The deaths of four people whose boat struggled to cross the Channel in freezing conditions early Wednesday morning add to a toll that includes babies and multiple members of entire 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 2020 report found that almost 300 people had died trying to cross the Channel over the 20 years up to that point.
All other fatal incidents since 2019 are listed below, including the deaths of 39 Vietnamese whose bodies were discovered inside a refrigerated lorry trailer in Essex in 2019.
Forensic Officers at Dover Harbor RNLI Station. Photograph: Gareth Fuller/PA
2022
14 January At least one Sudanese man, believed to be in his 20s, died after falling into the water as he and dozens of others tried to cross the Canal.
2021
November 24 A five-year-old girl and her teenage siblings were among 31 people who died after their boat sank in the worst maritime disaster in the Channel for 30 years.
All but two of the small boat died after it ran into trouble after leaving the French coast. The bodies of four of the victims have not yet been recovered.
November 4
One person was found dead on a beach near Calais after a boat was discovered full of water. Earlier in the day, French lifeguards pulled another person from the water when emergency services responded to reports that several boats were in trouble.
August 12
An Eritrean man died after the boat he was on with 36 others sank about 24 km off the coast of Dunkirk.
A vigil for those who died when a ship sank in the Channel in November 2021. Picture: Sean Smith/The Guardian
2020
October 27
Seven people, including five from an Iranian Kurdish family, died after a small boat carrying 20 migrants capsized off the French coast. Among the dead were Rasul Iran Nezhad and Shiva Mohammad Panahi, both 35, and their children Anita, 9, Armin, 6, and Artin, 15 months.
October 18
The body of a man wearing a life jacket, who may be Iranian and aged between 20 and 40, was found on a beach in Sangatte, Pas de Calais.
August 19
The body of Abdulfatah Hamdallah, 22, was found on Sangatte beach, Pas de Calais, after she drowned while trying to cross the Channel in a makeshift boat.
2019
October 23
A refrigerated truck believed to contain the bodies of 39 Vietnamese migrants in October 2019. Picture: Ben Stansall/AFP/Getty Images
Ten teenagers were among 39 Vietnamese people found dead in a refrigerated trailer in Essex after being sent across the channel by people smugglers. The Vietnamese leader of an involved human-trafficking ring was sentenced to 15 years in a Belgian prison this year.
October 14
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. The two are presumed to have drowned after falling into the water while trying to cross the Channel in a small boat.
August 23
The body of Niknam Massoud, 47, was discovered in the water at the Thorntonback wind farm off the coast of Belgium wearing a single fin and a life jacket made from a backpack full of empty plastic bottles.
August 9
Mitra Mehrad, 31, an Iranian national, drowned in the Channel while trying to reach the UK on a boat carrying 19 others.