Divers searching the wreck of a superyacht that sank off Sicily have identified the five recovered bodies brought up from the wreck so far, including that of UK tech tycoon Mike Lynch and Jonathan Bloomer, chair of Morgan Stanley International.
Specialist divers working with an underwater robot on Wednesday had pulled up four bodies from the wreck of the “Bayesian”, while another was pulled up on Thursday morning, according to AFP reporters.
The five identified bodies are:
- British technology tycoon Mike Lynch
- Jonathan Bloomer, Morgan Stanley Bank International chairman
- Judy Bloomer, Jonathan’s wife
- Chris Morvillo, Clifford Chance lawyer
- Neda Morvillo, the wife of Chris
Specialist divers are still searching for the last person missing, Lynch’s 18-year-old daughter, Hannah Lynch.
The 56-metre (185 feet) British-flagged “Bayesian” had been anchored some 700 metres off Porticello when it was struck by a waterspout — akin to a mini-tornado — during a pre-dawn storm.
It sank within minutes.
Fifteen people were rescued, including Lynch’s wife and a woman with a one-year-old baby.
But the tech entrepreneur and his daughter, his lawyer Christopher Morvillo and his wife Neda, and Jonathan Bloomer, the chair of Morgan Stanley International, and his wife Judy, were all reported missing.
Lynch and his daughter, his lawyer Christopher Morvillo and his wife Neda, and Jonathan Bloomer, the chair of Morgan Stanley International, and his wife Judy, were all reported missing.
Many questions remain about why the yacht sank, and on Thursday the head of the company which built the boat said the tragedy could have been avoided.
“Everything that was done reveals a very long summation of errors,” said Giovanni Costantino, head of the Italian Sea Group, which includes the Perini Navi company that built “Bayesian”.
He told Italy’s Corriere della Sera newspaper that bad weather was forecast and all the passengers should have been gathered at the assembly point, all the doors and hatches closed.
Security camera footage of the ship from the shore showed the lights on its mast going out, which Costantino said indicated a short circuit, meaning that the ship had already taken on water.
“A Perini ship resisted Hurricane Katrina, a category 5 (hurricane). Does it seem to you that it can’t resist a tornado from here?” he told the newspaper.
“It is good practice when the ship is at anchor to have a guard on the bridge, and if there was one he could not have failed to see the storm coming.
“Instead it took on water with the guests still in the cabin… They ended up in a trap, those poor people ended up like mice.”
Five minutes
The passengers were guests of Lynch — an entrepreneur sometimes referred to as Britain’s Bill Gates — to celebrate his acquittal in a massive US fraud case.
The 59-year-old was acquitted on all charges in a San Francisco court in June after he was accused of an $11 billion fraud linked to the sale of his software firm Autonomy to Hewlett-Packard.
Among the survivors was Charlotte Golunski, board director of a company founded by Lynch, who has described how she briefly lost hold of her one-year-old daughter before grabbing her again. Both were plucked to safety.
Fabio Genco, a member of the Palermo Emergency Medical Services who was among the team that treated the child, described the “apocalyptic” situation he found on arriving at the scene.
“The word that the mother and all the injured kept repeating was ‘darkness’, the darkness that they experienced during the shipwreck,” he told the BBC’s Newsnight programme.
“They spoke of about five minutes, maybe from three to five minutes, from the moment the boat was lifted, raised by the waves of the sea, until it sank.”
He said the survivors rescued had been in shock: “There were truly apocalyptic scenes where everyone was searching and hoping to find the people who at that moment, were not present or just missing.”
All the survivors treated in hospital have been discharged, he confirmed.
Anarchic sea conditions
The speed with which the yacht sank, and the fact that other boats around it were unaffected, was extraordinary.
Some key questions remain, including whether the keel, which provides a counterbalance to the towering mast, was down when the storm hit.
Matthew Schanck, from the Maritime Search and Rescue Council, told AFP what happened was a “pretty unprecedented”, describing it as a “black swan event” — something that is unlikely, but has a big impact.
UK meteorologist Peter Inness described a waterspout as a “narrow column of rotating air below a thunderstorm that occurs over water”.
Like tornadoes, they suck up air in a rotating motion. Many are fairly inconsequential, but some can pack winds of more than 100 kilometres (62 miles) per hour, said Inness.
Jean-Marie Dumon, a former naval officer now with the GICAN, the French maritime industry association, added that conditions with winds of 100kph or more can “create completely anarchic sea conditions which can cause capsizing”.