Pat Hennessy, whose brother Tom (32) and uncle Pat (48) drowned when the Pere Charles trawler sank off Hook Head on 10 January, spoke to the Sunday Tribune as the annual memorial mass for those lost at sea took place in Dunmore East yesterday.

The bodies of Tom and Pat Hennessy and the other three crew members - Billy O'Connor, Pat Coady and Andriy Dyrin - were not found despite one of the biggest recovery operations in Irish history.

"We are all really missing Tom and Pat. It is so hard when you have no funerals. We have never got to see their bodies so we think of them as being gone more than being dead, " Hennessy said.

A poignant monument commemorates the men from Dunmore East whose lives have been lost at sea, and a special memorial mass and wreath-laying ceremony takes place there annually on the first Saturday in March.

The names of 13 men were carved onto the marble monument before yesterday's ceremony.

The bodies of local men who drown at sea often remain there, never to be found, and a heartrending poem carved into the harbour memorial pays tribute to these 'Souls of the Sea'.

As well as the names of the Pere Charles crewmen, the names of Ger Bohan, skipper of the Honeydew II, and his missing crewman Tomasz Jagla, who were drowned when their boat went down just hours after the Pere Charles, were carved onto the plaque.

Although the wreckage of the Honeydew II washed up on the coast, Bohan and Jagla's bodies were never recovered.

Speaking about the Pere Charles, Hennessy said, "After the navy divers discovered the bodies were not in the vessel we thought that they might be washed up on the shore or found in the water but our hopes are diminishing now as time goes on.

"A lot of nights I expect the phone to ring with the news that a body had been found but it is nearly two months ago now so it doesn't look good."

Hennessy, who lives in Kerry, travelled to Dunmore East for yesterday's memorial mass and said it was comforting for all the families who had lost loved ones to meet up.

"People have been fabulous with all the support they have given us over the past two months. A lot of people travelled over 200 miles to go to the mass and the same people travelled the same distance to participate in the search. I will never forget how the people of Dunmore East opened up their homes to allow complete strangers to stay with them when they were participating in the search."

Hennessy, who worked as a fisherman himself for 12 years, said "his heart goes out" to the fisherman who had to go straight back to work after helping on the search for the victims of the Pere Charles and Honeydew II.

As well as the names of the five Pere Charles crew and the two Honeydew II crew, six other names were also added to the memorial for yesterday's commemoration.