Migrant dinghy at sea more than 33 hours before UK rescue
HM Coastguard directed lifeboat crews to take the people off the dinghy out of concern for their safety and deteriorating health, the RNLI said.
A dinghy carrying around 60 migrants spent more than 33 hours at sea crossing the English Channel, French maritime officials have said, before rescue boats reached it off the Hampshire coast.
The French Maritime Prefecture for the English Channel and the North Sea (MRCC) said its Jobourg rescue centre monitored the boat from 21 September until the afternoon of 22 September.
The boat appeared to have set off near Vierville-sur-Mer, west of Bayeux, on the morning of 21 September. Crossings rarely begin that far west in Normandy.
The MRCC called the boat “ill-suited for such a crossing” and said those on board “were weakened after more than 33 hours at sea in precarious conditions”.
French vessels were deployed under a duty to render assistance required by international and maritime law, it added.
The operation was also carried out “within the known and delicate context of the migrants’ refusal of assistance, as they are determined to take all risks to reach the United Kingdom.”
Two RNLI all-weather lifeboats launched from Eastbourne and Hastings as the boat neared Hampshire and the Isle of Wight.
“Before Border Force arrived on scene HM Coastguard directed the RNLI remove the people from their dinghy out of concern for their safety and their deteriorating health,” the RNLI said in a statement. “At this point they had been at sea for 36 hours.”
Those on board were transferred safely to the Border Force cutter HMC Vigilant.
A total of 17,480 people have crossed the Channel in small boats so far this year, Home Office figures show.
That is 46% down on the same point in 2025. The figures are provisional and subject to change.
The crossing follows an arrival at Portsmouth on 6 September that prompted protests, an incident officials described at the time as a one-off.
Hampshire Police and Crime Commissioner Donna Jones said Border Force should keep boats offshore and take those on board straight to Dover.
“Hampshire is not prepared or set up to process people travelling into Britain this way, and the burden on the police to deal with the arrival and potential protest activity is unsustainable,” Jones said.