Irako

Everything starts at the deck, 28 to 35 metres down, with the seabed another eight or so below it on a ship that sits almost upright. Outside there is plenty to swim along: the bow, a gun platform near it that has lost its gun, and a thick mast with a crow's nest wrapped in large barrel sponges. A big shoal of jacks pours down both sides of the hull and hangs in the water above the deck. Bottom times are short at these depths1.

The interior is the other dive. Divers describe entering through the wheelhouse, past the ship's wheel and into a large hold, where the ship becomes a maze of corridors and gangways with doorways, machinery and ladders leading off in several directions. A bridge hit by bombs is the one part of her that is not largely intact. Deeper inside the fittings are still there: a galley with big rice cauldrons and many sinks, a machine shop with pillar drills and loose wiring, intact catwalks, and a bicycle leaning against a cabin wall, in one account two of them in a single room. A massive wheel once used to bring ammunition up to the gun platform is still in place.

Divers who have worked through the whole Coron fleet say she takes many dives to learn.

Inside, the Irako is still the belly of a working supply ship: a galley built to feed a fleet, a workshop with its drills in place, and a cabin where a bicycle still leans against the wall. The fittings are the reason people come back, and the reason this wreck has a following among those with the training to look.

She was built for provisioning, not for war, and it shows in the details. A tall funnel is a sign of coal-fired boilers fitted against an expected oil shortage, and it was reportedly made high so that soot would not settle on the food. Her holds carried refrigeration and her workshops included confectionery, which is an unusual set of fittings to meet on a wreck.

Depth is the price of admission. At 28 metres the deck is already past the Open Water limit, and divers who rate her highly are mostly the ones who came back for a second and third visit.

She was ordered as a Special Service Ship under the third 1937 supplementary programme and fitted with powerful refrigeration installations and workshops, among them confectionery. Kawasaki laid her down at Kobe on 30 May 1940 as transport No. 74; she was launched on 14 February 1941 and completed on 5 December 19412. Navy records style her IJN Irako, a commissioned vessel of the Imperial Japanese Navy.

On 22 September 1944 she left Manila for Coron Bay in a convoy and on the 23rd anchored between Tangat and Lusong Island. On 24 September, 96 Hellcats and 24 Helldivers of Task Group 38.3 attacked the anchorage. Direct bomb hits fell on her midship section, her bridge and superstructure caught fire, and she began to sink by the bow. She was beached, then slipped into the sea and sank at the mouth of Coron Bay2. She is a wartime grave and a protected site, and divers treat her that way.

Bomb damage squeezed some decks to about 1.5 m of headroom, and divers describe multi-room routes with points of full darkness. Wreck training comes before the interior, with a primary light and a backup, and one diver singles her out as the Coron wreck where silt is easily kicked up, so buoyancy and trim are settled before the doorway, not inside it. Operators differ in whom they will take inside, and divers have reported being offered penetrations beyond their training, so agree the route and limits at the surface and be ready to decline an entry offered underwater.

Scorpionfish and lionfish are reported on the ledges, so keep clear of the metal. She passed fifty years under water in 1994, which makes everything on and in the hull the property of the State: nothing is removed, and exploring the site needs written authority from the National Museum with its representatives supervising3.

Plan as if no recompression chamber is on hand in Coron. The nearest one reported working is at Ospital ng Palawan in Puerto Princesa, and no airline flies from Busuanga to Puerto Princesa directly; the scheduled route goes through Manila. Insurance that pays for hyperbaric treatment and evacuation matters on a wreck dived at these depths.

On a first dive, keep to the outside: the deck, mast and bow at 28 to 35 m show you the light and the visibility before any interior is on the table.