Haunting footage goes INSIDE doomed Baysian for first time as divers scour wreckage of sunken superyacht
A HAUNTING video of divers scouring the inside of the doomed Bayesian has been revealed for the first time.
Seven people died in the disaster including Brit billionaire Mike Lynch and his daughter Hannah when a horror storm ripped through the vessel off the coast on Sicily on August 19.
Harrowing footage shows a team of brave divers exploring the fatal wreckage that is sitting 165ft below the port of Porticello.
One diver can be seen holding a steel tool as he wrenches open what appears to be a hatch on board the £30 million Bayesian.
Eerie remains of the shipwreck are then shown as the crew push through messy corridors and rooms inside the ship which plunged to the sea bed lying on its starboard side.
Handheld torches are used by the divers as they swim through the yacht showing a number of areas including the vessel’s control panel.
The video was first aired by Italian investigative TV programme Quarta Repubblica.
Their report said the seven bodies were all found in the area visible in the clip.
Tragically, initial investigations revealed that four of the victims survived the sinking but died in an air pocket.
Lynch’s 18-year-old daughter Hannah was the last passenger to be discovered in the third cabin after
Couples Jonathon and Judy Bloomer and Chris and Neda Morvillo also lost their lives along with the yacht chef Recaldo Thomas.
Of the 22 onboard, 15 survived with 11 including Mike Lynch’s wife rescued on an inflatable life raft.
Three crew members are now being investigated in Sicily, accused of leaving open the door at the rear port side causing water to enter the yacht and flood it.
The captain of the doomed Bayesian, James Cutfield, 51, is also being investigated for manslaughter.
Kiwi Cutfield, along with two other members of his crew, are being investigated by Italian authorities for culpable shipwreck and multiple manslaughter.
It comes after the boss of the Perini Navi company which built the Bayesian Giovanni Costantino, branded the boat “unsinkable” and slammed the crew for making key “mistakes” and failing to “close the doors and hatches.”
Mr Costantino told The Sun in August : “Modern sailing ships, especially high-tech ones like the Perini, are designed to be extremely safe and stable.
“Even in very critical conditions, if procedures are followed, a sailing yacht like the Bayesian will return to an upright position.
“The crew did not handle the adverse weather conditions properly and did not follow the correct procedures to ensure safety.”
It comes as the Bayesian is set to be raised from the seabed within weeks, according to the Italian coastguard.
Special balloons could be used to help lift it with the 236ft mast potentially being removed to haul the boat from the water.
The recovery will be paid for by Revtom, a firm controlled by Lynch’s widow Angela Bacares.
It will help the probe into the possible culpable shipwreck and manslaughter claims.
Specialist security is said to be guarding Lynch’s sunken superyacht amid fears rogue governments may want to plunder it for sensitive secrets.
Salvage experts believe passcodes could be among data held on two super-encrypted hard drives stored in on-board watertight safes.
Local law enforcement initially feared professional thieves might loot it for valuables like expensive jewellery.
But they have now asked for security to be bolstered both above water and underwater due to concerns over foreign powers like Russia and China.
Just two months before the disaster, Lynch had been cleared of carrying out a massive fraud over the sale of Autonomy to Hewlett-Packard in 2011.
The boat trip was a celebration of his acquittal in the case in the US.
Inside The Bayesian's final 16 minutes
By Ellie Doughty, Foreign News Reporter
Data recovered from the Bayesian’s Automatic Identification System (AIS) breaks down exactly how it sank in a painful minute-by-minute timeline.
At 3.50am on Monday August 19 the Bayesian began to shake “dangerously” during a fierce storm, Italian outlet Corriere revealed.
Just minutes later at 3.59am the boat’s anchor gave way, with a source saying the data showed there was “no anchor left to hold”.
After the ferocious weather ripped away the boat’s mooring it was dragged some 358 metres through the water.
By 4am it had began to take on water and was plunged into a blackout, indicating that the waves had reached its generator or even engine room.
At 4.05am the Bayesian fully disappeared underneath the waves.
An emergency GPS signal was finally emitted at 4.06am to the coastguard station in Bari, a city nearby, alerting them that the vessel had sunk.
Early reports suggested the disaster struck around 5am local time off the coast of Porticello Harbour in Palermo, Sicily.
The latest data pulled from the boat’s AIS appears to suggest it happened an hour earlier at around 4am.
Some 15 of the 22 onboard were rescued, 11 of them scrambling onto an inflatable life raft that sprung up on the deck.
A smaller nearby boat – named Sir Robert Baden Powell – then helped take those people to shore.