The boat, dangerously crammed with more than 100 people, got into trouble just off the French Coast in the early hours, leading to the deaths of five of those attempting the crossing, including a child. It happened just hours after MPs passed the government's Rwanda Bill, which is designed to deter people from attempting crossings like this. Our correspondent Andrew Harding, was on that beach in the early hours of this morning, just north of Wimara, filming as police ran towards the people smugglers and those who paid them to cross. They'd only been at sea a short time when they got into difficulty. Well, we can join Andrew now. Andrew.

Good evening, Rita. The smugglers in this area have access to almost 150 miles of coastline from which to launch their small boats. That makes it very rare, very difficult to actually witness one of those launches as it happens. But that's what happened to us in the very early hours of this morning on a big, beautiful beach close to to a French golf resort.

A skirmish early this morning on a French beach.

Okay, we're just running to catch up with some migrants here.

The police are trying to stop a small boat from leaving the shore. It turns violent, and the police are failing. The boat is dangerously overloaded.

It looks like the migrants who did get onto that boat are in But as we watch, we have no idea that people on board are dying, including a seven-year-old girl.

To understand how this happened, we need to go back to yesterday afternoon with crowds jostling at the bus station in Calais, anxious to get to the beaches outside town, the smugglers muscling in. The forecast is for a clear, calm night in the channel. Perfect conditions for a crossing. Young men from Syria, from Sudan. None put off by news that they might end up being deported from Britain to Rwanda. Are you worried that you might be sent to Rwanda by the British? No, if it's safe and I can study in Rwanda, then that's fine, too, he says. You hear that? Yeah. You don't want that? No, I don't want that. But it is not stopping you today? No. Nothing will stop you?

No, no, no, don't stop me.

Waiting for the migrants along the French coastline, a high tech force funded now by Britain, which is spending millions of pounds on drones and other gear to help the French police find and stop the small boats. And yet, compared with the same period last year, the number of crossings has risen. We need more equipment and more staff, says Mathilde Pautel, who coordinates the police effort here. Our officers are brave, but the number of people getting on each boat is rising. Official footage of French border police in the channel earlier this year, a difficult rescue operation in rough seas. As the number of attempted crossings rises, so does the death toll among migrants. Adding to the sense of crisis here, a new development. Hundreds of Vietnamese have recently begun arriving at the Coast. We met this group camped in a forest.

The Vietnamese people here seem quite confused about where they're going. They don't even know if they're supposed to end up in England. All they do tell us is that they are escaping from gangsters back in Vietnam who they owe money to.

Two years ago, it was Albanian migrants. Now it's these people from Vietnam swelling the numbers. And so to events overnight. We head to a beach south of Calais, a popular launch site for small boats, and we sit for hours in the sunlight and wait. Is there somebody walking there? I can hear somebody walking nearby there. Two shadows, almost certainly smugglers, come to check we're not police. Hello. Above us, a police plane circles. We've arranged for a BBC cameraman to be on board. The crew spot two groups of migrants on their thermal imaging camera. They're in the sand dunes and moving towards each other. On the beach, a French foot patrol quickly arrives. Surely the migrants will give up now, but they don't. Suddenly, the beach erupts in shouting.

Okay, we are running with the police as they try to intercept a group of, it looks like 60 or 70 migrants.

And now things turn violent. Fireworks thrown at the police. Several young men pulling out crude weapons.

You can see the smugglers here. Some of them have sticks. They're trying to protect the migrants as they head towards the sea to stop the police from stopping them.

And it works. A few stragglers are behind, but the boat is allowed to move out towards open water. Look at the child on someone's shoulders on the right. Could the French police have done more to stop this? We ask one officer. We're not allowed to go in the water, he replies. Did you notice they had sticks and there were children, too, so we had to be careful. The boat is wildly overloaded. On the right here, you can see another child being led out in an orange life jacket. More than 100 people are trying to squeeze on board. Somewhere in the Scrum, a seven-year-old girl's last moments. It sounds like someone crying for help. Rescue boats do arrive a little later. The five dead are taken away. But then something remarkable happens. 58 people, more than half the boat's original passengers, remain on board, refusing offers of rescue. Instead, they start their motor and manage to get out into the middle of the channel, where they're picked up by this British vessel and brought to the country they were ready to take such risks to reach. A reminder of how hard it is to deter some people and how complicated it can be for the police to intervene.

Now, some people watching that may well ask, why don't the French police take much more aggressive action to stop those boats? Well, one answer is that the police are, as we saw today, facing increasing levels of violence from the migrants, from the smugglers who are fighting with stones and rocks against each other, and particularly against the police. It makes it very difficult for the police to intervene without risking making the situation much worse already in what very difficult, dangerous circumstances.