denis o'brien yacht wreck

Superyacht sinks latest: Investigators reveal where bodies were found as probe looks at 'crew's responsibility'

Italian officials revealed at a news conference there could be "a question of manslaughter" as they opened a shipwreck investigation and said the probe is also looking at the "crew's responsibility".

Saturday 24 August 2024 18:33, UK

• Superyacht sinking

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• Prosecutor: There 'could be a question of manslaughter'
• Probe 'concentrating' on crew's responsibility
• Seven bodies recovered after five-day search of superyacht wreckage off Sicily
• Saturday's papers pay tribute to youngest victim Hannah Lynch
• Hannah's sister pays tribute to 'my little angel'
• Explained: Inside the superyacht | What challenges have faced divers?
• Eyewitness: Sombre scenes greet rescue teams as final body is brought ashore
• Live reporting by Niamh Lynch

We're ending our live coverage for this evening but here is a recap of what we know:

• Prosecutors have opened a manslaughter investigation into the Bayesian sinking;
• Officials have revealed more details on their investigation and the difficult five-day rescue mission;
• The six bodies found during the search in recent days were all in cabins on the left-hand - and highest - side of the ship. Five were found in the first cabin and the sixth was found in the third;
• Prosecutors said the six passengers were most likely asleep when the boat sank;
• The probe is now focusing on the crew and their responsibilities, with the captain set to undergo more questioning.

Monday 19 August

The Bayesian yacht, flying a British flag, sinks at around 5am local time when the area was hit by a tornado.

Fifteen people are rescued from the 56 metre vessel - including a mother and baby - but another seven remain missing.

One body, later confirmed to be the yacht's chef Recaldo Thomas, is found near the wreck.

It emerges that British technology tycoon Mike Lynch and his 18-year-old daughter Hannah are among six people that remain missing.

Tuesday 20 August

The search continues for the six tourists missing.

It is reported that among those missing are Morgan Stanley International chairman Jonathan Bloomer; his wife, Judy Bloomer; Clifford Chance lawyer Chris Morvillo; and his wife, Neda Morvillo.

Police divers try to reach the hull of the ship, resting at a depth of 50 metres.

Italy's fire brigade Vigili del Fuoco say early inspections of the wreck were "unsuccessful" because of limited access to the bridge and furniture obstructing passages.

The operation is later described as "complex", with divers limited to 12-minute underwater shifts.

Tributes pour in for Mr Thomas, with his friend Gareth Williams saying: "I can talk for everyone that knew him when I say he was a well-loved, kind human being with a calm spirit."

Wednesday 21 August

The search for the six people unaccounted for enters a third day, with crews carrying out inspections of the yacht's internal hull.

A team of four British inspectors from the Marine Accident Investigation Branch (MAIB) arrive in Porticello to look at the site of the sinking.

A helicopter is drafted in to help with the search effort and remotely controlled underwater vehicles are being used, with naval units and cave divers also taking part in the search.

Five bodies are found inside the yacht on Wednesday afternoon. Only four of them are brought to shore.

Body bags are seen being taken to Porticello in the afternoon where dozens of emergency services staff wait.

Searches finish for the day just before 7.30pm.

Thursday 22 August

The search resumes for the remaining missing person.

The body of the fifth missing person, found but not recovered the previous day, is brought to shore.

A fire service boat with flashing blue lights returns with a blue body bag to the port of Porticello just after 8.45am local time on Thursday.

Tributes pour in for Mr Lynch and Mr and Mrs Bloomer after they are identified as having died.

The search is called off at around 8pm in Sicily, with divers expected to begin again at 6.30am on Friday.

Friday 23  August

The search continues for the final person missing from the wreck of the Bayesian, Hannah Lynch.

Vincenzo Zagarola, of the Italian Coastguard, says the search for Hannah has not been "easy or quick", comparing the sunken yacht to an "18-storey building full of water".

The coastguard confirms in the late morning that her body has been found.

A green body bag is brought to the port of Porticello from the site of the sinking.

A spokesperson announces on behalf of the Lynch family that they are "devastated" and "in shock" after the deaths of Mike and Hannah.

Hannah's sister Esme pays tribute to her "little angel".

Saturday 24 August

A press conference is held in the court of an Italian town, Termini Imerese.

Public prosecutor Ambrogio Cartosio tells reporters that his office has opened an initial investigation against unknown persons into manslaughter and negligent shipwreck.

As the focus now turns to the manslaughter investigation, here's another reminder of the seven victims of the sinking and the 15 people who survived. 

A close friend of the Lynch family has added to the chorus of tributes for British tech tycoon Mike Lynch, who died in Monday's superyacht sinking.

Susannah Gurdun, who lives in Suffolk, recalled being "daunted" when she first met Mr Lynch at a dinner party, before discovering he was "so much more than the corporate cliche".

"He was riveting.  He was funny, and kind, and endlessly interesting; capable of talking about anything and everything," she said.

Ms Gardun said the businessman also had a "thrilling ability" to make complicated subjects "accessible to those of us less blessed with a science acumen".

"In particular, he was wonderful with children.  I will never forget hearing him explain to a group of them - including our ten year old son - the physics of why the sky went pink at sunset," she said.

She went on describe Mr Lynch as a "true genius" and "phenomenal creative".

Ms Gardun said his daughter Hannah was also showing "serious literary promise", and added that it was "beyond tragic that we will never know where her own particular brilliance might have led".

"I still feel blessed to have shared that time with them in Spain.  Not just because I witnessed Mike’s incredible storytelling; but because I was given a chance of understanding what that moment said about all four of them as a united vibrant loving family," she said.

"He was an extraordinary human being and it was - truly - a privilege to have known him."

A yacht crew member who survived the sinking has paid tribute to Hannah Lynch, calling her a "diamond in a sea of stars".

Sasha Murray, chief stewardess of the Bayesian, has released a statement after divers recovered the final missing body from the wreckage, which is believed to be 18-year-old Hannah.

"Those who knew her will know that Hannah was a diamond in a sea of stars," she said.

"Bright, beautiful and always shining. What most people may not have seen was the extraordinarily strong, deep and loving relationship she shared with her parents, whom she adored more than anything. 

"While swimming with them she often said, if anything ever happened she would save them. 

"I have no doubt that the Irish, Latina fire that burns in her soul kept that spirited determination alive."

Ms Murray's statement comes as a new image of Hannah Lynch and her father Mike Lynch is released:

Prosecutors announced in this morning's news conference that they have opened a manslaughter and negligent shipwreck investigation.

Officials were unable to answer several queries from the media, saying they needed time to establish the facts, but what are the key questions facing prosecutors? 

Why weren't passengers who remained on board the vessel warned about escaping from the yacht?

The prosecutor in charge of the case, Raffaele Cammarano, suggested that some passengers may have been asleep when others were awake.

Asked why they were not woken up or alerted, he said that is something investigators are trying to work out from the statements of the survivors.

He called it an "essential" part of the inquiry.

Why were several of the passengers in one cabin?

The press conference heard several bodies onboard the sunken yacht were found in a single cabin which was not theirs.

Mr Cammarano said investigators currently do not know the reason for them being discovered in the same cabin.

The chief of the Palermo fire service, Bentivoglio Fiandra, said the yacht pinned to the right and suggested people tried to go on the other side, taking refuge in cabins in the higher part of the wreck.

Why did the boat sink?

The vessel had been deemed "unsinkable" by its manufacturer - Italian shipyard Perini Navi.

The Bayesian was hit by a downburst, according to Mr Cammarano, which are powerful winds that descend from a thunderstorm and spread out quickly once they hit the ground.

Officials will look into the safety equipment on the sunken vessel.

Mr Cammarano was asked about whether there is a black box and if the hatches were left open.

He said investigators do not have exact information about the black box and that the first phase of the inquiry will look into it.

Why were nearby vessels not similarly affected?

Another yacht, the Sir Robert BP, was about 150 to 200 metres from the Bayesian when extreme weather hit.

Its crew helped to rescue 15 people from the stricken vessel.

Italian officials said they would be looking at how the downburst could affect one vehicle and not other nearby vessels.

What weather warnings was the Bayesian alerted to?

Maritime director of western Sicily, Rear Admiral Raffaele Macauda, said the weather at the time of the yacht's sinking was abnormal and there was nothing to suggest such an extreme situation would arise.

He said there were forecasts of winds and a storm alert, but there was no warning of a tornado.

"Given that the conditions were such, there wasn't anything to suggest there could be an extreme situation arising," he said.

"There are vessels that can monitor, after all, these events and one would have thought that the captain had taken precautions."

How long will it take to recover the sailing vessel?

Mr Macauda could not confirm how long it would take to retrieve the shipwreck of the sunken yacht.

"Everything depends on the availability of the owners and the timeframe of the retrieval of the wreck and of course all that has to be submitted to the port authorities and in parallel of course there will be the inquiry results and it's only really then that we will be able to authorise the operation," he said.

"I can't say, like some experts who have already spoken on the subject, [said] that it will be eight weeks."

He made clear that the owners will bear the full cost of retrieval, although he could not estimate the figure.

Italian authorities detailed the challenging and meticulous rescue operation to recover the six missing people from the Bayesian wreck (see 9.18am post).

But why was the five-day search so difficult? 

Read more below...

More on this morning's press conference. 

One of the main updates from prosecutors was that they have opened manslaughter and shipwreck investigations after the deaths of seven people in the Bayesian sinking. 

Watch the announcement below...

Prosecutors have given a lengthy news conference this morning on their investigation into the sinking of the Bayesian. 

Read the full report on the prosecutors' probe below...

Marine investigator James Wilkes has been speaking to Sky News after this morning's press conference.

"Naturally, there are more questions than there are substantive answers at the moment - that's the nature of investigative work.

"Something forced that yacht to roll beyond its nominal stability limits, such that it wasn't able to right itself with the ingress of a certain amount of seawater that was coming into the yacht. 

"So the investigators are going to ask themselves one initial question - what must the conditions have been for this to happen? 

"Then they are going to look at the contributing factors to the yacht, sinking, and, and the unfortunate loss of life." 

Prosecutors said this morning that the future of the investigation is reliant on recovering the wreck. 

Mr Wilkes said the yacht is a "major piece of physical evidence in and of itself." 

"It's lying at 50 metres, which is a recoverable depth. 

"If it was significantly deeper, then I'm not sure they'd be considering salvage at this stage or certainly, the salvage question would be a lot more complicated to answer. 

"But if there was the ability to raise that yacht in one piece safely, then it gives the investigators physically more to look at."

Mr Wilkes said he was unsure if the yacht would have a "black box" - called a voyage data recorder in shipping. 

"It would record things like GPS position, heading speed, engine telemetry, whether the radars were on, what they were recording, alarms, communications from the yacht itself, any audio on the bridge.

"But more often than not, these are on merchant ships. The yacht was a commercial yacht in the sense that it could be chartered out so it's quite possible it has a voyage data recorder on, but I'm not sure that it does. I don't know that as a matter of fact," he said.

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Super-yacht tragedy: Who is still missing and who has been rescued? What is known so far

20 August 2024, 13:28 | Updated: 20 August 2024, 13:36

By Kit Heren

Mike Lynch and his daughter are among six missing after their super-yacht sank off the coast of Sicily, while his colleague was killed in a car crash - here's what we know so far about the bizarre tragedy.

Listen to this article

Mr Lynch is a computing tycoon who was celebrating on the Bayesian yacht in the Mediterranean after being found not guilty in a long-running US fraud trial.

Some 22 people were onboard at the time of the sinking, with 15 people rescued - including Mr Lynch's wife, as well as mother and her one-year-old daughter.

Six people remain missing, including Mr Lynch and his daughter, and one has died.

Here's what we know about the tragedy so far.

Read more: Superyacht captain breaks silence as search resumes for six people still missing after vessel sank during storm

Read more: Tributes paid after co-defendant of tech tycoon Mike Lynch dies following car crash as search continues in yacht tragedy

Who is Mike Lynch?

Mike Lynch, 59, is the founder of Autonomy, a British computing company whose business is described as 'knowledge management and enterprise search'.

Founded in the 1990s, the company sold its products to big businesses such as Unilever and Barclays, and bought a series smaller companies - until it was bought itself by computing giant Hewlett Packard in 2011.

That deal valued the company at about $10 billion.

Lynch himself is said to have made about $800 million (£600 million) from the sale, and today he is worth around £500 million.

He had been embroiled in legal troubles related to the sale for much of the previous ten years, and was found not guilty of fraud by a US court in June.

What happened on the yacht?

Mr Lynch was celebrating being found not guilty with 11 family members, friends, lawyers on the Bayesian yacht, a 56-metre vessel off the coast of Palermo, the capital of the Italian island of Sicily. There were also ten crew members.

The yacht was about 300 metres off the coast.

It capsized at around 4.30am on Monday, August 19, according to ship tracking data.

Local media reported that waterspouts - a rare form of tornado - were seen in the area.

The waterspouts likely toppled the ship's 248-foot mast, which was unusually tall.

Who is still missing?

Mr Lynch is among two British people and four Americans who are missing from the yacht. One has yet to be named.

The others are:

• Hannah Lynch, his 18-year-old daughter who recently finished her A-levels and was preparing to study English at Oxford.
• Chris Morvillo, an American lawyer with Clifford Chance who represented Mr Lynch in the US.
• Jonathan Bloomer, a banker with Morgan Stanley who is a friend of Mr Lynch and appeared as a witness at the US trial.
• Judy Bloomer, Mr Bloomer's wife, who is a trustee at gynaecological cancer research charity the Eve Appeal

Divers continue to search for the missing people.

The ship's chef has died, according to local authorities.

Who survived?

Some 15 people have been rescued, including nine crew members.

Among the others are Angela Bacares, who escaped onto a lifeboat.

One of the survivors, British woman Charlotte Emsley who works at Mr Lynch's company Invoke Capital and previously was at Autonomy the business at the centre of his legal battle.

Ms Emsley told la Repubblica she held her one-year-old daughter, Sofia, to stop her from drowning.

She said: "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."

Charlotte and Sofia were treated in hospital, as was Sofia's father, James Emsley.

“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."

What happened to Mr Lynch's co-defendant Steve Chamberlain?

Mr Lynch's co-defendant in the US fraud trial, Stephen Chamberlain, died after being hit by a car while out running in Cambridgeshire on Saturday.

Mr Chamberlain was the former vice-president of finance at Autonomy. Like Mr Lynch, he had been acquitted in the trial.

Gary Lincenberg, Mr Chamberlain's lawyer, said in a statement: "Our dear client and friend Steve Chamberlain was fatally struck by a car on Saturday while out running

"He was a courageous man with unparalleled integrity. We deeply miss him.

"Steve fought successfully to clear his good name at trial earlier this year, and his good name now lives on through his wonderful family."

Mr Chamberlain died in hospital after the crash. The driver stopped at the scene.

What were Mike Lynch's legal troubles?

After Hewlett Packard bought Autonomy in 2011, the company said that it had discovered issues with the accounting at the company and declared a multi-million-pound write-down.

Hewlett Packard sued Mr Lynch in the UK and in the US. The British court found in favour of the US tech giant in a civil case in 2022, and the judge is still considering the award of damages.

Separately, Mr Lynch was extradited to the US in 2023 after a legal battle, and held under house arrest in San Francisco to face fraud charges. The court found him not guilty in June.

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Canadian dead, several others missing after superyacht capsizes off Sicilian coast

Mother who survived held 1-year-old daughter above waves until rescue.

Canadian dead, others missing after superyacht sinks near Sicily

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A Canadian man has died after a luxury yacht was struck by an unexpectedly violent storm and sank off the coast of Sicily early on Monday, local officials said.

The British-flagged Bayesian, a 56-metre-long sailboat, was carrying 22 people and was anchored just off shore near the port of Porticello when it was hit by ferocious weather, the Italian coast guard said in a statement.

Eyewitnesses said the superyacht vanished quickly beneath the waves shortly before dawn. Fifteen people escaped before it went down, including a one-year-old girl.

The Palermo Port Authority told CBC News officials recovered the body of Recaldo Thomas, a Canadian-born man who had been living in Antigua. He had been the ship's on-board cook.

Some media, including CBC, had earlier mistakenly reported his name as Thomas Recaldo or Ricardo Thomas.

Global Affairs Canada said it was "aware of reports" Canadian citizen had died.

"We extend our deepest sympathies to everyone affected by this tragic event," it said in a statement.

• What we know about the capsized superyacht off the Sicilian coast

Six other people were missing after the sinking, including British tech magnate Mike Lynch, his teenage daughter Hannah and Jonathan Bloomer, president of Morgan Stanley International, La Republicca reported.

The Italian coast guard said those who were missing had British, American and Canadian nationalities.

'The ship behind us was gone'

"The wind was very strong. Bad weather was expected, but not of this magnitude," a coast guard official in the Sicilian capital Palermo told Reuters.

Salvo Cocina of Sicily's civil protection agency said a mini tornado known as a waterspout that forms above the water had struck the area overnight. 

Eight of the 15 people rescued were transferred to local hospitals. All were in a stable condition, local media reported.

One of the survivors, identified as Charlotte Emsley, said she had momentarily lost hold of her one-year-old daughter, Sofia, in the water, but then managed to hold her up over the waves until a lifeboat inflated and they were both pulled to safety, Italian news agency ANSA reported, quoting the mother.

The father, James Emsley, also survived, Cocina said.

The captain of a nearby boat told Reuters that when the storm hit, he turned the engine on to keep control of the vessel and avoid a collision with the Bayesian.

"We managed to keep the ship in position, and after the storm was over, we noticed that the ship behind us was gone," Karsten Borner told journalists.

He said that his crew then found some of the survivors on a life raft, including three who were seriously injured, and took them on board before the coast guard picked them up.

'The ship behind us was gone,' says captain who rescued yacht passengers

Mother saves 1-year-old daughter.

The Bayesian was built by Italian shipbuilder Perini in 2008.

The luxury ship has an aluminum hull and can carry 12 guests and a crew of up to 10, according to online specialist yacht sites.

It was owned by a firm called Revtom Limited, according to the shipspotting.com website. Lynch's wife, Angela Bacares, is named as the sole shareholder of the firm on company documents.

'It was a big disaster,' boater says of storm that capsized luxury yacht

Cocina of the civil protection agency said Bacares was among those rescued, but it wasn't immediately clear if she required hospital treatment.

Lynch, 59, is one of Britain's best-known tech entrepreneurs. He built the country's largest software firm, Autonomy, from his groundbreaking research at Cambridge University. His PhD thesis and the software that made his fortune was based on one of the mathematical theories of English statistician Thomas Bayes, after whom the yacht was named.

Lynch sold the firm to HP in a multibillion-dollar deal in 2011, before the transaction unravelled spectacularly following the acquisition, with the U.S. tech giant accusing him of fraud.

Lynch spent much of the last decade in court defending his name. He was acquitted by a jury in San Francisco in June after he spent more than a year living effectively under house arrest.

In a grim coincidence, one of his co-defendants in the U.S. fraud trial, Autonomy's former vice-president of finance Stephen Chamberlain, was hit by a car while out running in Cambridgeshire on Saturday morning, two days before the Bayesian capsized. He was placed on life support and died Monday, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke with Reuters.

Divers find wreckage

The coast guard said divers were inspecting the wreck of the Bayesian, which was lying at a depth of 49 metres.

Prosecutors in the nearby town of Termini Imerese have opened an investigation to look into what had gone wrong.

Storms and heavy rainfall have swept down Italy in recent days after weeks of scorching heat, which had lifted the temperature of the Mediterranean sea to record levels, raising the risk of extreme weather conditions, experts said.

"The sea surface temperature around Sicily was around 30 C, which is almost three degrees more than normal. This creates an enormous source of energy that contributes to these storms," said meteorologist Luca Mercalli.

"We can't say that this is all due to global warming, but we can say that it has an amplifying effect."

The boat left the Sicilian port of Milazzo on Aug. 14 and was last tracked east of Palermo on Sunday evening, with a navigation status of "at anchor," according to vessel tracking app Vesselfinder.

A U.K. Foreign Ministry spokesperson said British officials were in contact with local authorities over the capsizing and were ready to provide consular support for Britons who were affected.

Corrections

• A previous version of this story identified the Canadian Antiguan killed in the sinking as Thomas Recaldo. In fact, his name is Recaldo Thomas. Aug 21, 2024 9:12 AM ET

With files from CBC's Megan Williams and The Associated Press

Related Stories

• Italy launches manslaughter investigation into mysterious sinking of luxury yacht
• Captain of sunken superyacht placed under investigation
• 5 bodies found by divers in Sicily yacht search, 1 person still unaccounted for
• Body of British businessman Mike Lynch recovered from deadly Italian yacht sinking

The Captain of Mike Lynch’s Super Yacht Shipwreck in Sicily Is Under Investigation 

T he captain of a super yacht that underwent a shipwreck in Sicily last week killing seven people, including the owner of the yacht, British tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch, is now under investigation. 

James Cutfield, 51, is being investigated for manslaughter and shipwreck, according to reports by local Italian news outlets. Charges have not officially been filed against him for the accident involving the 184-foot luxury yacht, named the Bayesian. However, investigators decided to look into Cutfield after interrogating him for a second time in a week, Italian news agency Ansa reports . 

A total of 22 people were on board the luxury yacht when the incident occurred, 15 of whom were rescued after the deadly wreck Lynch’s 18-year-old daughter, Hannah Lynch, along with ​​Morgan Stanley International chairman Jonathan Bloomer, Jonathan’s wife Judith Bloomer, lawyer Christopher Morvillo, Christopher’s wife Neda Morvillo, and Recaldo Thomas, a chef on the Bayesian, were also killed. Lynch’s wife, Angela Bacares, survived.

It took authorities days to locate the bodies of the deceased, but they confirmed that most of the dead were found in the same part of the ship, indicating they have been trapped, according to investigators.

Officers initially thought the shipwreck was caused by the ship being struck by a tornado. But Termini Imerese prosecutor Ambrogio Cartosio said that investigations indicated that the accident occurred rather quickly after the yacht was impacted by a downburst, a powerful downdraft from a thunderstorm. Notably, however, a nearby sailboat was largely unharmed by the same downburst.

“For me, it is probable that offenses were committed, that it could be a case of manslaughter, but we can only establish that if you give us the time to investigate," Cartosio previously said. 

It’s unclear if other crew members are under investigation for the incident.

Lynch had been celebrating his acquittal from fraud charges with family and those who defended him during the trial when tragedy struck. 

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