Remote-controlled underwater vehicles were on Wednesday joining specialist divers in a third day searching for the British tech tycoon Mike Lynch and others missing from the Bayesian superyacht as loved ones clung to the slimmest hopes of life.
The underwater vehicles were being used to assist divers seeking to clear a route past scattered furniture and other debris that has so far blocked access to cabins of the vessel lying 50 metres below the sea off the coast of Sicily.
Only one body had so far been recovered near the yacht, believed to be that of Recaldo Thomas, a Canadian-Antiguan chef who was working onboard. But the absence of others left faint hopes still lingering of a miracle survival. Mr Lynch and the five others were still unaccounted for since a “black swan” waterspout engulfed and sank the entrepreneur’s luxury yacht in the early hours of Monday.
The others missing are Mr Lynch’s 18-year-old daughter Hannah, the chairman of Morgan Stanley International bank Jonathan Bloomer and his wife Judy, and the Clifford Chance lawyer Chris Morvillo and his jewellery designer wife Neda.
Search crews today arrived at 6.30am local time, with a boat carrying divers seen leaving the port of Porticello at around 10.30am. Fire crews said they were accessing the yacht through natural entrances.
Italian coastguard teams were reportedly expecting to find bodies once divers finally manage to enter the yacht, which was moored when it was struck by a storm triggered by extreme heat in the Mediterranean. But amid speculation that the angle the sunken vessel is lying on the seabed could have helped to leave air pockets inside its cabins, the lack of any confirmation of further deaths led one expert to suggest that survivors might yet be found.
Dr Jean-Baptiste Souppez, a senior lecturer in mechanical, biomedical and design engineering at Aston University, said the next few hours would be “crucial” to find survivors trapped inside.
“The speed at which the vessel sank (a few minutes, according to survivor and witness accounts) and the fact that it remains intact and on its side could favour the formation of small air pockets inside,” he said.
“This is obviously highly speculative and impossible to predict accurately.”
Jeremy Bloomer, Jonathan Bloomer’s twin brother, told the BBC: “It’s a slow process and it will take time. So there might be air pockets, but we don’t know. It’s still wait and see, so fingers crossed.” Vincenzo Zagarola of the Italian Coastguard cautioned that despite the remote possibility of survival, the six missing tourists were feared dead.
Asked about the likelihood of them being alive, he said: “Never say never, but reasonably the answer should be not.” He told the PA news agency: “We think they are still inside the boat, that is our very hard idea.”
As today’s search continued, experts from the British Marine Accident Investigation Branch were in Sicily to help Italian counterparts work out why the superyacht sank. Theories include the possibility that its hatches were left open because of the extreme heat, allowing water to flood in during the storm and topple the yacht.
Other speculation centred on the 72m height of the yacht’s aluminium mast, which reportedly snapped, and whether its weight and size played a part in destablising the vessel. Of the 22 passengers and crew on board, 15 — including Mr Lynch’s wife, Angela Bacares — were rescued after escaping onto a lifeboat.
The Mirror reported Ms Bacares was in a “state of shock and sadness” as she awaited news of her husband. She has reportedly been joined by the couple’s elder daughter who was not aboard the boat.
Mr Lynch, who founded software giant Autonomy in 1996, was cleared in June of fraud relating to the $11 billion (£8.64 billion) sale to US company Hewlett Packard. The boat trip was a celebration of his acquittal.
