Body of British tech entrepreneur Lynch retrieved from sunken yacht, says official
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Rescue workers carrying the body of British tech magnate Mike Lynch near the Sicilian city of Palermo on Aug 22.
PHOTO: REUTERS
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PORTICELLO, Italy – The body of British tech magnate Mike Lynch was retrieved on Aug 22 from the wreck of a yacht that sank earlier this week off Sicily during a storm, Mr Massimo Mariani, an interior ministry official, told Reuters.
Mr Lynch’s daughter, the last person unaccounted for after the shipwreck, is still missing, Mr Mariani said, adding that she may be inside the wreck or could have been tossed into the sea as the boat sank.
On Aug 21, four bodies were retrieved from the wreck and transported to nearby hospitals,
The Italian authorities did not officially identify the corpses, but Britain’s Daily Telegraph reported that two of the dead were Mr Lynch and his 18-year-old daughter. Italy’s Corriere della Sera said the only bodies identified so far were Morgan Stanley banker Jonathan Bloomer and US lawyer Chris Morvillo.
Search efforts for bodies missing from the sunken yacht resumed early on Aug 22.
The British-flagged Bayesian, a 56m-long superyacht carrying 22 passengers and crew, was anchored off the port of Porticello, near Palermo, when it disappeared beneath the waves
Fifteen people, including Mr Lynch’s wife, managed to escape from the boat before it capsized, while the body of the on-board chef, Canadian-Antiguan national Recaldo Thomas, was found near the wreck hours after the disaster.
The body of British tech magnate Mike Lynch was retrieved on Aug 22.
PHOTO: AFP
Operations have been challenging due to the depth and the narrowness of the places that the divers are scouring, the fire brigade said in a statement.
It compared the efforts to those carried out, on a larger scale, for the Costa Concordia, the luxury cruise liner that capsized off the Italian island of Giglio in January 2012, killing 32 people.
Unsinkable
The disaster has baffled naval marine experts, who said such a vessel, built by Italian high-end yacht manufacturer Perini and presumed to have top-class fittings and safety features, should have been able to withstand such weather.
Prosecutors in the nearby town of Termini Imerese have opened an investigation and authorities have started questioning passengers and witnesses.
The captain and crew have made no official comment on the disaster.
The Bayesian was built by high-end yacht manufacturer Perini and presumed to have top-class fittings and safety features.
PHOTO: AFP
Mr Giovanni Constantino, CEO of the Italian Sea Group, which includes Perini, said the Bayesian was “one of the safest boats in the world” and basically unsinkable.
He added that he believed the disaster was caused by a chain of human mistakes and that the storm had been expected, in interviews with Italian media.
“The ship sank because it took on water, from where, investigators will have to say,” Mr Costantino told television news programme TG1 late on Aug 21.
Citing data from the yacht's automatic tracking and based on available footage, Mr Costantino said it took 16 minutes from when the wind began buffeting the yacht and began taking on water to when it sink.
Mr Costantino said the Milan-listed group had suffered “enormous damage” to its reputation, with shares falling 2.5 per cent since the disaster. REUTERS
