Unassuming volunteers whohaveour backs at sea

How many of us take the sea for granted? How often do you really look at it, get into it, feel its power? For those with family or friends who live well inland we are often surprised that the first thing they want to do when they visit is head for the beach and ‘a walk by the sea’.

Many of us rarely give the water a second thought – as long as we know roughly where it is so we can get our bearings – we might not see it for months, especially during the winter.

Not only do we take the sea for granted but also those who save the lives of those who get into difficulties on it – the Royal National Lifeboat Institution.

Like any of the emergency services we rarely give them a second thought… until we need them, often at the most stressful moments of our lives.

And so it is with the volunteers – no, they’re not paid to put their lives in great jeopardy for our benefit – at Portsmouth Lifeboat Station.

Now one of those former volunteers has been given perhaps the highest honour the RNLI can bestow, a lifeboat named after him.

We would call him a hero and we did in The News back in the day, as most people would.

But Dennis Faro was, like most of the RNLI’s volunteers, a selfeffacing man even when he was risking his own life and pulling others out of storm-tossed seas so they could live to sail another day.

Dennis’s family is rightly glowing with pride that the D-Class lifeboat The Dennis Faro is now taking to the water in and around the Solent to save lives almost 50 years after Dennis’s most heroic rescues.

Today we salute Dennis and all those like him who give of their time so freely that we might know they have got our backs.

Dennis became Portsmouth’s most decorated RNLI rescuer by risking his life countless times to save others at sea, and now he’s been immortalised.