‘It was like a scene from Shrek’: charity rowers chased after being mistaken for migrants

“It was just another fairly mundane day,” according to crew member Matthew Parker, one of the organisers of the four-strong crew’s 900-mile (1,448km) journey from Land’s End to John o’Groats to raise money for motor neurone disease (MND) research.

“We got round Dover on Wednesday, and that’s a sort of high-stress, high-tariff situation, and we’d headed offshore because of where the winds were, so it was a fairly quiet, benign day,” said Parker. “We were just, you know, plodding through.”

The Row4MND were crossing the Thames estuary as day broke on Thursday morning. By nightfall, Rupert Lowe MP had posted an image of them on Instagram and X and a crowd had gathered on the beach to “stop the boat” – convinced the crew were asylum seekers.

The crew sleep and row in two-hour shifts overnight, eating freeze-dried meals on their breaks. Parker had woken at 6am to take the oar, eating his breakfast – overnight oats, dried fruit and powdered cream – as the sun rose.

“I work in London and I cross the Thames almost every day, sometimes several times. You’ve no concept of how big the estuary is out there and how much is going on.”

He described waiting as towering Chinese container ships yawed past the tiny rowboat along the shipping lane. The crossing took a total of five or six hours to row before they reached Felixstowe.

“So far, the beauty of the English and Welsh coastline has absolutely amazed me. There are so many things that you’re just not aware of,” said Parker.

By evening, they were rounding Great Yarmouth harbour when a forecast headwind forced them closer to shore. Unbeknown to the crew, however, shortly after 8pm, Lowe had posted a grainy image of the boat on Instagram.

Lowe, who sits as an independent after being expelled from the Reform UK party, demanded “mass deportations” and a small, angry crowd appeared on the shore.

Parker said: “The first thing that we saw was that there were people just floating about on the beach. There were about half a dozen people just standing about and sort of looking at us.” He added: “I thought it was a bit odd.”

Then the boat received a call from the Dover coastguard. “They said: ‘Crean, Crean’ and gave our call sign. ‘We’ve had reports of an orange dinghy bobbing around. Have you seen anything?’

“I think what he said was: ‘This is going to sound ridiculous, but there’s been a report that there’s a migrant boat and we think it’s you, or people think it’s you, and the police are involved, and the police are asking us to get a lifeboat out to find out what’s going on.’”

In the end, the crew managed to avert an interception, but the crowd on the shore had grown and they were none the wiser.

“There were people following us up the coast after the event with torches. They reminded me of the swamp scene from Shrek, when the villagers go to get rid of the ogre. That was a bit disturbing, but we didn’t feel threatened and there’s no way they were coming. We were a mile offshore and we could move faster than any of them.”

He said they rowed until first light and anchored when the tide changed, checking phones and speaking to their team on land, saying they quickly discovered: “The world’s gone mad.”

Among the comments on Lowe’s post was one man calling for the formation of “civilian militias” to patrol the beaches and make citizen’s arrests.

The Row4MND crew, who are attempting to raise £57m for MND research over four challenges in four years, consists of two former Royal Marine commandos, a record-breaking sailor and Parker, a former tech chief executive.

They had been deluged with messages and quickly realised what had happened could be big news.

Parker said: “What’s going on with migrants at the moment and boats in the Channel is really serious, tragic, and not something to be laughed at, but the nearest piece of land from Great Yarmouth is something like 200 miles away.

“If you're going to do a crossing – a stealth crossing – that ain’t where you’re going to do it. And I know how hard it was for us. Try doing that in a dinghy with 50 or 60 or 70 migrants on board.
So we’re chuckling away at the slightly ridiculous nature of it.”

Parker, who was driven to fundraising for MND after a close friend’s wife died of the condition, said that Lowe had been forgiven, not least because donations had increased by more than £20,000 to almost £106,000.

Lowe promised to donate £1,000 to the team but said: “I make no apologies over being vigilant for my constituents. It is a national crisis. No mass deportations for the charity rowers, but we definitely need it for the illegal immigrants.”

Parker added that his time at sea had deepened his empathy for asylum seekers, who risk treacherous Channel crossings in small boats.

“I love the sea but it can be very unforgiving. I see videos and stuff in the media about what these people are doing and just think of the desperation that must be going on for them to do that.”

There are no confirmed reports of any small boats arriving on the Norfolk coast, but Border Force did not reply to requests for data. Lowe could not be reached for further comment.

Norfolk police said they had received a call at about 8.50pm from coastguards to relay reports of a boat “suspected of carrying illegal immigrants”. It added: “Following further investigation, HM Coastguard confirmed that the individuals on board were members of a charity rowing crew. No police action was required.”

Photographs by Mike Newman/PA/Jason Bye/Alamy