Rescued Channel swimmer 'lucky to be alive'

Mike Oram said the swimmer was "very cold and very tired"

A solo swimmer who spent eight hours at sea trying to cross the English Channel is "lucky to be alive", says the man who rescued him.

Mike Oram said the man "would be dead now" had his crew not spotted him at about 20:00 BST on Monday.

A search operation began at about 12:00 after the coastguard was told a man was trying to swim to Calais unescorted.

"He was on his way trying to struggle back to England," said Mr Oram, who captains a Channel swimming pilot boat.

He said the swimmer was "very cold and very tired" and had claimed to have "swum for eight hours and been a third of the way across".

Mr Oram, who was escorting another swimmer's organised attempt to cross the Channel from Shakespeare Beach at the time, said he was "very lucky" they happened to be passing.

The swimmer was rescued by Mike Oram and his crew on board Gallivant

"If we hadn't left the beach with all our lights on, he would be dead now," he said. "Nobody else would have been in that area to pick him up."

After pulling the man from the water, the crew "wrapped him up in blankets, gave him a warm drink and waited for the lifeboat to come and take him away".

The swimmer was "semi-comatose" and seemed "a bit embarrassed," Mr Oram said.

"The last thing he did when he got off the boat was threaten to come back next year and swim with us," he added. "I doubt if he'll want to get in the water that quick again."

Helicopters

It is very uncommon for swimmers to attempt to cross the Channel without support, he said.

"The last one was in 1954, when a guy tried to do it towing a rubber tyre and was never seen again," said Mr Oram, who founded the Channel Swimming & Piloting Federation in 1998.

A large search and rescue effort - involving two coastguard helicopters and two RNLI lifeboat crews - was launched after a friend of the man told the coastguard that he was trying to swim unaccompanied from Dover to Calais.

He was picked up from Mr Oram's boat by the RNLI Dungeness lifeboat and found to be "cold and tired but otherwise well," the coastguard said.