NSRI Heritage: How Patti Price Founded South Africa's Sea Rescue Service - IOL

An early SAISRS (South African Inshore Rescue Service) inflatable rescue boat in action.

As a child, Patti Price was rescued from a wrecked ship in the English Channel. Years later, when 17 people died after three fishing boats sank off Stilbaai in 1966, the Simon’s Town teacher began writing letters.

She wanted South Africa to have a dedicated sea rescue service, and she knew what it meant to need one.

The organisation now known as the National Sea Rescue Institute (NSRI) was established thanks to Patti Price's efforts, with NSRI volunteers rescuing 1,548 people in 2025.

This Heritage Day, as the institute approaches its 60th anniversary in 2027, its history tells a story of South Africans giving their time, skills and money to help people in trouble on the water.

For Price, the Royal National Lifeboat Institution had rescued her as a child, and she believed a similar service was needed here. The 1966 Stilbaai disaster prompted her appeal. Her letter-writing campaign drew support from the Society of Master Mariners of South Africa, which established the South African Inshore Rescue Service in 1967.

It was soon renamed the National Sea Rescue Institute. Nearly six decades later, the work she helped set in motion continues along the coast and on dams, rivers, and other inland waters.

NSRI chief executive officer Mike Vonk said the organisation’s history belonged to the people who had sustained it. “Heritage is not only what we inherit from those who came before us. It is also what we choose to carry forward,” Vonk said. 

“The NSRI’s story belongs to the thousands of volunteers who have answered calls for help, the donors who have made our work possible and the communities that continue to stand behind us,” Vonk said.

The official record of the first rescue craft from the organisation that later became the NSRI, featuring the SAISRS inflatable boat that entered service in January 1967.

According to the NSRI, 1,431 operational volunteers served at 43 active rescue stations across eight provinces in 2025. They responded to 1,069 operations and rescued 1,548 people.

The organisation’s responsibilities have also grown since Price’s campaign. Alongside search and rescue missions, its work now includes teaching water safety and survival swimming, providing lifeguards and placing rescue equipment where members of the public can reach it.

Last year, its water safety education and survival swimming programmes reached more than 924,000 people across all nine provinces. Its lifeguards carried out 531 rescues.

The NSRI says its Pink Rescue Buoys have helped save more than 260 lives since the programme began in late 2017.

These efforts extend its work to the moments before an emergency, helping people recognise dangers in the water and learn skills that could keep them alive.

Heritage Day on Thursday, September 24, also coincides with World Maritime Day, which recognises the maritime sector and the people who keep it operating safely.

The NSRI's work includes rescue operations and partnerships across South Africa’s maritime community. However, keeping these services running still depends heavily on public support.

More than 97% of the organisation’s funding comes from private individuals and companies, according to the institute.

The appeals that began with Price’s letters remain part of its work today, with community fundraising helping to sustain the service as it prepares to enter its seventh decade in 2027. 

Vonk said people from different communities, professions and backgrounds had spent almost 60 years working towards the shared purpose of saving lives.

“The spirit of volunteerism and care for one another is an important part of our national heritage,” Vonk said.

From its 1967 origins with a single inflatable boat, the National Sea Rescue Institute (NSRI) now operates advanced vessels like the Spirit of Ubuntu (Rescue 8). Sustained by public donations, today's fleet carries forward a nearly 60-year national heritage of sea rescue operations.

This Heritage Day, the NSRI is asking South Africans to help sustain its vital work, work that one teacher, Patti Price, a rescue survivor herself, campaigned so tirelessly to make possible.IOL