A man has drowned attempting to propose to his girlfriend underwater during their “once-in-a-lifetime” holiday.

Steven Weber dived into the ocean to pop the question to Kenesha Antoine through the window of their submerged cabin in Tanzania.

Video footage shows Mr Weber pressing a piece of paper against the glass with the message: “Will you please be my wife?”

He then opened a ring box before swimming up out of view towards the surface.

Ms Antoine, from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, posted the film on Facebook on Friday morning with her response: ”Yes! Yes! Yes!”

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However a few hours later she revealed that he “never emerged from those depths” to hear her answer.

“We never got to embrace and celebrate the beginning of the rest of our lives together, as the best day of our lives turned into the worst, in the cruellest twist of fate imaginable,” she wrote.

“I will try to take solace in the fact that we enjoyed the most amazing bucket list experiences these past few days, and that we both were so happy and absolutely giddy with excitement in our final moments together.”

Ms Antoine, a lawyer, added: “You were a bright light to everyone you encountered. You never met a stranger, and you brought so much joy to so many people. You were kind, compassionate, you regularly made me cry with laughter, and you showered me with a love like none I’d ever experienced.”

She also wrote that a few days earlier he had described the holiday as a “once in a once-in-a-lifetime thing that people want to experience before they die”.

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“I will find you and marry you in the next lifetime, and the next, and the next, and the next,” added Ms Antoine. ”I love you so much, and I always will.”

The couple were staying at a resort on Pemba Island off the coast of East Africa.

An official at the US Department of State said they were aware of the death of a US citizen in Tanzania.