately dumped surplus equipment into the sea at the end of the war after disposal negotiations failed.

Condition: A rust garden in slow collapse; recognizable machines emerge and disappear as the pile settles and storms rearrange the shallows.

Penetration: None. There is no hull to enter — only unstable stacked machinery, and wriggling into gaps between forty-ton machines is how divers get hurt.

Recommended certification: Open Water

Current: Mild · Visibility: 5–15 m

Marine life: Corals colonize axles and cab frames, octopus den in engine blocks, lionfish and sweepers fill the truck beds, and reef fish swarm the shallows where snorkelers drift.

Hazards: Sharp, unstable metal throughout; surge in the shallows; broken glass near the old bottle dumps.

Protected alongside the Coolidge under Vanuatu's wreck-site rules; local fees apply at the shore entry.

Bottles and brass have walked away for decades — the site is protected now, so leave every piece in the pile.