On 28 October 2015, a migrant boat left the coast of Western Turkey heading to the closest European coast—the Greek island of Lesvos. The sea was rough, and the boat was old and overcrowded with more than 300 passengers. It sank 280m beyond the maritime border into Greece, in EU territorial waters, resulting in the death of at least 43 people. It was the deadliest incident in a period known as the ‘long summer of migration’, when over a million refugees and migrants attempted to reach EU shores by sea. The incident was widely reported in international media. That reporting credited Frontex, the EU’s border agency, and the Greek coastguard, as having carried out of a successful and competent rescue operation. Our analysis disputes this, however, and opens up possibilities for civil society groups to call for accountability for lives lost in the Mediterranean. One of the survivors, the artist Amel Alzakout recorded the journey and the shipwreck on a waterproof camera attached to her wrist. This footage provides a unique situated perspective of this tragic event at the threshold of Europe.