At 122 pages, including introduction, Small Boat by Vincent Delecroix serves as a concise and powerful thought piece on the migrant crisis in the English channel.

I picked it up this summer when the media noise and frenzy around channel crossings in small boats was at an all time high. I felt it was important for me to read. However, the noise was so loud and the vitriol so toxic, that I couldn’t face the book for a number of months. I have finally read it in November, just a week shy of the time events took place four years ago, and on which the book is based.

Based on real events

Overnight on 23-24 November 2021, with dozens of other vessels attempting crossings, a small six-metre zodiac dinghy with at least 29 migrant passengers trying to reach Britain, got into difficulty. The outboard motor failed, the dinghy began to lose air and take on water. Some passengers had life jackets, some did not, and many could not swim. Desperate calls were made to British and French coastguard authorities.

At the time of the first call, the geolocation of the dinghy was in French waters meaning they should lead rescue operations. The French chose not to, citing that the dinghy was very close to British waters and by the time they would reach them, the dinghy would be on British territory. They claimed that a nearby French rescue vessel was attending elsewhere and unavailable – evidence of which has never been found. A French trawler spotted the dinghy and asked for guidance – the French coastguard told them their rescue vessel was heading for it.

A back and forth of calls and (mis)communications between the countries ensued for several hours, while passengers of the dinghy made more than a dozen terrified calls to the French coastguard that the boat was taking on water. The recordings of the French calls include off microphone comments made by the operator: ‘Don’t you get it? You won’t be saved.’ and, ‘It wasn’t me who told you to leave.’ That night 27 of the 29 passengers drowned.

Small Boat by Vincent Delecroix is a fictionalised account of the subsequent interviewing of the French coastguard operator, as the police investigate whether negligence and a failure to assist persons in danger has occurred. The book is split into three parts and was shortlisted for the 2025 International Booker Prize.

Part I

The first part is set mostly within the interview room, where the operator sits opposite a police officer who is remarkably like her in appearance. They grapple endlessly with whether there has been an act of negligence, an error in judgement, a lack of duty of care of the operator, and where the guilt and blame lies. The operator refuses to be drawn into taking the blame, despite the voice recordings being played back to them indicating their frustration and apathy. She argues that she is no more to blame than the traffickers, the faulty boat, the sea itself and the migrants who couldn’t ‘sit still’ ie stay in their own country, who had to leave and who put themselves in mortal danger.

The arguments go round in circles and are understandably frustrating to read. The policewoman is shocked at the operator’s lack of empathy, which the latter argues is necessary for their job. She argues she can’t do her job if she is panicking, screaming, crying and metaphorically in the boat with them. Similarly with the dehumanisation of the migrants, the operator argues that they simply have to work by sorting and prioritising the calls in order to do their job – they can’t make it personal. The operator regularly checks out of the interview, daydreaming and staring out the window.

Do you know how many lives the English saved that night? Let me tell you, she said, with icy fury: ninety-eight, exactly. Does that make you think? Since you clearly take a book-keeping approach to the matter, let’s put it like that: ninety-eight lives saved on one side, twenty-seven dead on the other. Looks like you didn’t come across the right migrants, unlike them: yours weren’t savable I guess, or maybe the others were professional swimmers. (Page 45, Small Boat by Vincent Delecroix)

Part II

The second part is from the perspective of the migrant passenger who made the 14 calls to the authorities pleading for help. Over the course of fifteen short pages, we witness the sinking of the dinghy and the deaths of the passengers. The darkness of the sky and sea that envelopes them, the onset of hypothermia and the lucid dream of a life in England as life itself slips from them. It is a difficult and sobering read, and the narrative is fragmented by the patchy phone signal, half uttered or misheard phrases on the calls, unknowable passing of time in the water as numbness takes hold and they dip in and out of consciousness.

When there was practically nothing left of the boat, and they were all scattered about in the water, the young man made a final call. He said It’s finished and soon after the signal was lost amid some indistinct shouting. A few moments later there was nothing left to hold on to; he felt the piece of deck his feet were standing on under the surface disappear, and he slid into the water. (Page 86, Small Boat by Vincent Delecroix)

Part III

Outside of the interview room, we return to the operator, now suspended from duty pending investigation. As she runs along the beach, she stops and stares out to sea. It becomes a bit of a fever dream – did she go the interview after all or was it a work of her imagination as she continues to grapple with where the blame lies.

Figures walking in the distance become the figures of the two survivors. Have they come to reckon with her? The figure of the passenger and his mobile phone sinks beneath the surface to walk the seabed with the rest of his dead passengers. The sea is a dark menacing creature, swallowing and feeding on the souls of those it takes. There are chaotic glimpses of post traumatic stress and paranoia that haunt the operator. Suddenly it’s unclear who said what and to whom. She too, now, is metaphorically drowning from her actions, from her words. ‘You will not be saved.’

***

Small Boat throws us into a number of uncomfortable and thought-provoking places. It maintains throughout an ambiguity about guilt, blame and responsibility, to keep asking us to question our morals and morality. The deaths of the passengers were unavoidable in so many senses, before they even set foot in the boat and embarked on the water. The proximity of the dinghy to the switching of international borders between the two countries also undoubtedly fed into the decision making processes that took place that night.

I came away from reading it portioning blame in various directions.

• I do portion blame onto the operator and decision not to send help at the pivotal moment – the recordings are a damning insight into their ambivalent attitude towards the migrants that night.
• I portion blame onto the patchy phone signal and geolocations which create a fragmented picture of a chaotic ever-moving situation.
• I portion blame on the miscommunications between the two countries.
• I portion blame onto the traffickers, and wish that their part in all of this was covered, as they are criminals exploiting vulnerable people. I do however understand for the purposes of this storytelling, why their role has largely been excluded. Vincent Delecroix purposefully chose to focus on the operator and the voice recordings, and drawing gaze towards the traffickers would make this less impactful.

Small Boat by Vincent Delecroix is a really clever, intelligent book, and one which sparks discussion and debate.

During the first part I got slightly bogged down by the interview going round in circles or off on tangents, but I think that was the point. No one was backing down, arguments led nowhere, there is no ‘Gotcha!’ moment, just frustration. To break away from that and move to the point of view of the migrants was both heart breaking and necessary. They are the forgotten, nameless victims. It left me wondering how long it took Vincent Delacroix to write the sinking of the dinghy, and how as a writer, do you approach something so difficult?