Naval Service divers will return to the sunken trawler Pere Charlestoday in the hope of finding the bodies of her missing crewmen in the living quarters after yesterday clearing debris and searching other areas of the vessel.
According to Lt Cdr Terry Ward of the Naval Service, eight divers carried out four dives yesterday on the Pere Charlesand cleared the wheelhouse of debris which had come loose since she sank in rough seas while returning to port at Dunmore East on January 10th.
The divers, who went down two at a time and worked in relays, also searched both the fish deck and the fish hold for the five crewmen lost when she sank, and they will today search the galley and living quarters of the steel hulled trawler.
So far, the divers have found no bodies but it is hoped that because the ship sank so quickly that the bodies of skipper Tom Hennessy, his uncle Pat, Pat Coady, Billy O'Connor and Andriy Dyrin are in the galley.
Local fishermen in Dunmore East believe that as the trawler was returning with her catch, there was no reason for any of the crew to be on deck and that they would have been in the galley when she suddenly went down two miles off Hook Head.
Meanwhile a team of Garda divers carried out three dives yesterday on the wreck of the Honeydew IIwhich is lying on her port side in some 30 metres of water some miles southeast of Ram's Head in Co Waterford.
According to Declan Geoghegan of the Coast Guard, garda divers spent much of their time at the wreck clearing away nets and other debris.
"They will go back out first thing in the morning to do an intensive search of the wheelhouse which appears to be substantially intact," said Mr Geoghegan who is co-ordinating the search effort for missing Honeydew IIskipper, Ger Bohan and his crewman, Tomasz Jagla.