Many of the world's navies including the Japanese built a series of small, fast, lightly armoured gunboats which came under the collective heading of "submarine chasers". Their soul purpose was to defend harbours, docks and river estuaries etc. from attack by submarine and they were well armed with depth charges and smaller calibre guns. Both this wreck and the Lusong Gunboat close by are of this type and you can see a photograph of a construction kit model of a very similar American vessel to the right.

This is the deeper wreck of the two and she lies close to the shore behind Tangat Island almost out of the water on the beach at her bows. It is perfectly possible to snorkel the wreck and indeed we spent a good half hour in the water with the camera after our dive on her dropping food leftovers to attract the fish. Although her bow is very shallow she is at such a steep angle in the water that her stern is much deeper at around 15 metres. She is ideal as a shallow second dive or for late on in a diving trip when a flight the following day precludes much on-gassing.

There is a lot of life on the wreck including some enormous anemones with attendant anemone fish, and a common site are batfish at the cleaning stations patiently waiting for their turn. Due to the shallow depths on this wreck it presents awesome possibilities for photography, especially where the sunlight is at it's most intense and the colours of the subjects really do stand out.

Whilst undoubtedly a great dive the East Tangat Gunboat is not our personal favourite but still well worth a visit.