"They can detect currents in the sea which humans can't," said dog instructor Miguel Sanchez. The dogs' endurance and strength surpass those of most humans. Newfoundland dogs are able to swim for three nautical miles (5.6 km) and tow life rafts weighing up to three metric tons or carrying six people, while Labradors can drag 2.4 tons and use their acute sense of smell to locate missing people.
Rescue dogs are a common sight on Italy’s beaches—and they even learn how to leap out of helicopters to save lives, per the organization’s website. Around 300 SICS dogs and their human handlers patrol roughly 30 Italian beaches, reported CNN’s Nicola Ruotolo and Amy Woodyatt in 2021. Three SICS dogs—Eros, Mya and Mira—made headlines that year when they helped bring a group of 14 swimmers safely to shore amid high winds at a beach in Sperlonga.
Stories of their life saving prowess are the stuff of legend. Perhaps the most famous is the rescue of the crew and passengers of The Despatch (sometimes spelled Dispatch), a brig full of Irish immigrants bound from Londonderry to Quebec which was shipwrecked off the coast of Isle aux Mort, Newfoundland in 1828. A 17-year-old Canadian girl Ann Harvey, her 12-year-old brother, father George, and a Newfie called Hairy Man, are credited with using their fishing boat to help rescue more than 160 men, women and children from the shipwrecked vessel.
"The whole of these unfortunate people, we learn, were in comfortable circumstances, one of whom, a Scotchman, had property to the amount of £500 on board, and he is now left with a family of 13 children, entirely destitute; indeed all that any of them have saved are a few clothes which were washed on shore," the Acadian Recorder reported.
To honour their heroic efforts, the Governor of Newfoundland, Sir Thomas Cochrane, gave George Harvey £100 sterling and a gold medal. A Newfie even reportedly rescued Napoleon Bonaparte when, during his escape from the Isle of Elba in 1815, he fell overboard in rough seas, according to Tiffin Shewmake’s Canine Courage. So when Ferruccio saw Mas save his daughter from drowning, he was witnessing a Newfie doing what the breed had done countless times before: proving itself to be a natural water rescue dog.
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