The deaths of four people whose boat got into difficulty crossing the Channel in freezing conditions in the early hours of Wednesday morning add to a toll that includes babies and multiple members of whole families.
While the full scale of deaths among those using makeshift rafts – or in some cases, trying to swim to the UK – is not known, a report in 2020 found that almost 300 people had died trying to cross the Channel in the 20 years up to that point.
Below are listed all other fatal incidents since 2019, including the deaths of 39 Vietnamese people whose bodies were discovered inside the refrigerated trailer of truck in Essex in 2019.
2022
14 January At least one man, from Sudan, who was believed to be in his 20s, died after falling into the water as he and dozens of others attempted to cross the Channel.
2021
24 November A girl aged five and her teenage siblings were among 31 people who died after their dinghy sank in the worst maritime disaster in the Channel for 30 years.
All but two of those on the small vessel died after it got into trouble after its departure from the French coast. The bodies of four of the victims have still not been recovered.
4 November
One person was found dead on a beach near Calais after the discovery of a boat full of water. The day before, another person was pulled from the water by French rescuers as emergency services responded to reports that several boats had got into difficulty.
12 August
An Eritrean man died after the boat he was on with 36 other people sank about 24km off the coast of Dunkirk.
2020
27 October
Seven people, including five from one Iranian Kurdish family, died after a small boat carrying 20 migrants capsized off the French coast. The dead included Rasul Iran Nezhad and Shiva Mohammad Panahi, both 35, and their children, Anita,9, Armin, 6, and Artin, who was 15 months old.
18 October
The body of a man wearing a lifejacket, who may have been Iranian and was aged between 20 and 40, was found on a beach at Sangatte, Pas de-Calais.
19 August
The body of Abdulfatah Hamdallah, 22, was found on Sangatte beach, Pas de-Calais, after he drowned while trying to cross the Channel on a makeshift boat.
2019
23 October
Ten teenagers were among the 39 Vietnamese people found dead in a refrigerated trailer in Essex after they were shipped across the channel by people smugglers. The Vietnamese leader of a people smuggling gang involved was sentenced to 15 years in a Belgian jail this year.
14 October
Hussein Mofaq Hussein, 22, and Soran Jamal Jalal, 17, Iraqi Kurds from the town of Slemani, were found dead on a beach in Le Touquet, Pas-de-Calais. It is presumed that the two drowned after falling into the water while attempting to cross the Channel in a small boat.
23 August
The body of Niknam Massoud, 47, was discovered in the water of the Thorntonback windfarm, off the coast of Belgium, wearing a single flipper and a lifejacket made from a rucksack filled with empty plastic bottles.
9 August
Mitra Mehrad, 31, an Iranian national, drowned in the Channel while trying to reach the UK aboard a dinghy that was carrying 19 others.
