The deaths of about 30 people who were trying to reach Britain in a small boat in 2021 were “avoidable,” an official inquiry into the disaster, one of the worst of its kind in the English Channel, found on Thursday.
Ross Cranston, a retired judge who led the inquiry, which had been commissioned by the British government, primarily blamed people smugglers who overloaded a flimsy, inflatable boat, but he also noted that many lives could have been saved if the authorities had responded differently.
At least 27 people, including children as young as 7, are known to have died when the boat sank on Nov. 23, 2021, and four others are missing and presumed dead. Migrants on the vessel had made multiple calls for help after the boat began taking on water, and the British Coast Guard issued a mayday call to ships in the area. But a nearby French warship did not respond and a British vessel and helicopter failed to locate the dinghy.
Although successive British and French governments have vowed to reduce small-boat crossings, they have nonetheless continued. At least 162 people have died attempting to cross the English Channel between 2019 and 2025, according to the International Organization for Migration, a U.N. agency.
Mr. Cranston said that the deaths in the 2021 disaster were avoidable and that “possibly all lives would have been saved” if the authorities had acted differently.
He blamed the people smugglers, “flawed decisions” by the British Coast Guard that caused searches to be stopped and the French warship that did not respond to the mayday call.
But he added that the coast guard had been “placed in an intolerable position” through chronic staff shortages and other issues, which represented “a significant, systemic failure” by the British government.
At least 33 people were on the boat when it began to take on water around three hours after leaving the French coast near Dunkirk, the inquiry found. Only two survived. The passengers tried to bail out the dinghy and called the coast guard for help.
The first call was received by the British Coast Guard at 1:48 a.m. from a 16-year-old Iraqi Kurdish boy who would later drown alongside his mother and two sisters. He told the call handler that people were “in the water” and were “finished” as shouting was heard in the background.
Several more calls were made as the boat was sinking, and people onboard sent their location to the coast guard, which issued a mayday call at 2:27 a.m.
The two survivors told the inquiry that some people were still alive after hours in the water. Several were “still clinging to the remains of the boat” at 7 a.m., including “a mother screaming as she searched for her children.”
By that time, the searches had ended. “No one in the U.K. was looking for the small boat, and no one came to their rescue,” the report said.
The inquiry did not make any findings of liability but made a series of recommendations for the British search-and-rescue authorities to try to reduce the likelihood of a similar incident occurring in the future.
Mr. Cranston said that the French authorities were conducting a separate criminal investigation into why the naval vessel did not respond to the mayday call.
The British government said in a statement that it would consider all the recommendations, noting that there had already been “crucial improvements made to Channel responses since 2021, including closer working ties with France, additional officers at Dover for search-and-rescue operations, and adoption of high-tech tracking technologies.”
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