[nomadking]

I thought I remembered similar stories before this and sure enough.

Nine suspected illegal immigrants had to be rescued when they became stranded on a small inflatable dinghy in the English Channel.

The two Pakistani men are being investigated by border officials after being rescued from the English Channel in a child’s inflatable dinghy

July 2015

Migrants desperate to get to England from the French port of Calais are now trying to swim across the English Channel - with disastrous consequences, reports the BBC's Paddy O'Connell.
Last summer, sitting outside his pub near Dover, landlord Nigel Wyndmus saw a small dinghy. A cutter from the coastguard drew up alongside.
At first he mistook what was happening for a training exercise.
"The boat was just a few hundred yards out," Mr Wyndmus said, "and we realised that it was illegal immigrants trying to get to England."

From 2001

Two would-be asylum seekers who used children’s inflatable rafts in a desperate attempt to paddle across the English Channel were released by French police without charge last night.
The immigrants, from Lithuania, had been on what coastguards described as “a children’s Lilo” for 10 hours as they tried to navigate their way across the world’s busiest shipping lane.