A teenager helped rescue a swimmer on Friday afternoon as he had a panic attack while snorkeling at Church Bay, Southampton.

Peter Kyle, 19, who rents snorkel equipment from a stand on the beach, described how he was serving customers when he heard people on the beach shouting “Help!” and pointing out to sea.

About thirty feet out, he said, a man was being held up above the water by his two young daughters, who were aged four and six.

“I swam out with another guy who was on the beach and we both dragged him in.”

He said the man, who was in his late 30s but could not be contacted, was “fine” once he got to the beach and was able to rest.

“I think he banged his leg on the rock and was just started to get short of breath. He would have drowned any minute if we hadn't got out there. It was exhilarating and I guess fulfilling to have done it. I'm glad he was all right.

“But it's not as if it hasn't happened before.”

Mr. Kyle said, while he was not trained to be a lifeguard, such incidents have happened occasionally in the weeks he has been working at the stand, usually after snorkelers got stung by jellyfish such as the Portuguese Man-of-War.

He said when swimmers got stung they had to be sprayed with vinegar and the affected area has to be covered in shaving foam, which then has to be scraped off with wooden spatulas.

“It stings and burns for a while. If it's serious then usually people end up having panic attacks and it's good to get them into shore before they do that. We have stuff here which we can use to treat people for that.

“Last month, we were having a serious sting down here almost every week.”

And snorkel stand entrepreneur Boyd Vallis said: “We take it for granted that if someone has a problem we'll just go out there and get them. We're there to provide a service.”

But he said he and his staff would not be on hand on Sundays and hoped that when passengers from the Carnival mega-ship, which stops periodically in Dockyard, would be okay without supervision.