Divers are continuing their search for a ship that sank off the Thai coast - leaving a British woman and the cook both lost at sea.

Footage shows the specialist deep sea scuba divers from the government scouring the seabed around four miles from the idyllic Surin Islands archipelago in southern Thailand.

They believe that Millie Young, 57, from Brighton, and Samniang Chaichana, 67, were dragged down with the sinking ' Reggae Queen' liveaboard diving vessel as 12 other holidaymakers and four crew escaped.

However, they found no sign of the shipwreck despite going down 46 metres.

A spokesman from the country's Disaster Response Association said: 'Divers have carried out exhaustive scanning at a depth of 46 metres but it has yielded no results. The co-ordinates of where the holidaymakers were rescued may have been further from where the ship sank.'

Pichet Songtan, spokesman for Thai Maritime Enforcement Command Centre (Thai-MECC) Region 3 which is conducting the search, previously said that the two women are believed to be stuck in the ship wreckage.

The rescue chief said that a 'side-scan sonar' had been requested from the navy's battle fleet to find the co-ordinates where the ship sank, around 35 miles from the Thai mainland in Phang Nga province.

However, tracking the wreckage had been made more difficult by the strong wind and currents at the time of the sinking and in the following days.

Thai islands have become popular destinations for diving and snorkeling trips because of the clear water and diverse marine life. However, safety on the aging and unregulated vessels is often below standard and operators routinely ignore warnings, swayed instead by the pull of income from holidaymakers.

One of the worst maritime disasters involving tourists happened in 2018 when a boat carrying more than 120 Chinese tourists capsized and sank in a storm off the resort island of Phuket.

Thirty-three Chinese holidaymakers were killed in the accident.

Thailand avoided taking responsibility for its lack of safety and regulation, with the country's then deputy prime minister General Prawit Wongsuwan blaming the Chinese victims.

'This accident was entirely Chinese harming Chinese,' he said at the time.

'The boats were theirs, and they ignored warnings and insisted on sailing out to sea. We weren't responsible for that – they were. They have to resolve this themselves.'