An overcrowded inflatable boat carrying about 50 migrants has left a beach near Bayeux in France for England under a full maritime escort.
The oversized dinghy departed from Port-en-Bessin on the Normandy coast on Monday.
Ouest France reported that a further 11 people joined the vessel at Cote Fleurie, about 30 miles farther east, before it turned towards the English Channel.
Acting under the direction of the French maritime prefecture, four SNSM lifeboats—France’s equivalent of the RNLI—were sent to accompany the dinghy. The tugboat Abeille Liberté also joined the operation after the vessel departed shortly before 10am yesterday.
More than 24 hours later, the boat remained at sea and was still making its way towards Britain.
“This dinghy is monitored by assets coordinated by MRCC Gris-Nez within its Search and Rescue Region, as part of its Search and Rescue mission and in response to the obligations of international law and the law of the sea,” a maritime prefecture spokesman told Our News Outlet today.
Authorities provide such escorts because the route to the UK from this section of the French coast is considerably longer than crossings from the usual departure points near Calais and Dunkirk. The journey can stretch to 100 miles—around four times the distance between Dover and Calais.
A local rescue-services spokesperson said the migrant boat was “in a very bad way” and riding extremely low in the water, powered by only one small outboard motor.
“The sea was calm, and weather conditions were good, but the decision was taken to escort the boat, without intervening.”
File photo of a migrant dinghy leaving Gravelines, France on Monday. People smugglers are moving their activities further west to avoid detection
The source said the operation was focused on protecting those at sea, rather than stopping the boat from reaching the UK.
He added that winds and currents initially pushed the dinghy along the French coastline instead of allowing it to head directly into open water.
“Gendarmes were also involved in monitoring the boat from the shoreline, and—at around 3pm—there was a movement towards English waters,” the source said.
The launch from Port-en-Bessin—roughly 160 miles from Calais and 180 miles from Dunkirk, the traditional starting points for migrant Channel crossings—appears to support authorities’ concerns that people smugglers are shifting operations west to avoid detection.
By first light on Tuesday, authorities had received no further reports on the dinghy’s position, although it was believed to remain at sea.
Daniel Thomas, a hard-right anti-migrant activist who uses the name “Danny Tommo” online, said on social media that he was travelling into the Channel to locate the boat.
On Tuesday, he posted a YouTube livestream showing himself aboard a high-speed boat at sea.
“We’re going to track it, we’re going to get to it, we’re going to document that handover, see who it is that’s picking them up,” he had said earlier.
He also said activists from the anti-migrant group Patriot Platform would be mobilised to confront any boat carrying migrants back to Britain.
Thomas dubbed the planned action “Portsmouth 2.0”, referring to an incident earlier this month when masked activists clashed with police in the city as the Coastguard and Border Force escorted a dinghy carrying 140 migrants into port.
‘Our boys and our ladies will be headed in that direction,’ he said. ‘There comes a time where you’ve just got to get things done and this is about getting things done.’
The crossing comes after a dinghy carrying up to seven migrants evaded French and Home Office patrols in the Channel and landed on a rocky shoreline near Folkestone, Kent yesterday.
Five people were detained and passed to Border Security Command. It is the first undetected landing in a year. The Home Office has labelled it an ‘isolated’ incident.
Defence minister Luke Pollard dismissed suggestions the government had lost control of the border.
‘Our borders are secure, but we want to make them stronger,’ he said this morning (Tuesday).
Asked by LBC Radio how the boat slipped through, Mr Pollard said a Home Office investigation was under way to determine what had happened, without going into detail.
He also said: ‘We’re aware that the boat that got through, everyone has been detained on it.
‘But because crossings are the lowest in six years, because asylum backlog is being cut, and because we’re closing asylum hotels, we know what we’re doing is working.
‘But where there are challenges in that system, we need to get it right because this is not just a matter of public confidence.
‘This is a clear political objective that we have set as a government to secure our borders, and where there are gaps in that, we will close them.’
Police in France are continuing to crack down on attempted migrant crossings: action yesterday saw officers slash a dinghy with a knife and drag its outboard motor from the water.
On Friday, a press briefing was held in which the prefect of Seine-Maritime and Normandy, Jean-Benoît Albertini, confirmed a ‘significant’ rise in dinghy departures along the north-west coast of France.
The migrants are most often from Sudan, Syria, Kurdistan and Iraq, BFM reported. Additional resources are being allocated, funded by the bilateral agreement between Britain and France to fund French border policing along the coast.
Smugglers’ desperate searches for new routes in order to stay under the radar have consequences for Britons greeted by the unexpected arrivals.
Enforcement action along established casting off points around Dover and Calais has seen police slash dinghies to thwart migrants’ journeys
Efforts by law enforcement to disrupt the supply chain for smaller boats have forced smugglers to load more people onto bigger craft.
As well as moving west, those putting migrants onto boats bound for Britain – charging around £2,000 to each one – have also turned to ‘mega-dinghies’, some capable of carrying more than 100 migrants at a time.
Earlier this month, a mega-dinghy carrying 140 migrants reached the UK from Normandy after what was believed to be the longest-ever migrant Channel crossing.
The 46ft craft was shadowed by five French rescue boats and two helicopters in case it got into difficulty.
It completed a then-unprecedented 70-mile English Channel voyage to Britain in around 14 hours, before reaching Portsmouth.
Scores of anti-migrant protesters tried to prevent the boat landing on Eastney Beach, but failed.
The launch site, close to Utah beach, where thousands of Allied troops landed in France on D-Day in 1944, was some 170 miles from Calais as the crow flies.
Some 17,480 migrants have arrived after crossing the Channel by boat so far this year, including 5,011 since Andy Burnham became Prime Minister. The 2026 total is down 46 per cent on the same point last year.
