Divers recovered the body of the last man missing after British tech tycoon Mike Lynch’s superyacht sank off Sicily on Monday, the coastguard told AFP, confirming his death.
In total, three men and three women had been missing since Monday morning and the sinking of the Bayesian off the Italian island. Only the body of a woman now remains in the wreck, with five bodies having been recovered since Wednesday, according to the same source.
Specialized divers working with an underwater robot brought four of them up on Wednesday from the wreck of the sailboat, now 50 meters deep and lying 700 meters from the port of Porticello. Another was recovered Thursday morning, AFP journalists noted.
The five bodies bring the death toll to six, with one crew member found dead on Monday.
A woman is still being sought, although it is not known who she is, pending official identification of the bodies.
A source close to the investigation said the bodies of Mike Lynch and his daughter Hannah were not among the first four recovered. The last victim in the wreckage, a woman, should therefore be Hannah.
Mike Lynch, a wealthy businessman nicknamed the “British Bill Gates”, celebrated with his friends, colleagues and lawyers his acquittal in June in a fraud trial in the United States that could have cost him many years in prison.
In addition to Mike Lynch and his daughter, the four other people missing since Monday were Jonathan Bloomer, the chairman of the board of directors of Morgan Stanley International – a branch of the American bank – and of the insurer Hiscox, as well as his wife, and Chris Morvillo, a lawyer who defended Mike Lynch in his trial in the United States, as well as his wife.
The ship sank within minutes after a tornado struck Monday morning.
Fifteen people were rescued. Among the six passengers rescued were a mother and her one-year-old daughter.
“Long series of errors”
Initial witnesses had said the 75-metre mast had broken, but information available on Wednesday suggested that this was not the case.
The speed at which the yacht sank and the fact that other boats around it were not hit raise questions, including whether the ballasted keel, which counterbalances the massive mast, was lowered or raised at the time of the storm.
The head of the naval group The Italian Sea Group, owner of the Perini Navi shipyard which built the Bayesian, is furious and points the finger at human error.
“Everything that happened reveals a long series of errors. The passengers should not have been in the cabins, the ship should not have been at anchor,” Giovanni Costantino said in an interview Thursday with Corriere della Sera.
“Look, a Perini ship withstood Hurricane Katrina, a Category 5 hurricane” that devastated the United States in 2005, he said.
“Does it look like it can’t withstand a local windstorm? It is customary, when the ship is at anchor, to have a watchman on deck and, if he were there, he could not have failed to see the storm coming,” continues Mr. Costantino.
“Instead, it (the yacht, editor’s note) took on water while the guests were still in their cabins. A 40-degree angle is enough for those in a cabin to find themselves with the door above them: can you imagine a 60- to 70-year-old man climbing to get out?” wonders the boss of the shipbuilder.
“They fell into a trap, these poor people ended up like mice,” Costantino concluded.