The sea has receded. It left its wet trail on the Calais beach in northern France, leaving with it a dead body. Shortly after 8 am on Wednesday, November 6, a walker spotted the body and raised the alarm. The corpse was quickly placed in a body bag and removed by employees of a funeral transport company. All that remained on the sand was his footprint, a lighter and a bloodstain on which a few flies had landed. The man had washed up there, his body swollen, his skin damaged by days of tossing about at sea and injuries possibly caused by boat propellers or animals. Police found identity documents on the victim, suggesting that he was of Syrian nationality.

A few kilometers further west, on November 2, on the beach at Sangatte, at the foot of the cliffs, the body of another man had also been brought in by the tide. Head in the sand, one eye missing, nose ripped off. "It's shocking the first time, but it's become commonplace, and you'd better not think people are crying at home in the evening," a man on a walk in Sangatte said, fatalistically.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, four more bodies were recovered, this time off the Calais coast. For the past two weeks, the English Channel has continued to wash up the bodies of people who never made it to England. The Boulogne-sur-Mer prosecutor's office told Agence France-Presse that investigations were underway to "determine whether these bodies can be linked to the shipwrecks or maritime events with deaths that have occurred recently."

Deadliest year on record

In the minds of many, they are undoubtedly linked to the shipwreck that occurred on October 23 around one nautical mile off Blériot-Plage. According to a report by the English Channel and North Sea Maritime Prefecture, 45 people were rescued that morning when their small boat sank, and three people died.

Several reports from survivors and relatives of victims suggest the death toll is much higher. Red Cross teams on the coast, assisted by associations, collected and forwarded to the authorities 15 reports of missing people after the sinking of October 23. This would make it the worst sinking in the Channel since the one on November 24, 2021, when 27 bodies were recovered. "Most of them are men, from Syria, Eritrea and also Afghanistan," said Bérangère Lucotte from the Red Cross.

Since the emergence at the end of 2018 of the rise in small boats, these poorly-made dinghies of less than ten meters that people use to reach the UK in the absence of a legal migration route, 2024 has already been the deadliest year. Sixty people have officially died at sea and three are missing, according to the Maritime Prefecture's count, which does not include those who drowned outside maritime zones (like canals and coastal rivers) and only counts those whose bodies have been seen by rescue services as missing.

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