The body of British tech tycoon Mike Lynch has been recovered from a sunken superyacht off the coast of Sicily. File | Photo credit: Reuters
The body of British technology tycoon Mike Lynch is among the bodies recovered off the coast of Sicily, the Italian coast guard said on Thursday. Wreck of a superyacht Its builders had described it as unsinkable.
One woman is still missing. She has not been identified, but Lynch’s 18-year-old daughter, Hannah Lynch, has not been found. The family was mourning her death. Recently acquitted of fraud charges with the people defending him at trial in the United States.
Five others were recovered by rescue teams following Monday’s tragedy.
The 56-metre (184-foot) long British-flagged ship called the Bayesian sank in a storm early Monday morning while anchored about a kilometre (half a mile) off the coast. Civil defence officials said they believed the ship was hit by an overwater vortex, known as a waterspout, and sank rapidly.
Investigators from the Termini Imerese Public Prosecutor’s Office were collecting evidence for a criminal investigation, which they began immediately after the tragedy, though no formal suspects were publicly identified.
The chief executive of Italian Sea Group, which is owned by the Bayesian’s maker, told the AP in an interview Thursday that such superyachts “are designed to survive sinking.”
“And it’s not going to sink not only because it’s designed that way, but also because it’s a sailing ship and sailing ships are the safest ships ever built,” said CEO Giovanni Costantino.
Costantino said that “obviously they shouldn’t have hit the rocks violently enough to collapse the hull, and they shouldn’t have taken in water either”, suggesting that the second possibility was the most likely in this case.
Costantino also said that sailing ships require “more skill” to steer than motor boats.
Investigators are now looking into why the Bayesian, built by the Italian shipyard Perini Navies in 2008, sank while a nearby sailboat was unharmed. Of the 22 people on board, 15 survived by fleeing into lifeboats, including a mother who said she held on to her 1-year-old daughter on the waves to save her. They were rescued by the sailboat Sir Robert Baden Powell.
The sailboat’s captain, Kirsten Borner, said his boat suffered minimal damage — a sun awning structure was torn off — even as he estimated winds reached 12 on the Beaufort wind scale, the highest strength of a hurricane on the scale.
He said that despite the predicted storm, they remained anchored with their engines running to maintain the ship’s position.
“Another possibility is to drop the anchor before the storm and run with the wind into the open sea,” Borner said in a text message. But he said that would not have been possible for the Bayesian because its mast was 75 meters (246 feet) high.
“If there were stability problems due to the excessively high mast, the situation in the open sea would not have been better,” he said.
Boats like the Bayesian must have watertight compartments specifically designed to prevent them from sinking rapidly, catastrophically, even if some sections are flooded.
Lynch is the only person confirmed dead; the other bodies have not been formally identified by the Italian coast guard.
Besides Hannah Lynch, the missing include one of Lynch’s American lawyers, Christopher Morvillo, and his wife, Neda; and Jonathan Bloomer, the chairman of Morgan Stanley’s London-based investment banking subsidiary, and his wife, Judy.
On Monday, the body of Chef Rekaldo Thomas was the first to be recovered. His family confirmed his death.
Divers had to struggle to find bodies in the boat’s hull, 50 metres (164 feet) below the sea floor.
“We would need a crystal ball to know when we would be able to find the next body,” said fire rescue service spokesman Luca Cari.
“It’s very difficult to get into the debris,” Carrie said. “It can take up to 24 hours to get just one meter in.”