Captain Oram added that when he reached the surface he felt entirely hopeful of others being able to escape, as his own escape had presented no difficulty.
In his opinion, the three men drowned in the escape chamber must have operated the apparatus incorrectly.
Asked to suggest the reason why no further men escaped, Captain Oram said: "I can only suppose that some major disaster occurred to the men inside the submarine."
Asked about the possibility of cutting a hole in the stern, the Captain declared that to cut a hole in the after-compartment was highly dangerous, as the compartment was only just showing above water and the submarine was artificially held up by a single wire.
In the course of his introductory statement, the Attorney-General, Sir Donald Somervell, gave a connected story of the events leading up to the grounding of the submarine's bow in Liverpool Bay on June 1 and of the'rescue efforts from early on June 2 until they were abandoned on the night of June 3.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.