Six people, including British-Irish tech billionaire Mike Lynch, have been declared missing after a superyacht capsized off the Sicilian coast on Monday. Divers are conducting search missions at the site of the wreckage, with reports they saw “corpses through the portholes”.
On Monday a powerful storm off the coast of the Mediterranean Island caused the 56-metre-long superyacht to capsize while it carried 22 individuals.
A total of 15 people have been rescued, including the yacht’s owner and billionaire’s wife Angela Bacares, and a one-year-old girl.
One person has been confirmed as dead, and eight have been sent to hospital.
Meanwhile, the search for the six missing individuals — including Lynch and his eighteen-year-old daughter Hannah — is ongoing, with the hope of a recovery decreasing every second.
Here’s what we know so far.
Everything we know about the Bayesian capsize so far
Mike Lynch’s superyacht, called the Bayesian, was last seen off the coast of Sicily, anchored near the port city of Porticello.
When a powerful storm began on Monday morning (local time) the $27 million yacht was caught in the middle of the weather event, with eyewitnesses reporting that the Bayesian vanished beneath the waves at around 5am.
The 22 inhabitants of the yacht, which included 12 passengers and 10 crew members, were on board for a vacation organised by Lynch before the storm hit with unexpected severity.
Reports say that a waterspout with winds as strong as 150mph (240km/ph) struck the ship, causing its 75-metre tall mast to break and leave the vessel unbalanced.
“The wind was very strong. Bad weather was expected, but not of this magnitude,” said a Sicilian coastguard, per Reuters.
A nearby boat managed to arrive at the scene and rescue 15 individuals who were on a life raft.
“We saw a red flare, so my first mate and I went to the position, and we found this life raft drifting,” said Karsten Borner, the rescue boat’s captain.
However, six people are still unaccounted for, and one has been confirmed dead. Italian media have said the identity of the deceased was the ship’s chef, Recaldo Thomas.
Two of the 15 survivors are a mother and her one-year-old daughter, with the mother reporting she swam in the sea to rescue her baby.
“For two seconds I lost the baby in the sea, then I immediately hugged her again amid the fury of the waves,” she told the local press.
“I held her tightly, close to me, while the sea was stormy. Many were screaming.”
The mother reported she was on the ship’s deck at the time it lost balance, as she had been woken by the “thunder, lightning, and waves that made our boat dance”.
Six people missing
The six missing individuals after the Bayesian capsized :
- Mike Lynch — British-Irish tech entrepreneur and billionaire.
- Hannah Lynch — daughter of the billionaire.
- Jonathan Bloomer — chairman Morgan Stanley International.
- Judy Bloomer — wife of Jonathan Bloomer.
- Chris Morvillo — Lynch’s lawyer.
- Neda Morvillo — wife of Chris Morvilla.
As firefighter divers swim to depths of 50m to reach the hull of the ship, the outlook for survival looks grim.
Italian outlets have reported that divers said they saw “corpses through the portholes” while searching, with fears that the six people were trapped inside the yacht’s cabins as it sank.
Who is Mike Lynch?
Mike Lynch has been described as “Britain’s Bill Gates” due to making his billion-dollar fortune through his founding of the software company Autonomy — a search engine that allows companies to find data in business documents and emails.
The 59-year-old has spent the last decade in court, however, fighting allegations of fraud related to the $11 billion USD sale of Autonomy to a US buyer. Lynch was accused of inflating the price of his software company before making the sale.
The civil case concluded in June this year in San Francisco, and Lynch was cleared of the criminal fraud charges. He has always maintained his innocence.
“It’s bizarre, but now you have a second life. The question is, what do you want to do with it?” Lynch told The Times after his acquittal.
It is believed that he was on the superyacht with lawyers and family members to celebrate the conclusion of the trial.
The name of the yacht, Bayesian, has been noted to have a particular connection to Mike Lynch, due to the Bayesian Theory being the focus of his mathematical PhD.
[Image: Nine/Getty]
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