Italian Divers Continue to Search Sunken Yacht for Missing Tech Exec

Italian rescue divers are still searching for missing passengers and crewmembers of the sailing yacht Bayesian, which went down in a sudden thunderstorm off Sicily on Monday morning. 

UK-flagged Bayesian was a 180-foot luxury yacht owned by the UK's most prominent tech entrepreneur, Mike Lynch. Mr. Lynch is among the missing, along with his lawyer, Chris Morvillo, and Jonathan Bloomer, the chairman of investment banking house Morgan Stanley International. 

On Monday morning, at about 0400-0500 hours, an unexpected and fierce thunderstorm ripped through Bayesian's anchorage area off the small port of Porticello. Bystander accounts suggest that a waterspout tore through the port,  turning a normally-calm Mediterranean destination into a stormy sea. Residents and good Samaritans saw a flare from Bayesian, but could not reach the vessel until the winds subsided. 20 minutes later, only floating debris - and 15 survivors - remained on the surface. 

One body was recovered, and five remain missing. Divers reported Monday that they had seen the remains of deceased passengers inside the vessel, but had not yet been able to reach them. The relatively deep water of the harbor (about 160 feet) limits the amount of time that the dive teams can spend at the bottom. 

Divers from Italy's national fire and rescue service are inspecting the interior of the wreck in a "long and complex" process, the agency said in a statement Tuesday. "The fear is that the bodies got trapped inside the vessel," explained Sicily's head of civil protection, Salvatore Cocina.

? #Porticello #Palermo, proseguono le ricerche dei 6 dispersi: i #sommozzatori speleo dei #vigilidelfuoco stanno ispezionando l’interno del relitto. Lunghe e complesse le operazioni [#20agosto 20:00] pic.twitter.com/UTebMHV4Sv

— Vigili del Fuoco (@vigilidelfuoco) August 20, 2024

The casualty appears to have brought an untimely end to most members of a successful legal defense team. In June, Lynch was acquitted of U.S. wire fraud charges in connection with the sale of his former company, Autonomy, to Hewlett Packard in 2011. Morvillo was his counsel for the trial, and Bloomer served as a character witness for the defense. Lynch's sole co-defendant, former Autonomy VP of Finance Stephen Chamberlain, was hit by a car and killed on Saturday.  

Lynch's wife, Angela Bucares, and his assistant Charlotte Golunski were among the survivors, along with Golunski's one-year-old daughter.