Tourist on a boat that capsized in Egypt knew something was wrong when he woke up to fish swimming outside his window, report says

• A diving boat with 26 guests on board capsized off the coast of Hurghada, Egypt, last month.
• One passenger told The Telegraph he knew something was wrong when he woke up to fish outside his window.
• Everyone on the boat survived, but guests are planning to sue the boat's owners and tour company.

A tourist on a boat that sunk in Egypt last month said he knew something was wrong when he woke up to fish swimming outside his window, The Telegraph reported on Monday.

David Taylor, a 53-year-old architectural technician from Nottinghamshire, England, was among 26 guests on the Carlton Queen, a three-story boat that specializes in diving tours, that rapidly sunk off the coast of Hurghada, Egypt, on April 24.

Taylor, who was on board with his 21-year-old son, told the newspaper that he was sleeping in his cabin when he was suddenly thrown from his bunk bed.

"I knew something was wrong when I could see fish swimming outside my cabin room's window," Taylor told the Telegraph. "It was horrendous. When we realized we had capsized, we knew we were in trouble."

Taylor and his son started shouting for help, desperate for a way to get to the deck, he said.

"When we realized 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" Taylor added.

Luckily, the father and son were found by Fernando Suarez Meilla, an experienced diver, who had gone to his own cabin to get his camera when the yacht started taking on water.

Suarez Meilla told The Telegraph that he found them both in a state of panic, but that he remained calm and checked every cabin for other passengers before trying to find a way out.

"I didn't panic, I was just certain we needed to get out as soon as possible," he said.

The three men crawled through the hallway towards the emergency hatch but found that it was defective, Taylor said, prompting them to attempt to clamber out of the hold and onto the top deck instead.

But to get up there, Suarez Meilla had to give the father and son each a leg up, leaving himself with no means to get out.

"Fernando had helped us escape, and, this part still haunts me, he told us to leave and instructed us to go … It was so impossibly hard," Taylor said.

Suarez Meilla ended up escaping through an open hatch at the bottom of the boat. He told The Telegraph: "I jumped back into the submerged part of the boat and swam 15 meters below the water's surface, managing to escape that way."

All the guests and the yacht's nine crew survived. It is still unclear why the boat, which had only been refurbished last year, capsized on a day with calm conditions.

Several guests on the boat have since launched a GoFundMe to pay for equipment lost at sea, as well as a potential lawsuit against the boat's owners and tour company.

The GoFundMe claims that the holidaymakers were "threatened, lied to, and pressured to make false statements to the authorities" by the boat's owners.

"During the event, we had to deal with a lack of safety equipment on board, live rafts with malfunctions, flares that did not ignite an untrained crew, and a captain that was amongst the first to leave the boat solely focused on safe his own life," the GoFundMe adds.

In a statement to The Telegraph, the owner of the boat, tourism company, The Carlton Fleet, said the reports were "ill-founded."

"Needless to say, the safe return of all those on board bears testament to the crew members' effective management of the situation, which spared the lives of all passengers," the statement said.

The Carlton Fleet did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.