Dolphins lead boat to plane crash survivors.

By Ben Stubenberg

11:00 AM / Grand Turk

Most of the morning hours of January 3, 2023 had slipped away with quiet routine at the JAGS McCartney International Airport when Air Traffic Controller (ATC) Danial Thompson arrived for his shift. As he took the hand-off from the other ATC who was about to go on lunch break, the tower phone rang. It was Provo Approach ATC calling to say that a twin-engine Cessna 340 with four souls heading from St. Kitts to Provo reported being low on fuel and might have to make an emergency landing in Grand Turk. Danial quickly informed the airport firefighters to prepare.

11:18 AM

A scratchy, static-filled voice cut into the Grand Turk air frequency 118.6. “This is Cessna November 824 Bravo Charlie. We cannot make it.” Danial radioed back, “What is your position?”

“19 miles southeast of Grand Turk. Going down in the water! Ditching! Going down in the water.”

Then silence.

The response

This was Danial’s first emergency. He had earned his certification to manage the tower unsupervised less than two months earlier. But he knew what to do and switched to the emergency frequency 121.5 in an attempt to reach the Cessna or any other aircraft in the air in hopes they might get a better signal. One pilot did respond and briefly made contact to confirm the Cessna was in trouble and ditching. When Danial asked her to update, she radioed back, “No Joy,” meaning “No Contact.” Danial went through the emergency notification procedures beginning with calling back Provo Approach and 911 to report a downed aircraft and the approximate location.

Danial’s supervisor, Captain Irvin “Porky” Robinson and the tower technician Gordon “Chef-G” Wilson had heard the emergency blare over the airport intercom alerting the fire trucks. They radioed back and rushed to the tower. Danial told them that the pilot reported he was ditching 19 miles southeast of Grand Turk. Captain Irvin, also a commercial pilot, and Gordon went to the map on the wall and measured out the distance from the airport to determine the approximate location. They didn’t have much to go on but used their best judgment to estimate the plane’s position 14 nautical miles east-northeast of Salt Cay. Irvin and Gordon then marked the spot with an X.

Meanwhile, the TCI emergency response system went into effect with further notifications to the Department of Disaster Management and Emergencies (DDME), Ministry of Health, the Grand Turk Hospital, the ambulance service, the Ministry of Tourism, the TCI Regiment, and the Red Cross. Director of Health Disaster, Education and Training Charlene Higgs took charge of coordinating the government groups.

An informal response from a network of boaters called the Grand Turk Search and Rescue Operation also kicked in. Co-founded by Ed Forbes and Hartley “Bonefish” Squire four years ago, the association had responded to distress calls from hundreds of boaters in the waters off Grand Turk and Salt Cay and made a number of rescues. On this day, both Ed and Hartley canceled all plans to focus on mobilizing their band of mariners to assist with the search.

     At the same time, the TCI Marine Police, whose boats in Provo were too far from Grand Turk to be effective, contacted the US Coast Guard Rescue Coordination Center in Miami to request assistance. The US Coast Guard forwarded the request to the liaison office in the Bahamas that diverted two US Coast Guard aircraft in the air—a twin-engine turboprop HC-144 Ocean Sentry and a Sikorsky MH-60 Jayhawk helicopter—to the crash location. A US Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) Bell 212 helicopter also joined in.

12:00 NOON

As the emergency response was set in motion, boat captain Kellison “Kell” Talbot, owner of Deep Blue Charters, was calmly preparing his 31-foot boat, I Comin’ Now, to take some cruise ship visitors to Gibbs Cay to snorkel with the stingrays. For the popular and highly respected boat operator, it looked to be another sunny day for an excursion until a police car pulled up to the boat ramp near Jack’s Shack. The officer stepped out and informed Kell that a small plane had gone down in the ocean and asked if he would be able to help with the search and rescue.

Without hesitation, Kell agreed and cancelled the afternoon tour. Two friends, Anthony Forbes and Jervis Simmons, happened to be at the boat ramp with Kell, heard the conversation with the police officer, and on the spot offered to join the search. Kell knew them as experienced and reliable boaters and welcomed their help.

“So, where did the plane go down?” Kell asked the police officer. “Off South Caicos,” she replied. Kell thought to himself that this is a huge area to look for a raft or someone floating in the ocean. But he finished fueling up his boat and set off anyhow, heading west across the Turks Channel towards South Caicos in hopes of getting lucky. Two other boat captains, Tim Dunn and Ranfurly Been, had also received word of the crash. Tim prepped his boat, Esmeralda (Emerald Escapes) and quickly found two friends, DJ Devano Pierre and Zeus Butterfield, who dropped everything to help. Ranfurly, a firefighter on Salt Cay who had been in touch with the Grand Turk ATC about a possible emergency landing, also readied his boat. Fellow firefighter Walrico Hanschell joined him as crew.

12:30 PM

Text messages about a plane going down in the ocean flooded the chat groups and social media with fast and fluid speculation. Gordon glanced at his cell phone and saw someone’s text stating that Kell had left the dock in his boat heading for South Caicos to locate the survivors. He and Captain Irvin instantly realized the error and called Kell who had been out for about 20 minutes. “You’re going in the wrong direction!” Gordon hollered. “The plane ditched northeast of Salt Cay. Stand by. I’ll get you the coordinates.”

Somehow, when the crash information was passed down the chain, the location of 19 miles southeast of Grand Turk had become garbled or confused. It is not unusual for the first report coming in about an emergency or crisis to contain errors, especially when there are several layers of personnel involved. (The second report usually contains the corrections.) There was no time to dwell on what may have happened.

Gordon called Kell back with the coordinates that he entered into his GPS and turned the boat heading east. From Kell’s position, the crash site was a good 25 miles away on a course that would take him along the north coast of Salt Cay, south of Cotton Cay, and past Pinzon (East) Cay further out into the Atlantic.

These were familiar waters for all the boat captains and the crews, most of who hailed from storied families of Salt Cay sailors and had carried on the maritime tradition of their forebears. But finding anyone in eight to ten foot swells and a howling 25 knot wind would be next to impossible, even for the most seasoned mariner.

The flight

7:30 AM / Basseterre, St. Kitts

Earlier that morning Cessna pilot Ellington Osborne and Ronny Viquez, a friend and flight instructor, went through the preflight checklist together at the Robert L. Bradshaw International Airport. Ellington lived in Miami where he had established a successful electrical contracting and security monitoring company. But St. Kitts was where he was born, and this trip had been for a Christmas visit back to his home island to reunite with relatives and friends. The flight plan he filed would take him first to Provo to refuel and then on to Miami. An experienced pilot with more than 300 hours of flying time in his Cessna, Ellington had flown this route several times before and knew it well.

Joining Ellington and Ronny for the trip was Ellington’s brother Lesroy Osborne and niece Valecia Osborne. Ronny, who already had 1,800 hours of flight time, sat in the right front seat next to Ellington to rack up some multi-engine aircraft time. The St. Kitts airport did not have aviation fuel, but Ellington had fueled up in Anguilla on the way down from Miami ten days earlier and had more than enough gas to make it to Provo. But on take-off, the St. Kitts ATC instructed Ellington to climb to 7,000 ft. heading east, the opposite direction, before clearing him to turn northwest toward Puerto Rico. That unexpected diversion caused Ellington to use more fuel, but he still had plenty in reserve.

The Cessna’s northwest heading took the four past St. Croix and over the mountains of Puerto Rico. The plane continued to fly on a heading of 308º above the reefs of the Navidad Bank and Silver Bank off the north coast of the Dominican Republic toward the Turks & Caicos Islands.

11:15 AM / Southeast of Salt Cay

While cruising at 16,000 feet, Ellington prepared to activate the fuel transfer pump to move gas from one tank to another. But the switch failed. After trying several times to make it work without success, he radioed Miami Center to advise his situation. Concerned about the possibility of running out of fuel at a high altitude, he made a judgement call to descend to a lower altitude and received permission from Miami Center. As he cross-fed fuel from one wing to another, he could see that the engines continued to burn fuel at a high rate and attempted to contact Grand Turk ATC to see if aviation fuel was available. However, he was still outside the “cone” of Grand Turk air traffic communication. A second plane in the air and closer to Grand Turk picked up the message and relayed it on.

At 3,000 ft. the right engine began sputtering. Ellington shut it down and feathered the prop by turning the sharp edge of the blade so that it cut straight into the wind to reduce drag. Flying on just the left engine, he hoped to reach Grand Turk. But doubts quickly set in when the left engine began running rough before resuming power.

11:30 AM

At 2,000 feet Ellington realized there was no chance of making it to Grand Turk and prepared to ditch in the ocean. As he was descending, he finally came within range of the Grand Turk ATC and, in a barely audible transmission, told Danial they were going down. The pilot in the second plane in the air could still hear Ellington over the 121.5 emergency frequency and anxiously relayed Ellington’s transmission before she too lost contact.

At 800 feet the left engine sputtered and at 300 feet it shut down. Now the plane could only glide. At 200 feet Ellington could clearly see the whitecaps below and felt the strong wind bulleting the plane. He knew from his training that he would have to try to line up the plane parallel to the swells to minimize the impact when hitting the water. But it was hard to make out the swell direction through the sloshing waves.

Ellington kept the airspeed at 100 MPH before moving the wing flaps down to slow the aircraft a further 20 MPH, close to the stall speed, the point at which the air separates from the wing and can no longer fly. At the same time, he pressed hard on the right rudder pedal to “crab” the plane into the strong crosswind and keep it stable while slowing the airspeed a little more. When the Cessna was just 20 feet above the water, Ellington pulled the yoke back just a bit in an attempt to land with the tail first. Strangely, the fear left Ellington as he was literally on autopilot and focused on the ditching seconds away. Then he shouted, “Brace!”

The crash

11:39 AM

The plane slammed into the ocean and flipped on its side with the left wing digging into the water and right wing sticking up into the air. From his left seat, Ellington saw nothing but water pushing against the side window. He quickly unbuckled his seatbelt and made his way back to the cabin where Valecia and Lesroy were sitting and pushed open the door that was still just above the water line. As soon as he did, the water began rushing in. Still, everyone managed to scrambled out.

In the chaos, Lesroy’s life jacket did not inflate. So while in the water, Ellington and Ronny filled it up by blowing air through the extended tubes. Luckily, the jacket started inflating automatically. At that point Ellington realized that his own life jacket had become stuck around his neck and one shoulder. He also saw that the raft he had taken out of the plane and inflated had somehow blown loose just as the plane was disappearing below the surface, all in a matter of minutes.

Unable to reach the raft floating away, Ellington and Ronny tried to hook everyone’s life vests together, a near impossible task as one wave after another battered the four survivors bobbing helplessly in the water. Lesroy began drifting from the group. Ellington tried swimming after him, but could not catch up. He swam back to the others, his heart filled with agony. All they could do now was wait and hope as the chilly water began sapping heat from their bodies.

Ellington apologized for what had happened even though he successfully ditched the plane using incredible piloting skills that few other pilots would have been able to do. That finesse under extreme pressure allowed everyone to get out alive and barely scathed. No pilot can properly train for that event. Ronny, keeping his cool, said to Ellington as the sea tossed them about, “Listen, let’s worry about staying alive. We’ll get out of this.”

Ellington had cheated death in the crash, but the prospect of dying continued to stalk the four survivors pummeled by waves in a vast ocean. He began talking aloud to his mother who had passed away 20 years earlier, wondering if he would see her soon. He always remembered how she had looked after him as a child and asked over and over, “Mom, if you can hear me, can you help?”

12:45 PM

After drifting for almost an hour in the water, the four saw a twin-engine aircraft from the US Coast Guard circling high above them that boosted their spirits. After a few minutes, it circled back, and they waved frantically, but it was too high to see them.

1:24 PM

Almost 45 minutes later a black US Customs and Border Patrol helicopter came into view and flew a big circle. Once again, they waved their arms in hopes the crew would see them, but they didn’t and flew off.

2:30 PM

After more than three hours in the water, a US Coast Guard helicopter appeared. By now they had swallowed so much seawater and sensed their arms and legs going numb. Still, they were hopeful, especially as the helicopter passed near them. This time they were too exhausted to wave. After 45 minutes, the US Coast Guard chopper flew away too and despair returned. Life was closing out.

Suddenly, Ellington told Ronny and Valecia that he heard an engine noise, but they didn’t believe him.

The rescue

1:30 PM / Southeast of Grand Turk

It took Kell more than an hour to reach the location based on the coordinates provided by Captain Irvin and Gordon. 

Motoring against the current in rough seas forced Kell to reduce speed, so the trip took longer than it might have on a calm day. When his aptly named vessel, I Comin’ Now, finally arrived, the US Coast Guard fixed-wing plane and the first helicopter were still in the air circling over the area and communicating off and on with Danial at the Grand Turk Tower. Tim arrived on the scene a few minutes later and spotted Kell’s boat a couple of miles off as well as the two aircraft. But shortly after the boats arrived, both aircraft left the scene.

Captains Kell and Tim decided to let the boats drift with the current, as it might take them to where any survivors might be since they had also likely drifted from where the plane had ditched­—that is if anyone had survived the crash. Ranfury and Walrico also approached the scene but conducted their search a couple of miles south. All three boats spent two long hours meticulously looking for survivors while holding on tight as the swells washed over the bows. But they saw no sign of the people or the plane.

2:30 PM

Out of the blue, a US Coast Guard helicopter showed up and circled around. At one point, it appeared to drop low and hover just a couple of hundred feet above the waves. Kell and Tim thought for a moment that the chopper may have spotted someone. Tim radioed the helicopter several times to find out but received no response. After about 45 minutes, it too departed, unable to find anyone, even with sophisticated sensor equipment onboard.

3:15 PM

As daylight was running out, Kell noticed mist spraying into the air just ahead. At first he thought it might be a humpback whale that had arrived early in the season. But the spray turned out to be from a dolphin. Soon, two other dolphins appeared off the starboard side of the boat moving in the same northerly direction. On a whim and out of curiosity, Kell decided to follow them and gently nudged the throttle forward out of neutral. After a couple of minutes, the dolphins suddenly veered right and that’s when Kell, Anthony, and Jervis heard a woman scream, “Help, help!”

In the water just in front of them, they saw Valecia and then Ellington and Ronny huddled together. Anthony and Jervis threw out a life ring attached to a rope, pulled them toward the boat and helped them all onboard. Kell hit his GPS to mark the location at N 21°13.644 / W071° 15.509. That put them 17.5 miles southeast of Grand Turk which showed they had drifted about a mile and a half northwest from their crash site.

The three survivors on board were shivering and had suffered some cuts from the crash. Jervis brought them towels and blankets while Anthony opened a medical kit to treat them for cuts. But Ellington waived them off and said, “My brother Lesroy is missing. He got loose from us and drifted off. We have to find him.” Kell looked around from the flybridge and again saw dolphins just ahead. This time he knew they were telling him something, and he steered the boat in their direction. After following the dolphins for a quarter of a mile, Kell spotted Lesroy in his life jacket, right where the animals had taken him.

Anthony and Jervis pulled Lesroy on board too where he received big hugs from Ellington, Valecia, and Ronny. Suffering from hypothermia after nearly four hours in the water, all four survivors were in a daze and needed to warm up. For Kell, Anthony, and Jervis, the miraculous moment began to sink in. They knew that no one should have survived the crash and nor should any of them have been found in the rough, chilly sea. Yet here they were, face to face with four souls who had somehow defied the long odds. They felt a deep sense of satisfaction and were keenly aware of the role played by friendly dolphins.

Indeed, according to the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society, recorded stories of dolphins protecting humans date back to ancient Greece. In recent decades, there have been several accounts of dolphins protecting swimmers and surfers from sharks as well as nudging a drowning child back to the safety of a boat. Why they do this remains a bit of a mystery, but researchers at the National Aquarium in Baltimore, Maryland have come up with a theory. Dolphins, it seems, recognize themselves in a mirror and this capability, the researchers say, “is thought to correlate with higher forms of empathy and altruistic behavior.”

The Turks & Caicos dolphins certainly exhibited that wonderful attribute by looking out for humans in distress. But they were not yet done. As Kell readied the boat to head back, a couple of dozen dolphins swam all around the boat. Soon more came into view, undulating through the choppy seas in a wondrous display of wild nature. No one doubted what they were saying: “Hey, we’re glad that you are back with your people.” And then still more showed up. Kell estimated that a pod of as many as 100 dolphins had gathered about. He had only seen that many dolphins together twice in all his decades of being on the

sea off Grand Turk and Salt Cay. And those were just pods moving together in search of food. This time, however, the dolphins weren’t looking for food. They were there to relish the moment too.

The return

3:45 PM

Kell called his partner Katherine Hart to tell her that he and the crew had found all four from the plane alive and that they were heading back to Grand Turk. She notified the authorities and let the ambulance know the boat with survivors was on its way. A few people following the unceasing flow of text messages on their phones could not believe that all aboard the plane had been rescued. It just did not seem possible in the heavy seas and gusty winds.

4:15 pm / Grand Turk

That belief was soon dashed when Kell arrived at the dock with four happy but still stunned survivors. People stopped whatever they were doing to come and witness the extraordinary and unexpected rescue by their island boys. One of those on the dock was Dalton Daniel who was attached to the Governor’s Office and a marine with the TCI Regiment. Dalton took it upon himself to escort the ambulance taking the four survivors to the hospital to make sure they had whatever they needed. After they were treated for minor injuries and released, Dalton took them to the Osprey Hotel where the Tourist Board had booked them rooms and gave them his own shoes and clothes to wear. He also lent them his cell phone so they could call their families and let them know they were alive. Then-Governor Nigel Dakin called Ellington to see how he and the others were doing.

While finally settling into the hotel room and letting the full experience of the ditching pour over him, Ellington checked his pockets and was surprised to see that he still had his wallet and AMEX card. Although the governor and TCI Government had guaranteed hotel room costs, Ellington insisted on paying with his credit card so as not to be a burden. The heartfelt TCI generosity continued the next morning when a local man saw the survivors inside the Osprey Hotel café eating breakfast. Figuring they had lost everything, the man, whose name is not known, pulled $100 from his pocket and pushed it into Ellington’s hand so they would have some spending money for food and other necessities.

One thing all the survivors did lose in the plane crash was their passports. Ellington’s wife in Miami quickly stepped in and located the eAPIS (Electronic Advance Passenger Information System) email that Ellington had filed before taking off from St. Kitts. The eAPIS listed the US citizenship of Ellington, Valecia, and Lesroy and noted that Ronny was a Costa Rican citizen on a US student visa. She contacted US Immigration authorities who quickly accepted the eAPIS as sufficient proof of status and authorized entry for all of them into the US without documents. The lucky four flew to Provo where they caught a plane home to Miami.

The aftermath

Later in January, while dropping off Katherine and Morgan Luker on Great Sand Cay for a hawksbill turtle nesting survey, Kell, accompanied by Anthony and Jervis, noticed a hunk of white metal on the beach. On closer inspection, he saw that it looked like an engine cover from a plane and wondered if it might be from Ellington’s Cessna. He lugged the engine cover over the beach and put it on his boat. Back in Grand Turk, he called Ellington who asked if he could see an “R” on the cowling. Kell did, which confirmed that it was in fact from the ditched plane that had washed up on the beach.

That summer, Ellington traveled to Grand Turk with his wife and three children so they could meet the Islanders who had saved his life and the lives of Ronny, Valecia, and Lesroy. The quick actions by those in the tower at the airport, the selfless courage and fortitude of those who went out on the boats, and unhesitating kindness of people on Grand Turk from high level officials to ordinary folk touched Ellington deeply. He stated, “No words can describe the love and affection I have for the people of Grand Turk and Salt Cay who had risked and done so much for us.” He had formed an unshakable bond with the Islands, and his life would never be the same.

Wanting to give back, Ellington asked Captain Irvin what they needed and was told more cameras and monitors for the airport security. Knowing these products well from his security and surveillance business, he ordered 16 of each and shipped them to Grand Turk. He also learned that Grand Turk’s H.J. Robinson High School could use computers. So he dug into his pocket and raised money from his friends in Florida to buy 100 Microsoft Surfaces and external keyboards for the school.

In November 2023, Lesroy received a surprising call from the Cayman Islands at his Orlando home. It turns out that the briefcase he had left behind in the plane had been found on a beach in Grand Cayman. Inside were his wallet with ID along with his passport that enabled offcials to locate Lesroy in the U.S. and confirm his ownership. Astoundingly, the briefcase had floated more than 500 miles southwest from the crash site, past Great Inagua Island, through the Windward Passage between Cuba and Haiti, and along the north coast of Jamaica before finally washing up on a beach in Cayman.

The fast and decisive actions and steady demeanor of all those involved in the response, as well as the care afterwards, cannot be understated. On that day Kell, Anthony, and Jervis, along with Tim, DJ, Zeus, Ranfurly, and Walrico had done what they and other Turks Islander mariners were born to do when the call came—save people in trouble on the ocean. Finding Ellington, Valecia, Ronny, and Lesroy—barely hanging on that chaotic January afternoon—was no fluke.

Extraordinary seamanship, intuition, and courage made it happen—along with uncanny help from a pod of caring dolphins who have always had a kindred spirit with the sailors of these magical Turks & Caicos Islands.

Ben Stubenberg is a regular contributor to Times of the Islands and has recently published a book entitled The Jamaican Bobsled Captain: Dudley “Tal” Stokes and the untold story of suffering, struggle and redemption behind Cool Runnings.

Ben’s articles and commentary on TCI and Caribbean history and current events can be found on his website BenStubenberg.com.