The body of British technology magnate Mike Lynch was recovered on Thursday from the wreckage of his family yacht, which sank during a violent storm off the coast of Sicily earlier this week, a source close to the rescue operation said.
Lynch’s 18-year-old daughter Hannah is still missing, the source said. The bodies of the other four people who disappeared when the boat sank were recovered from the yacht on Wednesday.
The British-flagged 56-metre superyacht Bayesian, with 22 passengers and crew on board, was anchored off the harbour of Porticello near Palermo when it disappeared into the waves within minutes of the onset of bad weather.
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 major US fraud trial.
His body was brought ashore in a blue body bag and taken by ambulance to the morgue of a nearby hospital.
In addition to Lynch and his daughter, other people who failed to escape from the boat were Judy and Jonathan Bloomer, CEOs of Morgan Stanley International, and Clifford Chance lawyer Chris Morvillo and his wife Neda Morvillo.
Fifteen people, including Lynch’s wife, were able to escape to safety, while the body of the ship’s cook, Canadian-Antiguan citizen Recaldo Thomas, was found near the wreckage a few hours after the disaster.
Specialized rescue teams have been searching the interior of the sunken yacht’s hull for the past three days. However, due to the depth and narrowness of the areas the divers are searching, the operations have proven difficult, the fire department said.
The organization compares the efforts to those undertaken on a larger scale in the case of the Costa Concordia, the luxury cruise ship that capsized off the Italian island of Giglio in January 2012, killing 32 people.
UNSINKABLE
The disaster has baffled marine experts, who believed that such a vessel, built by Italian luxury yacht builder Perini and presumably with top-notch equipment and safety features, should be able to withstand such weather conditions.
The public prosecutor’s office in the nearby town of Termini Imerese has launched an investigation and authorities have begun questioning passengers and witnesses.
Captain James Cutfield and his eight surviving crew members have not commented publicly on the disaster.
Giovanni Costantino, CEO of Italy’s Sea Group, which includes Perini, said the Bayesian is “one of the safest boats in the world” and essentially unsinkable.
In interviews with Italian media, he added that he believed the disaster was due to a chain of human errors and that the storm was expected.
“The ship sank because it took on water. Investigators have yet to determine why this happened,” Costantino said late Wednesday evening on the television news program TG1.
Citing data from the yacht’s automatic tracking system and existing footage, Costantino said it took 16 minutes for the yacht to sink after the wind began to attack and take on water.
Costantino said the reputation of the Milan-listed company had suffered “enormous damage” and that its share price had fallen by 2.5 percent since the disaster.
(Written by Crispian Balmer; Reporting by Giselda Vagnoni, additional reporting by Giulia Segreti; Editing by Bernadette Baum and Sharon Singleton)
