DOZENS of asylum seekers who drowned in the worst disaster of its kind in the Channel last year likely perished in British waters, according to a new documentary and documents. 

At least 27 people died, including three children, with five still missing, after the dinghy got into difficulty while travelling from France to Britain in the early hours of November 24 last year. 

In the immediate aftermath, British ministers claimed that the boat had been in French waters when it capsized. This remains the official explanation a year on from the disaster. 

However, new evidence, revealed by ITV’s documentary The Crossing, suggests that the boat had drifted into British territory when passengers slipped into the water and drowned. 

The French coastguard’s call logs of the incident, obtained by the documentary team, indicated that those on board repeatedly called both the French and British emergency services in the hours before the boat sank. 

The documentary, which aired on Monday night, also found that there were more than a dozen vessels within a two-mile radius of the refugee boat during the two and a half hours it took to sink. 

Each could have arrived within minutes, but no mayday call was broadcast, the team found. 

One of the two survivors of the disaster, Somali asylum-seeker Issa Mohammed, told the programme that people were calling the emergency services from eight different phones. 

“Children were screaming, all I could hear were the screams of people drowning,” he said. “I saw dead bodies floating by my side. That’s when the horror kicked in.”

The call logs, which have also been released to French lawyers acting for the families of the victims and published in newspaper Le Monde, show that the first call was made to the French coastguard at 1.51am when a passenger stayed on the phone for 14 minutes pleading for help. 

The passengers were wrongly informed by the emergency services that help was on its way. 

In the following hours, the logs suggest the British and French services argued between themselves over who was responsible for responding to the boat in distress as the passengers repeatedly sent the GPS location of the vessel. 

At 4.16am, a last call was made to the French coastguard, saying: “People are in the water, it’s over.”

The French eventually closed their incident log at 4.34am presuming that the British services had rescued the asylum-seekers. 

It wasn’t until 2pm — nine hours later — that a French fisherman spotted the bodies in the water and raised the alarm. When the French coast guard arrived they found only two survivors. 

Matthew Schanck, a maritime expert instructed by lawyers for some of the victims’ families, told ITV: “The fact of the matter is over 30 people were left in the middle of one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world slowly perishing one by one and almost nothing happened.

“If this was a vessel with 34 French or British tourists on board the response would have been on a different planet.”

While the French coastguard has disclosed its record of emergency calls to lawyers in the case, the British authorities have not. The incident is being investigated in Britain by the Marine Accident Investigation Branch.

Families of the victims have said they’ve been left without answers in the year since their loved ones perished. 

Care4Calais founder Clare Moseley said: “The callousness and apathy of authorities that leave tortured families waiting over a year for answers is scandalous.  

“We must urgently know what lessons should be learned from this incident before more people die.” 

A Home Office spokesperson said: “All of the operational teams involved stand ready to respond 365 days a year and work tirelessly to save every person they possibly can.”