Seven men are huddled, cold and wet, in a car park at Samphire Hoe near Dover talking to a Coastguard Search and Rescue officer. Four have turquoise blankets wrapped tightly around their shoulders by the time an ambulance arrives on Friday lunchtime to check if they have any injuries or hypothermia.

On the rocks of a beach below, a dinghy with a small engine is deflating. Two lifejackets and a red fuel tank float limply inside it. A black glove and coat have been abandoned nearby on the pebble beach, which is overlooked by Dover’s white cliffs.

The men are Iranian, and have travelled overnight in their inflatable craft through thick fog across the English Channel, the latest migrants to arrive during an unprecedented week which has seen 55 caught by border patrol, in what is thought to be a rush ahead of the March Brexit deadline.

Most travelled by boat across the Dover Strait, mainly from Iran and including a four-year-old boy, with seven of the suspected migrants discovered on a lorry from France.

The Coastguard responded to six separate incidents in three days in a surge of crossings that has never been seen before. New smuggling networks into the UK run by criminal gangs and the impending arrival of winter, as well as the Brexit deadline which it is assumed will harden the border, are all thought to be reasons for the increase.