London - A Labrador has survived a 16-kilometre, six-hour swim off the English south coast to return exhausted to his owner after falling off his boat.

Todd, a two-year-old Labrador, had swum from Cowes on the Isle of Wight across the Solent, his owner Peter Loizou said on Tuesday.

The dog then swam up the tidal stretch of a river to make land at Beaulieu in the New Forest, where he was found by passer-by.

Police used scanning equipment to detect a chip in Todd's neck and returned him to Loizou some 10 hours after he had fallen overboard.

Loizou spent four hours frantically searching the waters of the Solent before giving up and returning to his home in Winsor, near Cadnam on the outskirts of the forest, where Todd arrived shortly afterwards. - Sapa-DPA