Trawler skipper prevents worse disaster as migrants' dinghy sinks in freezing Channel

A fisherman prevented what could have been the worst Channel migrant disaster yet by rescuing more than 30 people from the freezing sea in a tragedy that cost the lives of at least four.

Raymond Strachan, skipper of the Arcturus trawler, and his crew pulled 31 “screaming” migrants from the icy water after their flimsy dinghy punctured and began to sink in the middle of the Channel just before 3am in temperatures of -4C.

Four died and there were unconfirmed reports of four more missing from the dinghy that was believed to be carrying up to 47 migrants, including at least four children. The youngest was just 11 from Afghanistan. One Albanian youth travelling alone was taken to hospital “traumatised.”

It followed a major air and sea rescue operation involving at least 10 vessels from the Navy, Border Force, RNLI and the French coastguard as well as helicopters which used their lights to guide rescuers to migrants in the sea in the pitch-black of the night.

"It was like something out of a Second World War movie, there were people in the water everywhere, screaming," said Mr Strachan, whose crew plucked 31 of the 39 rescued from the sea. "I steamed towards the dinghy and we secured it with a rope to the side of the boat. We were trying to pull them off the dinghy."

A government source said that without Mr Strachan’s intervention it “could have been far, far worse.”  It is the first major rescue operation launched in the Channel since November last year, when at least 27 migrants perished after their dinghy sank.

Rishi Sunak opened Prime Minister’s Questions in the Commons by expressing his sorrow at the “tragic loss of human life”. It came just hours after he announced a five-point plan to combat the Channel migrant crisis. Sir Keir Starmer said the gangs profiting from the misery of migrants “must be broken up and brought to justice”.

In a statement to MPs, Suella Braverman, the Home Secretary, said: “These are the days that we dread. Crossing the channel in unseaworthy vessels is a lethally dangerous endeavour. It is for this reason we are working so hard to destroy the business model of people smugglers, evil organised criminals who treat people as cargo.”

She added: “It is vital, literally vital, that we end the illegal crossings in the Channel.”

The migrants from countries including Afghanistan and Iraq told rescuers they had paid £5,000 to smugglers in France for passage to the UK. They had reached Sandettie bank, half way between France and the UK, and the point at which the French authorities usually hand over migrant boats to the British.

At 1.53am, a migrant is believed to have sent a distressed voice message from their sinking dinghy to Utopia 56, a French migrant charity, said Nikolai Posner, its communications officer. It was one of five messages the charity received overnight from small boats, but it believed it was from the sinking dinghy due to its location.

In the 22-second WhatsApp voice message, the man pleaded for help and said: “We're in a boat, we have a problem. Please help us. There are children and families in the boat. The water enters the boat from the back... We are in the water and we have a family.” A child can be heard crying in the background.

The charity called the French coastguard at 1.59am before emailing the UK and French coastguard at 2.13am. RNLI lifeboats were launched from Dover at 3.07am, followed by vessels from Dungeness, Ramsgate and Hastings.

Mr Strachan said he had been sleeping when he was awoken by a member of the trawler crew who told him "there are migrants alongside the boat".

"One guy was hanging off my wire. I thought at first it was just him, and once I got my fishing gear up - which took about three minutes - I stopped my boat and ran outside and along the port side there were five of them hanging off the side of my boat."

Mr Strachan said he counted 45 people holding on to the collapsed dinghy and surrounding his fishing boat. Images show survivors of the incident standing in the collapsed dinghy knee deep in water - sandwiched between the sides of the inflatable.

Some of the group are seen wearing red life jackets but one man could be seen in a short-sleeved shirt in freezing conditions. It appeared the flimsy inflatable suffered a puncture forcing the boat to lower into the water with the sides going up vertically as the terrified migrants on board had no alternative but to stand.

Mr Strachan’s crew spent two hours pulling people from the water. He said those he rescued came from Afghanistan, Iraq, Senegal and India.

"We stripped all their wet clothes off, and my crew gave them any clothes they had to keep them warm," he said. "We put them in beds to keep them warm, with quilts, to get their body temperature up slowly."

As the crew prepared to head back to shore with the rescued migrants they realised one had drowned after attaching himself to the side of the boat.

Mr Strachan said: "We had been concentrating on the port side and this one person had swum to the starboard side, tied a rope on to my fishing gear and tied it around his wrist to keep himself alongside the boat. When I put my boat into gear his body floated up."

More than 30 of the migrants are believed to have been taken to hospital for treatment and medical checks. Fatbardha Celaj, an Albanian translator, told Albanian TV there was one Albanian, Denis. “He is from the north, his condition is very good, but he is still traumatised,” she said.

So far this year, 45,000 people have crossed the Channel in small boats, compared with 28,526 last year.

Mrs Braverman told MPs: "This morning's tragedy, like the loss of 27 people on one November day last year, is the most sobering reminder possible of why we have to end these crossings."

On Wednesday night, however, in the Grande-Synthe camp outside Dunkirk, where it is believed the drowned migrants had been staying, migrants said they would still take boats. Lovepreet Singh, 25 and his friend Hardeep Singh, 17, both from India, had crossed from Serbia, Germany, Slovakia, Italy, and Switzerland and had been in Dunkirk for the past three days.

“We don’t speak French and want to live and work in England. Staying in this freezing cold camp is not an option so we’ll take our chances,” said Lovepreet.

Suella Braverman, the Home Secretary, said in a joint statement with Gerald Darmanin, the French interior minister, that the incident in the English Channel on Wednesday was a "stark reminder of the urgent need to destroy the business model of people-smugglers".

The statement added: "We have prevented more than 30,000 crossings so far this year, and together with other European partners, including Europol, we have made over 500 arrests since 2020.

"We recently agreed on a renewed bilateral framework to tackle illegal migration, with closer joint working and intelligence sharing, more French officers equipped with cutting-edge technology patrolling the French coast and UK and French officers working with each other's law enforcement teams as embedded observers.

"We also held a meeting in Calais format (Germany, Belgium, France, Great Britain, Netherlands) in Brussels on Dec 8 and resolved, with our European neighbours, to intensify our police, border and judicial cooperation, with the support of EU agencies.

"Today's tragic incident underlines the importance of taking this forward together."