A prestigious west London school is “incredibly shocked” over news an 18-year-old former pupil is among those missing after the Bayesian superyacht sunk off the coast of Sicily.
Hannah Lynch was on the superyacht with her father Mike Lynch, a British tech tycoon once known as Britain’s Bill Gates, and her mother Angela Bacares, when it was struck by a violent storm in the early hours of Monday.
The vessel, which had been moored overnight around half-a-mile off the coast of Palermo, sank “within a few minutes”, according to eyewitnesses.
A major search was underway on Tuesday to find Hannah, Mr Lynch, and four other people who remained missing.
A spokesperson for the Italian coastguard said they are feared to be trapped inside the luxury yacht.
Hannah is a former pupil of £25,000-a-year Latymer Upper School in Hammersmith - a private school which counts Alan Rickman, Hugh Grant and Heston Blumenthal among alumni.
The school said in a statement: “We are all incredibly shocked by the news that Hannah and her father are among those missing in this tragic incident and our thoughts are with their family and everyone involved as we await further updates.”
Hannah is understood to be the youngest of Mr Lynch’s two daughters.
She had been due to study English at University of Oxford having recently finished her A-levels, The Times reported. A gifted pupil, she won a prize for English while she was in Year 10 at Latymer Upper School.
The teenager has been described by friends as a “supernova” - a gentle, kind, clever young woman who was a staunch feminist, according to The Times.
Also missing following Monday’s tragedy are Morgan Stanley International bank chairman Jonathan Bloomer and his wife, and Clifford Chance lawyer Chris Morvillo. Mr Morvillo’s wife is said to be the sixth person unaccounted for, according to the head of Sicily's Civil Protection.
Hannah Lynch’s mother, Ms Bacares, is among 15 of the 22 passengers and crew onboard who managed to escape on a lifeboat.
A body, reportedly the ship's chef, was recovered at the scene.
On Tuesday Ms Bacares recalled how a “slight tilt” of the Bayesian was the first sign it was about to sink.
She and Mr Lynch were awoken around 4am on Monday after the 180ft superyacht suddenly “tilted” in a violent storm, she told Italian news outlet La Repubblica.
Though they had initially not been worried, she got out of bed to investigate what had happened.
Glass then suddenly shattered, reportedly causing confusion among those on board.
Ms Bacares is said to be in a wheelchair following the tragedy. She is understood to have suffered injuries to her feet, caused by walking on broken glass.
Also among survivors of the tragedy are Charlotte Golunski, her husband James, and their one-year-old daughter Sofia.
Mrs Golunski fought to keep their baby from drowning after they were thrown into the darkened sea in the tragedy.
“For two seconds I lost my daughter in the sea then quickly hugged her amid the fury of the waves,” she told La Repubblica newspaper yesterday, recounting her heroism.
“I held her afloat with all my strength, my arms stretched upwards to keep her from drowning. It was all dark. In the water I couldn’t keep my eyes open. I screamed for help but all I could hear around me was the screams of others.”
She, her husband, and their daughter were discharged from the Di Cristina hospital in Palermo on Tuesday afternoon.
Mike Lynch is a tech entrepreneur who built Britain's biggest software company Autonomy.
The 59-year-old was lauded by shareholders, scientists and politicians when he sold it to Hewlett-Packard for $11 billion in 2011.
In late 2012, HP said it had found a massive accounting scandal at the business, and wrote off $8.8 billion of its value. Mr Lynch spent the next 12 years trying to clear his name and was finally acquitted on all criminal charges just weeks ago, in June, in the United States.
The trip on the family’s yacht is understood to have been organised by Mr Lynch as a celebration for his family, colleagues, and lawyers following the end of the legal proceedings.
Experts believe the yacht was battered by a tornado over the water, known as a waterspout.Local fisherman Giuseppe Cefalu told the PA news agency that he saw a "tornado" close to the scene, and he and his brother Fabio saw a flare in the sky at around 5am as the Bayesian sank.
The pair aided efforts to locate people in the water after the yacht sank, but Mr Cefalu said he only saw cushions and a buoy.
Karsten Borner, the captain of another sailboat that had been next to the Bayesian when the storm hit, said: “I have never seen a vessel of this size go down so quickly. Within a few minutes, there was nothing left. Then we saw the raft with the 15 passengers. It was a tragedy.”
Divers were on Tuesday afternoon working to access the cabins of the yacht, but passageways leading to the rooms were reportedly obstructed by a huge amount of furniture and other items.
Vincenzo Zagarola of the Italian Coastguard said that because the boat sank so quickly, the working theory of officials is that the six people who remain unaccounted for are still inside the luxury yacht.
"We think they are still inside the boat, that is our very hard idea,” he told the PA news agency on Tuesday.
"Our search and rescue activity by sea and air has gone on for around 36 hours.
"Of course, we do not exclude that they are not inside the boat, but we know the boat sank quickly.
"We suppose that the six people missing may not have had time to get out of the boat."
