Super yacht was hosting party for tech magnate’s acquittal when it sank off Sicily

Porticello, Sicily: Police divers resumed searching for six people believed trapped in the hull of a super yacht that sank in deep seas off Sicily, including a British tech magnate who was celebrating his recent acquittal on fraud charges with the people who had defended him at trial.

The luxury yacht, off Porticello near Palermo, was some 50 metres underwater — far deeper than most recreational divers are certified for and a depth that requires special precautions. Recovery crews could only stay for 12-minute shifts, a measure that slowed their efforts to reach the cramped inside of the wreck.

An Italian Firefighters helicopter flies over the harbour of Porticello, southern Italy.Credit: AP

The Bayesian, a 56-metre British-flagged yacht, was moored about a kilometre offshore when a storm rolled in before 4am on Monday. Civil protection officials said they believed the ship was struck by a tornado over the water, known as a waterspout, and sank quickly.

Grainy film from closed-circuit cameras from shore, broadcast on the website of the Giornale di Sicilia, showed the majestic, illuminated 75-metre mast of the Bayesian weathering the storm and then disappearing over the course of a minute.

Fifteen of the 22 people aboard survived, including a mother who reported holding her 1-year-old baby over the waves to save her. One body was recovered, identified by officials as the Antiguan-born on-board chef. The rest of the 10-person crew survived, including the captain, whom prosecutors reportedly sought to interview.

“It’s a great, great tragedy,” said Britain’s ambassador to Italy, Edward Llewellyn, who visited Porticello. Britain sent four investigators to the scene, given the disaster involved a British-flagged ship and British citizens were among the missing.

Fire rescue officials have said the six other passengers would be considered missing until located in the wreckage. They include tycoon Mike Lynch, who was once hailed as Britain’s king of technology and was cleared in June of fraud and conspiracy charges in a US federal trial related to Hewlett Packard’s $US11 billion takeover of his company, Autonomy Corp.

Also unaccounted for are Christopher Morvillo, one of Lynch’s lawyers, and Jonathan Bloomer, a chairman at Morgan Stanley International and the former head of the Autonomy audit committee who testified in Lynch’s defence.

Karsten Borner, the captain of the Sir Robert Baden Powell, which rescued the 15 survivors who managed to get into a lifeboat, said he was close enough to be able to see the Bayesian as the storm came in.

“A moment later, she was gone,” he said. “They said they went flat on the water and were sunk in two minutes,” Borner added, quoting the survivors.

Scuba divers study a map of the sailing yacht Bayesian at the Porticello harbor.Credit: AP

The rotating search teams, each made up of two specialised cave divers, worked to open up access points to get inside the wreck. They were using a remote-controlled underwater vehicle, or ROV, to help in the search.

The divers hadn’t been able to access the below-deck cabins because they were blocked by furniture that had shifted during the violent storm. Rescue crews said they assume the missing six are in those cabins because the storm struck when most would be sleeping, but the teams haven’t verified their presence there through portholes.

Luca Cari, a spokesman for the rescue teams, said the search was proceeding much more slowly than another big shipwreck in Italy, the 2012 Costa Concordia cruise ship that flipped on its side off Tuscany’s coast, because of the depth of the wreck and the limited space divers have to manoeuvre.

“That was much simpler. Here everything is more tight,” he said.

The outing was intended at least in part as a celebration of Lynch’s acquittal and a “looking forward to what was coming next,” said Reid Weingarten, a Washington lawyer and a member of Lynch’s defence team who was not on the yacht.

“A lot of people went, a lot of people were planning to go, and then, of course, this happened,” Weingarten said.

Some of the people who stood by Lynch throughout the ordeal were on board, including Morvillo, the lawyer, who Weingarten worked with and said, “was like a brother.”

Morvillo’s wife, Neda, is also missing, according to his law firm, Clifford Chance.

Aki Hussain, chief executive of international insurer Hiscox Group, where Bloomer, the witness, was chairman, said the company was “deeply shocked and saddened by this tragic event.”

“Our thoughts are with all those affected, in particular our chair, Jonathan Bloomer, and his wife Judy, who are among the missing, and with their family as they await further news from this terrible situation,” he added.

Among the survivors, the Emslie family was released from Palermo’s paediatric hospital on Tuesday, where little Sofia had been kept overnight after her rescue. Her mother, Charlotte Golunski, had reported that she momentarily lost hold of the one-year-old in the water but then managed to hold her up over the waves until a lifeboat inflated, and they were both pulled to safety, doctors said.

Karsten Borner, the Captain of a Dutch sailing ship, who rescued 15 people from the shipwreck of the Bayesian, stands on a rubber boat at the harbour of Porticello, southern Italy.Credit: AP

The father, identified by ANSA news agency as James Emslie, also survived.

“They don’t talk much, primarily because they consider themselves survivors, and they don’t understand why they survived given what they went through,” said Dr Domenico Cipolla, head of the emergency room at Di Cristina Hospital.

Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, Cipolla said Golunski had reported that she and the baby were sleeping in the cabin and suddenly found themselves in the water, where they also found Emslie who had been in a different part of the ship. Cipolla said the parents had been in touch with other survivors, who were being housed at a nearby hotel and are waiting for other family members to arrive in Sicily.

According to a videotaped interview posted on Palermo Today, the baby slept well overnight, and all were released after final checks. He added that psychologists had been made available.

Lynch’s wife, Angela Bacares, was among the other survivors. Hannah Lynch, reportedly the couple’s 18-year-old daughter, is among the missing.

The yacht’s registered owner is listed as Revtom Ltd, according to the online maritime database Equasis. Bacares is listed as Revtom’s sole owner, according to corporate registration documents from the Isle of Man.

Its name, Bayesian, may be a reference to “Bayesian Inference,” one of the two main approaches to statistical machine learning and the one used by Lynch’s company.

The yacht, built in 2008 by the Italian firm Perini Navi, carried 12 passengers and 10 crew. According to online charter companies, it was available for €195,000 (about $320,000) a week and was notable for its massive 75-metre-tall aluminium mast, one of the tallest in the world.

The coast guard said to date, there was no trace of fuel leaks from the wreckage.

In an unrelated event, Lynch’s co-defendant in the Autonomy trial, who was also cleared, Stephen Chamberlain, was killed on Sunday when he was hit by a car while running in Cambridgeshire, England, said Chamberlain’s lawyer, Gary Lincenberg.

AP