The Italian coast guard has confirmed that the body of British tech tycoon Mike Lynch was among five bodies that have been retrieved from the wreck of the superyacht Bayesian, which sank during freak weather off the coast of Sicily.
Only one body of the six people who were reported missing after the sailboat capsized on Monday has not been found and it is reportedly Lynch’s 18-year-old daughter, Hannah.
Divers continue to search the wreck to locate the sixth body.
Lynch’s wife, Amanda Bacares, who was the legal owner of the Bayesian, was pulled from the water Monday morning, along with 14 other survivors.
Lynch founded software company Autonomy after graduating from Cambridge University and later sold the company to Hewlett-Packard (HP) for $11 billion.
But in 2012, HP claimed there had been massive false accounting at Autonomy, writing off $8.8 billion of its value.
Lynch was later extradited to the United States, but in June this year, he was acquitted of federal fraud charges by a jury in California.
Superyacht’s Skipper Questioned
Prosecutors in the nearby town of Termini Imerese have opened an investigation, and authorities have started questioning passengers and crew members, including the boat’s captain, New Zealand-born James Cutfield.Cutfield, 51, and his crew have made no official comment since the incident.
Four investigators from the UK’s Marine Accident Investigation Branch have flown in to conduct their own investigation as the Bayesian was a UK-flagged vessel with a home port of London.
The Bayesian was built by one of Italy’s top sailboat manufacturers, Perini, and was fitted with a retractable keel that should have allowed it to survive the stormy conditions.
Giovanni Constantino, CEO of the Italian Sea Group, which owns Perini, said the Bayesian was “one of the safest boats in the world” and should have been unsinkable.
Costantino told TG1, the flagship news program of Italy’s state-owned RAI television channel, that “the ship sank because it took on water; from where, investigators will have to say.”
Costantino, citing data from the Bayesian’s automatic tracking devices, said it took just 16 minutes from when the wind began buffeting the boat, and then taking on water, for it to sink.
He said his Milan-listed group had suffered “enormous damage” to its reputation, with shares falling by 2.5 percent since Monday, but he said he believed the disaster was caused by a chain of human errors.
Meanwhile, more details have emerged of the survivors’ traumatic ordeal after the boat suddenly went down just before dawn on Monday.
James Emsley, 35, his wife, Charlotte Golunski, also 35, and their one-year-old daughter, Sophia, were thrown into the water when the boat capsized.
Dr. Domenico Cipolla, who treated them at Di Cristina Children’s Hospital in Palermo, said: “Obviously the mother and the husband were so shaken by what has happened, it was a tragedy for them.”
“She told me that two minutes after falling asleep with her baby, they were in the water, she did not understand how this happened, it went dark.
“She held the child high in her arms above the waves, for a few seconds the baby was in the water, but she saved her.”
Other survivors included Sasha Murray, 29, an Irish national; Myin Htun Kyaw, 39, from Myanmar; Matthew Griffith, 22, a French national; British nationals Ayla Ronald, 36, and Matthew Fletcher, 41; Dutch national Koopmans Tus, 33; and two hostesses, Leah Randall, 20, from South Africa, and Katja Chicken, 22, from Germany.
The Epoch Times has been unable to reach the captain of the Bayesian, Cutfield, for comment.
