RNLI volunteer paged after Christmas proposal

RNLI volunteer Steve Elliott was paged on Christmas Day just after proposing to partner Alla Renbenko

An RNLI volunteer says he had to rush away minutes after proposing to his partner on Christmas Day when he was called out to an incident at sea.

Steve Elliott, a volunteer at Sheerness RNLI lifeboat station, was first paged at 10:40 GMT following concerns for a person's welfare. He had just asked his partner Alla Renbenko to be his wife.

Mr Elliott's pager went off a further three times over the course of Christmas Day.

"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," he said.

Mr Elliott paid tribute to his now fiancee, a Ukrainian refugee who moved to Sheppey three years ago, for being so patient as he attended the call-outs across the day.

"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," he said.

Mr Elliott, from Rushenden, added: "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."