Charles Devos, a French lifeboatman who was one of the first people to arrive at the scene of Wednesday’s tragedy, said: “It was a bit like the film Titanic when you saw all these people plunged into the water, drowning, with no means of being able to be rescued.”

Before the crossing attempt, the migrants had been living in camps, on the street, near a canal and sleeping in Calais train station, according to La Voix du Nord newspaper.

A group of Afghan teenagers in a French migrant camp revealed that they feared five of their friends were among those who died in the tragedy.

Hassan, 30, said a group of his friends decided to cross the Channel on Wednesday and that he had not heard from them since.

Meanwhile, it emerged that smugglers shot a scared migrant in the kneecaps after he refused to board a boat on the same night as the tragedy.

However, French authorities backtracked on claims to have arrested the smugglers behind the disaster.

Gérald Darmanin, the French interior minister, had said that four suspected traffickers accused of being directly linked to the doomed crossing had been arrested. On Wednesday morning, he said that a fifth man suspected of buying inflatable boats for the crossing had been detained.

However, the Lille prosecutor’s office has all but ruled out any link between those arrested and the dead migrants.

In a message seen by The Telegraph, it said that there was “no objective link” with its investigation into people trafficking by a criminal gang and manslaughter related to the deaths.