A father jumped into the ocean to save his daughter after she fell from the fourth deck of a Disney cruise ship traveling from the Bahamas to the United States on Sunday afternoon.
Footage showed passengers applauding as the pair were brought to safety on a rescue boat after treading water for about 10 minutes, according to BBC.
Witnesses said the incident occurred while the father was taking a photo of his daughter near a railing. A “man overboard” alert was quickly issued, and crew members rushed to respond.
“The ship was moving quickly, so quickly, it’s crazy how quickly the people became tiny dots in the sea, and then you lost sight of them,” passenger Laura Amador said.
“The captain slowed the ship and turned it around, and then they deployed a tender ship with people on it to go get them, and we saw them rescue the dad and daughter,” she told CBS News, the BBC’s US partner.
The identities of the father and daughter have not been made public, though several U.S. media outlets describe the girl as a child.
The incident occurred aboard the Disney Dream, a cruise ship with a capacity of 4,000 passengers, as it was returning to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, after a four-day voyage around the Bahamas.
In a brief statement, Disney confirmed that two passengers were rescued but provided few additional details about the event.
“The Crew aboard the Disney Dream swiftly rescued two guests from the water,” a Disney Cruise Line spokesperson said. “We commend our Crew Members for their exceptional skills and prompt actions, which ensured the safe return of both guests to the ship within minutes.
“We watched it, you could see two little things…it was crazy, it was horrific,” passenger Gar Frantz told NBC News, describing how he saw the two plunged into the ocean and nearly vanish into the horizon.
While passenger falls from cruise ships are rare, successful rescues are even less common.
According to a 2019 report by the Cruise Lines International Association, 25 people went overboard that year, but only nine were rescued.
