A cocktail party was organized that morning at the Gris-Nez (Pas-de-Calais) regional operational surveillance and rescue center (Cross). In this old building overlooking the Opal Coast, where sea rescue operations are coordinated, a member of the management was celebrating his departure. On a clear day, from Gris-Nez, the view is breathtaking and extends to the cliffs of Dover, in England, which the migrants who have been setting off for several years now in the Pas-de-Calais Strait, aboard small inflatable boats, dream of reaching. More than 20,000 of them have already made the crossing by 2024.
On Tuesday, September 3, while the cocktail was in full swing, a tragedy occurred under the windows of the Cross. A sinister ballet of boats began to move, less than three kilometers from the coast. There were fishing vessels, a customs patrol boat, a ship chartered by the State, resources from the National Society of Sea Rescuers (SNSM) and even, in the sky, helicopters. All were looking for survivors after a boat loaded with sixty-five migrants sank.
On Tuesday evening, the provisional report communicated by the public prosecutor of Boulogne-sur-Mer, Guirec Le Bras, reported fifty-one people rescued – including several in states of severe hypothermia and two in absolute emergency –, two missing and twelve dead, including ten women and six minors. The victims are believed to be mostly from Eritrea. This is the heaviest toll since the shipwreck that occurred on November 24, 2021, at the end of which twenty-seven lifeless bodies were found.
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Gaëtan Baillet usually fishes for lobsters. On Tuesday, September 3, he saw “floating bodies”. The boss of the Boulogne caseyeur The Breton responded to the “Mayday” alert message broadcast shortly after 11 a.m. by the Cross, which asked boats available in the area to rescue people at sea. This is the first time that Gaëtan Baillet has picked up a body in the water. “It’s a bit shocking”he said modestly. His cousin, Axel Baheu, on board the trawler Murexrecovered three corpses before him. It was the first time too, and he cried about it.
Axel Baheu had spotted the boat around 10 a.m., about a hundred meters offshore from his boat. The migrants were crammed in, perhaps eighty of them, some straddling the poorly inflated tubes of the dinghy, at least one holding a swimming ring in his hand, almost all without life jackets.
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