Rescuers who pulled bodies from the sea after the 1985 Air India crash off Ireland delivered emotional testimony before a federal inquiry Wednesday, recalling a horrific scene that shook them deeply.

Daniel Brown, a Scottish-born merchant seaman on the MV Laurentian Forest, a commercial vessel that was one of the first on the scene, told of wrestling bodies and body parts slick with oil onto a lifeboat.

Crew members were crying; some were physically ill.

Brown personally dragged half a dozen bodies aboard, including that of a long-haired Sikh man whose face was riveted into his memory.

"His eyes were wide open, his mouth was wide open in a scream … He had a look of horror on his face."

Brown eventually returned to port.

"Originally I thought it was just a tough day's work," he said.

It wasn't until he sat in a pub in Dublin, watching TV coverage of the tragedy, that the enormity hit him.

He left the pub and hurriedly returned to his ship. "I went to my cabin and just cried."

Witness speaks of horrifying scene

Not many of the victims' families were in the room Wednesday to relive the events. But one who was, Susheel Gupta, walked up to Brown and embraced him after his testimony.

Gupta, whose mother died on the flight, is now a federal Crown prosecutor.

Another witness, Seanie Murphy, was emotional as he described the bodies and wreckage floating at the crash site where 329 people died when Air India Flight 182 fell victim to a terrorist's bomb.

The Irish rescuer said he had never spoken of what he saw and did that morning.

He said he has seen disaster sites, but none as devastating as this.

The inquiry is in Day 3 of its examination of the disaster.