From festive swims to migrant crossings - why every life at sea matters

A festive tragedy off the Devon coast exposes a brutal truth: when lives are lost at sea, compassion is not applied equally, says Melissa Pawson – and migrants pay the price

As usual, we were late getting to the beach. Weaving through the crowds gathering for the Christmas Day swim, we reached the sand with just a few minutes to spare. In my hometown in Devon, hundreds – if not thousands – turn up in Santa hats and reindeer ears, carrying flasks of hot chocolate (or something stronger), ready to dip in the icy waters of the English Channel at precisely 11am.

My family and I were still shedding layers when the crowd began the countdown; I barely caught a glimpse of the sea to assess conditions before running to the shoreline and plunging in. I know it’ll happen every year, but I was still shocked by the cold that caught in my chest and quickened my breath. That year, there was also a current to contend with.

For a few long seconds I realised I was already out of my depth and being pulled along at pace – panic over in a moment, a few effortful strokes brought my toes back into contact with the sand. Only an hour or so later, after a shower and a glass of mulled wine, did I learn we’d been warned not to swim that morning.

Just five miles down the coast, two people had been pulled out to sea during another festive swim. Very soon, it was announced they were missing, presumed dead.

Emergency services had been called to Budleigh Salterton at 10.25am after several people got into difficulty in the water there – just over half an hour before the swim I attended in Exmouth. The waves in Budleigh had been over 1.5m high and were crashing over people’s heads on a beach that shelves dangerously quickly into deep water. The two missing men had reportedly gone in to help other swimmers in distress and did not come back.

The news was a sobering reality check – a heavy reminder of the brutal power of the sea, even on the most light‑hearted of occasions. But it hit home for other reasons too.

Watching the search for the missing men took me back to many hours spent scanning the horizon of a different sea a few weeks earlier, praying there would be no bad news.

Not long before Christmas I returned from several weeks on board a civil search and rescue vessel in the central Mediterranean. During the trip the crew rescued 160 people – one as young as six months old – from unseaworthy boats attempting to cross from Libya to Italy. Many of those rescued told us they believed they would have died at sea had our boat not found them.

For the last 10 years Italy and Malta’s coastguards have not conducted proactive search and rescue operations on this stretch of water – in that time more than 30,000 people have died or gone missing.

Instead, Malta reportedly leaves distress calls unanswered on a regular basis when the calls come from boats carrying migrants. Italy has “repeatedly blocked” civil search and rescue vessels, according to reports, most recently detaining the boat I was on for not communicating with the Libyan coastguard – who are known to shoot at rescue crews.

So why are there two tiers of rights at sea?

Shortly after emergency services were called to Budleigh, a full search was launched: Exmouth and Beer coastguard boats and helicopters, and RNLI lifeboats from Exmouth, Teignmouth and Torbay were out for two full days. At the end of Boxing Day the search at sea was tragically called off with no survivors found.

Some commenters on local Facebook groups called it “stupid” to go in; one swimmer told BBC News it had been a ”mistake”. Having been swept up in the seasonal joy and crowd mentality of a swim along the coast, I can see how even experienced swimmers were caught out in Budleigh.

It’s easy to imagine myself in that scenario – just a few miles from where I’d been in the water, revelling in the same eccentric Christmas traditions. Many readers will imagine themselves there too.

Where empathy stretches – and so often fails – is in response to lives lost after more serious, desperate choices. Luck still separates us, but if you’ve never had to face it, it is harder to imagine risking the perils of the sea on a dinghy in search of safety.

Yet this imaginative effort is one small part of the picture. A much larger part is the near‑constant barrage of hostile messaging about migrants that flows daily from media and politicians, distancing us from the experiences of people on the move.

A recent Runnymede Trust report found British media and politicians played a key role in creating a “racist narrative” about migrants between 2010 and 2024. That messaging portrayed people migrating – most often people of colour – as a “threat” and “inherently illegal”, used to justify “harsh and discriminatory migration policies”.

Those policies ultimately result in deaths at sea. In the latest tragedy at the UK border, three people, including two children, died after they were likely crushed in a dinghy crossing the Channel in September. Researchers and rights organisations say deaths like this are happening not because of criminal gangs but because UK policy prioritises border security over people’s safety at sea.

These decisions – often made far from the realities on the ground – push people at our borders into a deadly cycle that is hard to escape. French police – with over £760m in funding from the UK taxpayer – use violent tactics against people on the move, including slashing inflatable boats in the water and unleashing police dogs on migrants. With no safe options for staying in northern France, and no safe options for leaving, many people resort to dangerous crossings.

The UK government has spent a further £3.77bn on private contracts for surveillance and security on the Channel since 2015 – during which time the British public has endured austerity, a pandemic and the cost‑of‑living crisis. Despite this spending, crossings have not stopped – and neither have the deaths.

This political game to drive down net migration numbers will not be won – and we could all pay the price as human‑rights protections are rolled back across the board in its pursuit.

On the long journey back to port in Italy last month, I spent days talking to many of the rescued people on board. They told me horrifying stories of torture and beatings after being kidnapped by militias or detained by Libyan authorities – authorities that receive funding and support from the EU, again in the name of curbing migration.

The survivors told me about families waiting for news of safe arrival, showed me baby pictures and asked about my own family. One man from Sudan said the time with us on board helped him forget the worst of what he had been through at home and on his journey. Surrounded by the vast expanse of the Mediterranean, we connected over that strange experience – as any humans would.

It was right that a full search and rescue response was launched for the missing men from Budleigh – the loss of those two lives is a tragedy, as is the loss of any precious human life. That right should be afforded to everyone, no matter the colour of their skin or their reason for being in the water. If we are collectively looking for a word for 2026, let it be compassion.