Étaples or Étaples-sur-Mer (French pronunciation: [etapl syʁ mɛʁ]; Picard: Étape or Étape-su-Mér; formerly Dutch: Stapele; West Flemish: Stoapel) is a commune in the department of Pas-de-Calais, Hauts-de-France, northern France.

The site of modern Étaples lies on the ridge of dunes which once lay to seaward of a marsh formed off-shore from the chalk plateau of Artois.

However, excavations coordinated by Dr David Hill of Manchester University between 1984 and 1991 uncovered the remains of a substantial settlement at Visemarest near the hamlet of La Calotterie.

From their point of view, this off-shore site, protected by mud flats and marsh, was ideal as a base from which to conduct raids elsewhere, assemble the booty and ship it home.

Traffic was increased when the local railway company was amalgamated with the Chemins de fer du Nord in 1851 and the connection between Boulogne and Calais was completed in 1867, slowly reversing the decay.

The line enabled the swift transport of fish inland as far as Paris, displacing the old chasse-marée system and requiring changes to working practices in order to accommodate the rail timetables.

The railway, with its network of connections across the north of France, became of strategic importance during World War I, and it was added to temporarily during the period it lasted.

Étaples became the principal depôt and transit camp for the British Expeditionary Force in France and also the point to which the wounded were transported.

[13] The British virologist, John Oxford,[14] and other researchers, have suggested that the Étaples troop staging camp was at the centre of the 1918 flu pandemic or at least home to a significant precursor virus to it.

The camp, he noted, was 'almost infinitely expandable at very short notice', attributable to its organisation in groups of huts, each of which contained a headquarters, a cookhouse, and a store housing numerous additional tents and equipment.

When the war artist John Lavery depicted it in 1919, he showed a train in the background, running along the bank of the river below the sandy crest on which the cemetery was sited.

The town was then occupied by the Germans and during the Allied invasion was again bombarded, causing seventy civilian casualties and destroying or damaging a third of its houses.