He was a Hampshire greengrocer who took a Lively Lady on a 28,000-mile voyage around the world and sailed into the hearts of the nation.

It was 47 years ago, back in 1968, that the 59-year-old solo yachtsman Alex Rose returned, suntanned and weather-beaten, to the Solent and a hero’s welcome after 11 months and 19 days at sea.

His epic voyage so gripped the country and his feat of endurance was so admired that just 24 hours after he returned home, Downing Street announced that the Queen had conferred a knighthood on the Hampshire sailor.

The quiet gentleman of the sea had planned his voyage ever since he was a boy when he loved to listen to the tales of ocean-going adventurers battling with storms and roaring waves.

Throughout the Second World War, Sir Alec served in the Royal Navy on convoy escorts in the Mediterranean, Atlantic and Arctic and then, some time after being demobbed, he bought an ex-German ship’s lifeboat from a Southampton yard and spent the next five years converting it into a cruising yacht.

In 1961 he moved to Southsea and opened his greengrocer shop but the call of the sea soon saw him preparing for a single-handed transatlantic race in 1964.

He needed a different craft for the competition and after looking around he discovered the 36ft, yawl-rigged, nine-ton Lively Lady.

It was with this vessel that Sir Alec, pictured below, first came to national prominence as a lone sailor when he finished fourth in the race behind Sir Francis Chichester.

Daily Echo:

Two years later Sir Alec faced three frustrating false starts to his global journey, which he originally wanted to undertake as a sailing duel between himself and Sir Francis, and was forced to delay it for a year.

In July 1967 he finally set off from Portsmouth on his voyage of a lifetime and 155 days later he arrived in Melbourne, Australia, to a message of congratulations from the Queen.

Four weeks later he was back at the helm and battling against heavy seas. Fears for his safety grew as day after day nothing was heard from him and even long-range RAF aircraft failed to make any contact.

But then a radio operator in Ireland picked up the message: “This is Lively Lady calling.”

The country breathed a sigh of relief and a few days later thousands lined the waterfront to welcome back Sir Alec.

He was feted everywhere he went, he became a life governor of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, a Freeman of Portsmouth, and the House of Commons congratulated him on his “courageous and seamanlike voyage”.

In his later years he lived quietly in a 200-year-old cottage a mile from the seafront in Hampshire.

Sir Alec died at the age of 82 in January 1991 but Lively Lady’s work continued by providing adventure training for local youngsters.