A father jumped overboard to rescue his five-year-old daughter who fell from the fourth deck of a Disney cruise ship travelling from the Bahamas to the United States (US) on Sunday.

They were then rescued by crew members.

“We watched it, you could see two little things… It was crazy, it was horrific,” Disney Cruise Line passenger Gar Frantz told NBC News.

In the report, Frantz goes on to describe how he was on the fourth floor of a Disney Dream cruise ship and saw the child, a five-year-old girl, placed on the railing, then watched her tip over the edge into the water below.

Others on board described the tiny yellow boat with the ship’s crew that had gone out to find the father and daughter, and indicated the larger vessel had then turned around once they were rescued.

Disney Cruises confirmed that the two had been rescued on Sunday.

The sheriff’s office in Broward County, Florida, also indicated they were investigating the tumble, indicating in a statement that there didn’t “appear to be anything suspicious”, but detectives were “investigating the circumstances that led up to the child falling overboard”.