It has now emerged that a second boat, organised by the same smugglers, was forced to return to shore after suffering engine failure on the same night.

A local resident claimed those taking part in the Hastings incident had chanted anti-migrant slogans, shouting: “Don’t bring any more of those home,” referring to refugees, adding: “We’re full up, that’s why we stopped our donations.”

‘You could hear the hatred in their voices’

The witness, who only gave her name as Zoe, said she had been walking with her boyfriend near the Old Town beach when she spotted the incident.

Zoe told James O’Brien, the LBC presenter: “We heard the lifeboat station opening up and thought: ‘Oh, they have a call,’ and started watching. 

“As the lifeboat crew pulled the boat out and were going to go into the water, a group of people stood directly in the line of the boat, so the boat couldn’t be put in the water.

“It was really upsetting and you could hear the hatred in their voices. It really shook me to the core and we thought of it when we saw the news that people had passed away again,” referring to the 27 people who died in the Channel tragedy.

Nick Limpkin, from nearby Battle, wrote on Twitter that he saw local fishermen join the protest. One emptied his fish waste in the path of the lifeboat and was “hassling the crew trying to launch”.

Local fishermen denied attempting to stop the launch of the lifeboat, claiming that there had simply been an argument over one of their number getting in the way of the boat.

One, who wanted to remain anonymous, said: “The fishing boat didn’t stop the RNLI from going out. He was in the way, discarding some undersized fish back into the sea.

“The lifeboat had to reverse up and go out somewhere else, so the RNLI guy got a bit upset.”

The RNLI said the Hastings lifeboat had been responding to a call for a rescue operation overseen by the Maritime and Coastguard Agency. 

The incident was investigated by Sussex police, but no arrests were made.

Mark Dowie, chief executive of the RNLI, has said that it has a moral and legal duty to rescue migrants in danger in the sea.

A spokesman for the RNLI said: “There are instances where our crew at Hastings have had negative comments made to them about their rescues of those who have crossed the Channel. However, Hastings RNLI receives overwhelming support from the local community.”

Another crossing attempt made hours after tragedy

The Telegraph has established that several hours after the doomed migrant boat sank off Calais, another inflatable boat containing around 30 people from Somalia, Kurdistan and Eritrea tried to leave from a different beach outside Calais.

Two Somali men said that they were told by Kurdish people smugglers that the first boat had made it safely to England, only discovering several days later that their fellow countrymen had perished along with two dozen more migrants.

The men said they had paid 2,000 euros for the trip, because they could help carry and crew the boat, while women were charged 2,500 euros.

One teenager, aged 19, who said he was told by the French authorities to return to Belgium, where he went to school, said: “We were in the same group but we went out in two boats. I wanted to go in the other boat but an Eritrean man said there was too many people so I went in the other.”

But after about 15 minutes, the boat’s engine stopped working. They were able to restart the motor but it repeatedly stopped working, forcing them to call the police for help.

The teenager added: “The smugglers said there had not been any calls from the other boat, so it must have made it to England. They gave my money back except the 100 euros, because we had been in the sea.

“Then three days later we heard that [one passenger] had been rescued and Halimo [another passenger] had died. Then we knew the truth that the boat had sunk.”