LONDON -- Two teenage children were found dead Wednesday on board a ferry traveling from Britain to Ireland, apparently asphyxiated by fumes from the ship's toilet system, authorities said.
The children, Catherine Tomlins, 15, and her brother James, 13, were found dead around 8 a.m. on board the Swansea-to-Cork ferry after their parents tried to enter their locked cabin, Irish police said.
One of the children was dead by the time their parents, who had been staying in an adjacent cabin with a younger sibling, were able to break into the room, and the other child could not be revived, police said.
Passengers on board the seven-deck Celtic Pride ferry reported smelling sewage beforehand, and ferry officials said the children appeared to have been suffocated by fumes accumulating in their cabin from the ship's septic system.
But the childrens' father, Gary Tomlins, who was returning from a family vacation, told the British Broadcasting Corp. he expected a full investigation of the matter.
'I feel that that should never happen again,' Tomlins told the BBC, 'and there needs to be a full investigation of the matter.
'I'm not feeling anything right now -- I'm just numb at the shock of just finding my two children dead,' he said.
