The operation lasted more than 36 hours and involved six coastguard and Border Force vessels, a French Navy helicopter and three coaches travelling in a blue-light convoy alongside seven police cars and vans.
The extraordinary episode also featured a knife-carrying far-Right YouTube personality in a speedboat and an angry crowd of balaclava-wearing supporters, turning the Channel migrant operation into an enormously costly Anglo-French farce.
Dubbed the “Bayeux Travesty”, the incident saw around 60 migrants attempt what was almost certainly the longest and most chaotic Channel crossing since the small-boat crisis began. It offered a stark illustration of the failures and confusion surrounding the asylum system.
This is how the remarkable episode unfolded, hour by extraordinary hour…
9.30am, Monday September 21
Around 50 migrants rush across a sandy beach several miles west of Port-en-Bessin, the Normandy seaside town near Bayeux.
The morning is clear and sunny, with temperatures already in the high teens. As the tide ebbs, conditions seem ideal for boarding a 40ft inflatable boat bound for Britain.
As with many boats used in Channel crossings, the dinghy had been imported from the Far East by people-smuggling gangs before being taken to the French coastline.
Channel migrants aboard a mega-dinghy arrived in Dover earlier this week after an unprecedented 38-hour voyage to the UK (Pictured: Personnel aboard a French sea rescue service SNSM boat watch as migrants aboard a smugglers’ boat)
Although the gang charged desperate passengers about £2,000 each for the crossing, it spent only £750 on the outboard motor. The 25-horsepower engine was made by Hangkai, a Chinese company that produces cheaper alternatives to Yamaha and other Japanese brands.
The motor would soon prove disastrously inadequate for the journey ahead.
10am
Overloaded with passengers, the dinghy heads north towards England. Gendarmes monitoring the launch from the shore alert the French maritime authorities.
Four lifeboats, the coastguard tug Abeille Liberte — or “Liberty Bee” — and a French Navy search-and-rescue helicopter are dispatched to the area.
‘The boat was in a very bad way, very low in the water, with just a single outboard motor to power it,’ a rescue services spokesman later recalled.
‘The sea was calm and weather conditions were good, but a decision was taken to escort the boat, without intervening.’
The crossing point, near Omaha Beach — where thousands of Allied troops landed on D-Day — is at least 85 nautical miles from Britain.
6pm
The weak engine cannot overcome the currents and winds off the French coast. Rather than making progress into the Channel, the dinghy is swept roughly 35 miles eastward before eventually reaching a beach near Cabourg.
As gendarmes look on, another 10 migrants climb aboard, pushing the already overloaded boat even lower in the water.
Describing the unusual journey, a Maritime Prefecture source later told the Daily Mail: ‘We know there was a stop on a beach near Cabourg [Also on the Calvados/ Normandy coast] and that they set off again towards England. By this time there were about 60 people on board.’
According to the spokesman, the focus of the small French flotilla was on ensuring public safety, rather than on preventing the vessel from reaching the UK.
9pm
Still unable to break free of coastal currents, the dinghy has now spent 11 hours at sea.
The sun has set and its passengers are cold, wet and increasingly febrile. Two of them suddenly jump into the sea.
When a lifeboat approaches, the crew is informed that the migrants are suffering from hypothermia. They are therefore taken to hospital in Caen.
Pictured: The mega-dinghy with at least 60 migrants on board began its 38-hour journey escorted by the French Navy
The remaining 60-odd passengers continue to sit tight, refusing to give up their attempt to reach the UK.
Britain has agreed to pay France some £662million, over the next three years, ostensibly to prevent such charades from taking place. But the local authorities seem unwilling to stop this particular boat.
Explaining why the group is allowed to remain at sea, despite the growing risk to life and public safety, a spokesman says: ‘This operation is 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.’
2am, Tuesday September 22
A falling tide, which bottoms out at 2.08am, has finally pushed the dinghy out to sea and, with the help of an almost full moon, it begins to make slow progress towards Britain.
Although the French Navy’s helicopters appear to have returned to base, it continues to be shadowed by the Abeille Liberte and two coastguard lifeboats.
The passengers, who are all young men, are by now exhausted. Those lucky enough to have lifejackets have been moved to the sides of the boat, where they spend the night sitting upright with feet dangling in the water. The migrants without orange safety devices are crammed into the bottom of the dinghy.
8.30am
A social media personality and far-Right activist named Daniel Thomas has been following the Abeille Liberte’s overnight progress via the AIS tracking system that all large ships carry.
The privately-educated 37-year-old former builder, who was jailed in 2016 for attempting to kidnap a man at knifepoint over an alleged drug debt, now runs Patriot Platform, a YouTube channel which live-streams footage of anti-migrant demonstrations. And today, he’s going to be creating some viral content.
Speaking to followers from an orange rubber dinghy, he explains that he’s travelling towards a French vessel which set sail the previous morning ‘from the beaches where our grandfathers fought’.
11am
When day broke, the migrants were still able to see the French coast. But some five hours later, they are closing in on the maritime border, roughly 45 nautical miles from Cabourg, which marks the start of British territorial waters.
Pictured: Before the French sailors handed over to the RNLI in the Channel
The French authorities, which continue to shadow the vessel, call HM Coastguard to alert them of the incoming dinghy.
This triggers a well-worn emergency response procedure which involves the RNLI instructing two of its most experienced lifeboat crews, from Hastings and Eastbourne, to head out into the Channel to meet the migrant dinghy.
According to the RNLI’s tracker, Eastbourne RNLI was called out at 11.09am and Hastings, at 11.11am. They are to be supported by a UK Coastguard aeroplane.
12pm
Thomas, who is 18 miles off the south coast, catches sight of the Abeille Liberte. It takes another hour for his fishing dinghy to pull up alongside it.
The activist ignores a request from the French vessel to move away from them and instead spends the next two hours in an uneasy stand-off, entertaining viewers of his live-stream by shouting occasional insults in the general direction of the migrants and taunting the Gallic coastguards by calling them ‘French frogs’, as well as ‘sausages’.
Pointing towards the ‘absolutely rammed’ dinghy, he’s also seen shouting: ‘We want our money back. This is not what we paid for. We paid for you French frogs to take them back to France.’
3pm
Following the arrival of the RNLI, the migrants are transferred to two British lifeboats, leaving their dinghy empty.
Thomas, who is videoing the spectacle, describes the lifeboatmen as ‘a personal taxi service into our nation’, at one point shouting: ‘Lads, how do you sleep at night?’
4.30pm
Once the migrants have disembarked, Thomas records himself motoring up alongside the dinghy. After declaring ‘this is what needs to happen to every one of these boats’, he takes out a knife and begins slashing its inflatable sides.
A French coastguard has meanwhile boarded the now-punctured vessel and is attempting to secure it to his lifeboat so that it can be towed back to Normandy.
Thomas confronts him, shouting: ‘You are in English territory. This is England. This is not France any more, OK?
‘Get off the boat. You’ve got time to get off the boat!’
The boat was escorted by sturdier vessels throughout its passage to Britain
Motoring away, he adds: ‘Now try and take that boat back to France! You traitors! Traitors!’
Explaining his decision to puncture it, he adds: ‘We wanted to make sure that boat is not taken back to France and used again. That’s one boat that will not be used again.’
5pm
Thomas catches up with the RNLI boats, which had turned off their location tracking devices in an unsuccessful attempt to stop him from following them, and are now a couple of miles from the scene of the original handover.
He films the migrants being decanted onto the Border Force’s ship HMC Vigilant and invites supporters to head to Fort Blockhouse, a Victorian sea fort in Gosport where sources have informed him that they are to be brought ashore.
‘Anyone in the Portsmouth, Gosport, Southampton area, come to the Fort’, he says.
‘This boat is now coming to Portsmouth. Portsmouth is now a clear destination, like Dover, for the invasion of our country.’
Thomas instructs supporters to avoid bringing alcohol to the scene of the protest. ‘Remain calm. Do this the right way. This is a fight for the future of our nation. It’s not just a day out, having a pop at the Old Bill.’
6pm
On the streets of Gosport, Thomas’ supporters have other ideas. Between 150 and 200 of them have now turned up, many wearing black balaclavas and wrapped in flags.
As crowds of masked protesters confront a line of riot police, to chants of ‘let them drown’ sung by a child over a megaphone, occasional scuffles break out.
According to Hampshire police, two men from Salisbury, aged 19 and 36, are arrested on suspicion of aggravated trespass, while four people from Gosport – two men aged 33 and 67, and two women aged 31 and 32 – are held on suspicion of assaulting an emergency worker. The 67-year-old is also held on suspicion of careless driving.
Many locals are unimpressed. ‘I’ve got two autistic daughters aged eight and five and they’re absolutely terrified, too scared to come out of the house’, a 48-year-old resident who gave his name as James told the Daily Mail.
‘They’re a bunch of narrow-minded idiots thinking they’re here for King and country when really they’re just morons.’
7pm
Ugly scenes have convinced the authorities to abandon plans to disembark the illegal migrants in Gosport.
Instead, they have decided to change plan and use the RNLI lifeboats and Border Security Command ship to transport the young men more than 100 miles east towards Dover.
Police officers inform demonstrators: ‘We’ve been told to let you know that there will be no landing here this evening,’ and encourage them to leave.
Several attempt to adjourn for a drink. But several local pubs, including the Fighting Cocks, a few hundred yards from Fort Blockhouse, have decided to close their doors to avert trouble.
9pm
Empty coaches that had been sent to Gosport to pick up the migrants are now no longer needed in the town. So they are given a blue-light escort onto the motorway, with videos showing them being accompanied by at least seven police cars and vans.
George Madgwick, a local Reform UK councillor who posted the footage on X, said: ‘Unbelievable scene. Coaches that were planned for migrants to get on in Gosport being escorted from Hampshire by a larger motorcade than what the Prime Minister or King would get. This has to be seen to be believed.’
10pm
More than 36 hours after setting sail from the beaches of northern France, roughly 60 migrants are brought ashore in Dover and taken to Manston processing centre, completing the longest, and almost certainly most farcical, dinghy crossing in the history of the ongoing crisis.
Thomas is refuelling his Audi at a BP service station when two police cars descend on the scene.
Footage uploaded to social media soon afterwards shows an officer telling him: ‘Step out of the car please, sir, OK? At this moment in time we have information to suggest that you were involved in criminal damage.’
Thomas replies: ‘Yep, yep, can I just… give me my phone. I want my phone to be on, please.’ An unknown woman adds: ‘The cameras are on, let go of the phone.’
The officer continues: ‘At this point in time, you are under arrest – you do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence…’ Thomas replies: ‘I understand.’
The officer adds: ‘The information that I’ve been given is that you’ve been involved in criminal damage that has recklessly endangered someone’s life, OK?’
A Hampshire and Isle of Wight Constabulary spokesman later releases a statement saying: ‘A man has been arrested after a boat that had an emergency responder on board was damaged in the English Channel.’
Last night Hampshire Police confirmed that Thomas had been charged with criminal damage and failing to disclose the PIN to his phone after he was filmed slashing a boat in the English Channel with a rescue crew member on board.
Additional reporting: Peter Allen and James Fielding
