'Little hope' for missing fishermen

DUBLIN, Ireland -- A full-scale search has resumed for eight crewmen from a French trawler which sank in heavy seas off the west coast of Ireland.

But a spokesman for the Marine Rescue Co-ordination Centre admitted there was "very little hope" of finding the men alive.

Four French fishing vessels searched through Sunday night for the crew of the French-registered An Oriant, which foundered within seconds of being swamped by a giant wave in storm conditions early on Sunday.

Three of the 11 crew were plucked from the water by rescuers but no trace was found of the others.

The MRCC said an Irish Coastguard helicopter re-joined the search in daylight on Monday and a French military aircraft was also expected to take part.

Six of the missing crew are from France. One is a Portuguese national and one is from the Republic of Ireland.

The ship, battered by 20 foot (six metre) waves and 50 knot winds, went down some 57 miles (92 km) off the west coast of Ireland, the MRCC said.

The three survivors, who spent four hours clinging to a lifebuoy, were flown to a hospital in Galway city on the west coast to be treated for hypothermia and shock.

"Just me and two crewmen, we just had time to get out... It was not possible to transmit a distress message," skipper Lerude Xavier told state broadcaster RTE Television from Galway University Hospital.

Bosun Fernando Neves spoke of their desperate attempts to help the other crewmen.

"When we are at the buoy, we stayed together. We saw another Frenchman, all the time swimming. We saw him and we try to go to get him but it's tiring and he died in my hands," Neves said.

The 125 foot (38-metre) vessel was registered in the western French port of Lorient.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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