USAT Liberty

The Liberty is the world's most visited shipwreck largely because you can walk to her. Built in 1918 as a US wartime freighter, she was crossing the Lombok Strait in January 1942 with railway parts and rubber when the Japanese submarine I-166 torpedoed her. Two Allied destroyers took the flooding ship in tow, but she could not make Singaraja and was run ashore at Tulamben on Bali's northeast coast, where she was stripped and left rusting on the black sand for twenty years. In 1963 the catastrophic eruption of Mount Agung — whose cone rises directly behind the beach — shook her off the shore, and she slid to rest on the sand slope a stone's throw out, from snorkel depth to thirty meters. Six decades of warm, nutrient-rich water have done the rest: the broken hull is now Bali's densest reef, circled at dawn by a famous school of bumphead parrotfish. Guides, porters, and warungs in Tulamben village all live on her patronage.

How she sank: Torpedoed by Japanese submarine I-166 on 11 January 1942 and beached at Tulamben; tremors from the 1963 eruption of Mount Agung slid the hull below the waterline.

Condition: A ruin in the best sense — structural collapse has opened her to light and growth, and coral now holds much of her shape together.

Penetration: Limited. Openings in the collapsed hull allow short daylight swim-throughs; there is no deep interior left to penetrate. Entering any overhead environment requires specific training — a wreck certification at minimum, technical wreck training for full penetration.

Recommended certification: Open Water

Current: Mild · Visibility: 10–25 m

Marine life: Bumphead parrotfish at first light, resident great barracuda, garden eels on the slope, pygmy seahorses on the gorgonians, and clouds of anthias over every surface.

Hazards: Crowds at peak hours, surge on the shallow section in season, and stonefish and scorpionfish on the entry rocks.

The village community manages the site; fees and porter customs support local stewardship.

Nothing has been left to take — and nothing on the reef may be.