Melbourne, Florida - The US Coast Guard said Wednesday it had rescued 11 people who spent five hours clinging to a raft after their small plane crashed off the coast of Florida.

Rescuers hoisted the 11 Bahamian adults from a life raft floating around 80 miles off Melbourne, Florida.

Authorities received an emergency locator transmitter signal from the small propeller plane on Tuesday morning, the Coast Guard said in a statement.

An aircrew from the nearby Patrick Space Force Base were already in the air for a training exercise and joined Coast Guard rescuers to locate the group.

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"They had already been in the raft for about five hours. You could tell just by looking at them that they were in distress," Rory Whipple, an Air Force combat rescue officer, told a news conference on Wednesday.

"They didn't have communications so they didn't even know we were coming until we were directly overhead."

Bahamian authorities are investigating the crash, which is suspected to been caused by engine failure, the Coast Guard said.

Air Force commander Elizabeth Piowaty said it was "pretty miraculous" the 11 people survived the crash.

"I've not known anyone to survive a ditching in the ocean," she told the news conference. "For all those people to survive is pretty miraculous."