PORTICELLO, Italy >> Four bodies were found on board the sunken wreckage of a yacht belonging to the wife of British technology magnate Mike Lynch on Wednesday, sources close to the rescue operation said.
The identities of the victims were not immediately released by authorities. Three of the bodies were brought ashore and taken to nearby hospitals for identification. The fourth body was brought ashore at dusk.
Britain’s Daily Telegraph reported that two of the dead were Lynch and his 18-year-old daughter. Local authorities in Sicily declined to comment on the report.
The British-flagged 184-foot superyacht Bayesian was carrying 22 people and anchored off Porticello Harbour when it was hit by a violent storm at dawn on Monday.
Lynch, 59, was one of Britain’s best-known technology entrepreneurs and had invited friends to join him on the yacht to celebrate his recent acquittal in a US fraud trial.
In addition to Lynch and his daughter, Judy and Jonathan Bloomer, CEO of Morgan Stanley International, as well as Clifford Chance lawyer Chris Morvillo and his wife Neda Morvillo were also missing after the disaster.
Specialized rescue teams have been searching the interior of the sunken yacht’s hull for the past two days. The victims were believed to be trapped in cabins that were extremely difficult to access. Divers could only stay in the ship for 8 to 10 minutes before having to resurface.
Fifteen people managed to leave the yacht before it capsized at dawn. The body of the cook on board, Canadian-Antiguan citizen Recaldo Thomas, was found near the wreck hours after the disaster.
The Bayesian lies on its side at a depth of about 50 meters and appears to be largely intact.
In addition to the diving team, the coast guard also deployed a remote-operated vehicle to search the seabed and take underwater pictures and videos, which could provide “useful and timely information” to prosecutors investigating the accident, it said.
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The coast guard questioned survivors, including the captain of the Bayesian, as well as passengers on the yacht moored alongside who had witnessed the ship sinking, judicial sources said.
Sources added that no one is currently under investigation.
Experts cannot explain how a large luxury ship, which is said to have first-class equipment and safety precautions, could sink within minutes, as witnesses reported. The yacht anchored next to it was spared by the storm.
The Bayesian, which belonged to Lynch’s wife, was built in 2008 by the Italian shipbuilder Perini and last refitted in 2020. According to the manufacturers, it had the tallest aluminum mast in the world at 72 meters.
Lynch has been called Britain’s Bill Gates. He built Britain’s largest software company, Autonomy, which was sold to HP for $11 billion in 2011. The deal then collapsed spectacularly when the US technology giant accused him of fraud, leading to a lengthy trial.
In June, a jury in San Francisco acquitted him of all charges. Morvillo represented him at the trial, while Bloomer acted as a character witness for him.
The Bayesian’s captain, James Cutfield, a 51-year-old New Zealander who survived the shipwreck, was a “very good sailor” and “highly valued” in the Mediterranean, his brother Mark told the New Zealand Herald.
Matthew Schanck, chairman of the Maritime Search and Rescue Council, a UK-based non-profit organisation that trains sea rescuers, said the Bayesian was the victim of a weather-related incident of “high significance”.
“If it was a waterspout, and that appears to be the case, I would call it a so-called ‘black swan’ event,” he told Reuters, referring to a rare and unpredictable phenomenon.
