Three siblings on Boone Lake in Tennessee took their grandparents’ fishing boat out and helped rescue teenagers from a sinking boat
Declan, Cormac and Elsa Jackson, aged 10, 12 and 13, were staying with their grandparents on Boone Lake in Tennessee when four teenagers on a sinking boat shouted for help. They went out in the family’s slow fishing boat.
30 October 2026
Photo: courtesy of Nick Jackson, via ARLnow
Declan, Cormac and Elsa Jackson, aged 10, 12 and 13, from Arlington, Virginia, were staying at their grandparents’ house on Boone Lake in rural Tennessee on the afternoon of 28 July, ARLnow reported. All three are scouts.
Declan and Elsa were fishing, and had just helped a baby bird out of the water, when they heard a foghorn. “We see a bunch of [teenagers] waving, ‘Help us! Help us!’” Declan said.
Four teenagers had hit a rock in the middle of the lake, and their boat was filling with water. Dark storm clouds were rolling in.
Declan ran to tell their grandparents. Cormac steered the family’s slow Pond Prowler fishing boat over to the teenagers. They all wanted to get in at once, but he was afraid of overloading it, so he took them one at a time.
“They were sitting up on the gunwale, kind of the edge of the boat, trying really hard not to touch the water at all,” their mother, Laura Jackson, told ARLnow.
The family brought two of the teenagers back before the owner of a nearby marina arrived to help the rest.
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