A MISSING teenager off the coast of Southend managed to swim ashore, before borrowing a phone to send a Snapchat message confirming he was safe.

Southend's Coastguard and RNLI teams launched a huge rescue mission for the 18-year-old, who hadn't been seen off the shoreline yesterday for almost an hour, and had been drinking.

His mobile phone had been left at the shoreline.

His friends had alerted the coastguard authorities, who then sent lifeboats from Southend Pier.

A coastguard helicopter was also seen overheard in the search.

However a Snapchat message was then received on one of his friends phone, from what was believed to be from the missing teenager.

It then emerged how he had managed to get ashore "outside the area", before borrowing a phone to use Snapchat to alert friends he was safe.

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A spokesman from Southend Coastguard, said: "We were tasked at 17.20pm to reports of a missing 18-year0old male in the water who had not returned to shore and had not been seen for approx 50 minutes, was not a strong swimmer and had been drinking.

"Once further details were established from his friends, the Atlantic lifeboat was also launched from the end of Southend Pier and Coastguard Rescue Helicopter 163 was also tasked to conduct a search pattern from the air of the locale.

"Further searches were also conducted along the shoreline by Southend Coastguard officers.

"While one of our Southend Coastguard officers remained with thefirst informants, a Snapchat message was received by a friends phone from what we believed to be the missing person.

"Upon further interrogation of the messages, whilst we continued with the searches, a location of the missing person was established so friends and coastguard officers were able to track down the missing male who was confirmed to be the person we were searching for.

"They had somehow made it to shore at a different location not being local to the area, so then borrowed a member of the publics phone to send a Snapchat message of their location which confirmed they were safely ashore.

"Coastguard officers were able to then confirm that they were all ok and not in need of any further help, so all search parties (land, sea & air) were then stood down."