A British tourist said he "knew something was wrong when he saw fish swimming outside his cabin's room window", as he recalls the horrific moment he realised the vessel he was on had capsized. David Taylor, 53, was on board a holiday yacht in the Red Sea when disaster struck.
According to The Telegraph, Mr Taylor was first asleep in his cabin on the Carlton Queen, a Red Sea holiday diving boat, and woke with a thud, having been thrown from his bunk bed.
The Carlton Queen Yacht, a 45-metre liveaboard, sank on April 25 after rolling onto its side off the coast of Hurghada in Egypt. Within just one hour, it had sunk to the bottom of the sea, leaving passengers petrified.
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Mr Taylor said: "We were shouting for help and heard crashing above us and had this deep-seated feeling of dread that something terrible was happening. When we realised we couldn't escape by the stairwell and no one had come to help us, it felt awful. I had lost the plot, I felt I couldn't protect my son and I started to panic."
The holiday-maker and his son Christian, 21, have praised the actions of a fellow passenger for rescuing them in their moment of fear. Fernando Suarez Meilla, a 60-year-old administrator in the EU parliament in Brussels, guided father and son to safety after they had become disoriented as the ship went down.
Mr Suarez Meilla discovered the handle on an emergency hatch was broken so he eventually found a way out through an open hatch at the bottom of the boat after all other routes were impossible to escape from, and helped save the family in need.
Reports suggested the boat, built in 2002 and launched in 2022 after refurbishment was tilting or "listing" to one side from the moment the guests boarded, gradually getting worse. Christian Hanson, a diver from the UK also on the sinking ship said he noticed upon boarding that the boat was listing by "a couple of degrees".
Holiday-makers were on the second day of a week-long dive holiday in the Abu Nahas reef area which is famous for shipwreck diving. Incredibly, all 26 guests, 15 of them British, survived the terrifying ordeal along with the ship's nine crew. After the captain put out a distress call, guests escaped in the life-rafts, and the Rigid Inflatable Boats (RIBs) and nearby boats helped rush guests to safety.
Speaking to Divernet, the Carlton Queen Red Sea said they would not comment on the cause of the accident until the investigation was over. They did praise the "crew members" for effective management of the situation, which spared the lives of all passengers. In a statement, they said they were working with the Egyptian authorities to determine the cause of the accident.
Meanwhile, divers have organised a fundraiser Linkto replace lost possessions, as well as medical and legal expenses.