She said: "Dennis had had the camera strung around his neck because he didn't want to drop the second one.

"Everything was fine until he sat down on a lounger on deck and took it off his neck. Somebody spotted the ships' cats on the upper deck and the two of us jumped up and that was it.

"It literally bounced off his lap, across the deck and into the water with hardly a splash and it was gone.

"We were devastated. We'd lost every photograph we had and some of them were destined to be lolcats classics."