PORTLAND (AP) – A Portland church with long-standing ties to the waterfront has held its first service for lost seafarers in years.

The Anglican Cathedral of St. Paul held the service Saturday following a spate of deaths of fishermen and workers on the waterfront.

The service memorialized the lives of five fishermen, two oil rig workers and a tugboat deckhand who died in the last year.

Most people were there to honor Christopher Cordeau, the 29-year-old deckhand from Portland who died last December, when he was crushed by a cable as his tugboat was setting an oil rig’s massive anchor.

The Very Rev. Lester York said the last such service was held in the 1980s. He asked St. Nicholas, patron saint of seafarers, to continue looking after all men and women who work on the water.