Lee, who is a plasterer and singer songwriter, performing as “soundstruggles”, recalls there being all sorts in the water – even cars at the bottom – when the incident happened in the mid 90s.
He said it took him three attempts, diving deep under the surface, to find the teenager.
After managing to untangle him, Lee said it was a struggle to get him back to the surface as he was “much bigger than me”.
Lee got his friends to enter the water to help keep the teenager’s head above the surface while he swam to get help from a dad who was in a dinghy with his son.
By this point, Lee recalls being shattered but said the adrenaline spurred him on to raise the alarm. The dad then used the dinghy to get the teenager ashore.
Lee said the stranger walked off afterwards without saying a word. “I presume he was in shock,” he added.
He said looking back it could have been a very different outcome.
“I could easily have died myself that day,” he said.
Lee’s message to anyone thinking of swimming in open water is “don’t do it because it is so dangerous”.
The trauma of that fateful day has never gone away and Lee believes it triggered anxiety.
Lee, who is one of the stars at this weekend’s Chorley Live which features 280 performances across 36 venues in the town and has more than 10,000 followers on TikTok, has written a song about the ordeal called Aqualung.
The moving song has helped him deal with what happened, he said.
“It is a long time to carry that burden.”
He said the teenager had blond hair and was about 5ft 10in (1.78m). He was wearing a Liverpool FC shirt and was with two girls.
Lee added: “I would love to know how he is getting on so if he or one of the girls was with him, could contact me that would be amazing.”
