RNLI volunteer has marriage proposal interrupted after Christmas Day callout
A volunteer from UK charity the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) had to rush away from his partner just as she was trying on the engagement ring he’d just presented to her, as his pager sounded on Christmas Day.
Steve Elliott, a volunteer at Sheerness RNLI Lifeboat Station on the Isle of Sheppey in North Kent, was first paged at 10.40am on 25 December 2024 following concerns for a person’s welfare, just as he asked his partner Alla to be his wife.
Without hesitation, Elliott and the rest of the crew dropped everything and made their way to the lifeboat station. The inshore lifeboat was tasked initially, and an hour later, when the pager sounded again to the same shout, the station’s all-weather lifeboat, with Elliott onboard, launched.
The crews returned to the boathouse at 3.30pm, however the pagers sounded again at 6.59pm to another incident, before the pager sounded a fourth and final time at 11.34pm.
Thankfully Alla, a Ukrainian refugee who moved to Sheppey three years ago, was able to say yes to the proposal.
Elliott, from Rushenden, said: “It is the first Christmas since my dad passed away, so we had my mum here along with her two dogs and Alla’s cat, which we only managed to get out of Ukraine three weeks ago.
“Alla and my mum were amazingly patient. People don’t realise that it’s the families and partners of the lifeboat crews that are the real heroes in the RNLI.
“Going afloat is easy but to wait at home just wondering what’s going on is the hard part, I don’t think I could do that job.”
Coxswain Clive Hancock said: “It was a great effort by the three crew on the inshore lifeboat in the cold conditions and similar for the six on the all-weather lifeboats.”
The RNLI marked its 200th anniversary in 2024 and released new figures showing its volunteer lifeboat crews and lifeguards have saved 146,277 lives in the UK and Ireland during its two centuries of lifesaving — an average of two lives saved every day for 200 years.
The post RNLI volunteer has marriage proposal interrupted after Christmas Day callout appeared first on Marine Industry News.
