During a vicious storm before dawn on Monday, a superyacht carrying nearly two dozen people suddenly capsized while still anchored and sank within sight of a small Sicilian fishing village. A Canadian-born man who had been working as the on-board cook died, and several others are still missing.
The authorities have yet to determine what caused the yacht to capsize, but here’s what we know about the ship.
Who was on board?
Twenty-two people — 10 crew and 12 passengers — were on board the anchored ship when it went down off the coast of Porticello, less than 20 kilometres from the Sicilian capital of Palermo.
They included one of Britain’s most recognizable tech entrepreneurs, Mike Lynch, his teenage daughter, his wife, one of his lawyers as well as the president of Morgan Stanley International.
Fifteen people were rescued, including Lynch’s wife, Angela Bacares. Lynch and his 18-year-old daughter, Hannah, are among the six people unaccounted for. Luca Cari, a spokesperson for the local fire rescue service, said they are believed to be inside the hull of the sunken ship.
The Italian coast guard said the missing included people with British, American and Canadian nationalities.
A passenger ship anchored nearby, the Sir Robert Baden Powell, found some of the survivors on a life raft and took them on board before the coast guard picked them up.
Rescuers later recovered the body of the ship’s cook, who was born in Canada and lived in Antigua.
Karsten Borner, who was captain of a boat that was out in the same storm off Palermo, Sicily, that capsized a luxury yacht, describes the violent weather and its aftermath.
Salvo Cocina of Sicily’s civil protection agency said Jonathan Bloomer, chairman of Morgan Stanley International, and Chris Morvillo, one of Lynch’s lawyers, with the firm Clifford Chance, were also among the missing.
Cocina said the crew and passengers were from a variety of countries, including France, Germany, Ireland, Myanmar, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Spain.
How bad was the storm?
Officials had expected poor weather, but the severity of the storm caught them off guard.
The Italian Air Force’s Center for Aerospace Meteorology and Climatology registered intense lightning activity and strong gusts of wind in the area when the ship sank, according to its director. Col. Attilio Di Diodato told the New York Times he could not rule out that it had been a waterspout — rotating columns of water that can form over the ocean.
Separately, Cocina told journalists that a waterspout had hit the area overnight.
“It could be that the mast broke or the anchor at the prow pulled it” as the mini tornado hit, fisherman Fabio Cefalu, who helped look for survivors, told The Associated Press.
Karsten Börner, the captain of the nearby ship that helped survivors, said he struggled to control his own ship during what he described as very strong winds.
Karsten Borner describes seeing the British-flagged Bayesian capsize, and his subsequent rescue of some passengers, after the luxury yacht was struck by an unexpectedly violent storm and sank off the Sicilian capital Palermo.
A meteorologist said there was a higher risk of extreme weather in the Mediterranean Sea because recent storms and heavy rainfall after weeks of intense heat affected the water’s temperature.
“The sea surface temperature around Sicily was around 30 C, which is almost three degrees more than normal. This creates an enormous source of energy that contributes to these storms,” Luca Mercalli told Reuters.
“We can’t say that this is all due to global warming but we can say that it has an amplifying effect.”
What kind of yacht was it?
The Bayesian was 56 metres long — about half the length of an NFL football field. Perini, an Italian firm, built the ship in 2008.
It was named for English statistician Thomas Bayes, whose theories of probability influenced the software Lynch developed and with which he made his fortune.
Refitted in 2020, the ship was notable for its single 75-metre mast — one of the world’s tallest made of aluminum. It was lit up at night, including just hours before it sank.
The boat left the Sicilian port of Milazzo on Aug. 14. It was last tracked east of Palermo on Sunday evening with a navigation status of “at anchor,” according to vessel tracking app Vesselfinder.
According to the shipspotting.com website, the boat was owned by a firm called Revtom Limited. Lynch’s wife is named as the sole shareholder of the firm on company documents.
Where is the wreck now?
Police divers spent the day trying to reach the hull of the ship, which was resting where it had been anchored at a depth of 50 metres off Porticello.
Rescuers returned to the site after 10 p.m. to see if it would be possible to search through the night, when weather conditions were expected to worsen, said Luca Cari with the fire rescue service.
The U.K. Marine Accident Investigation Branch is deploying a team of four inspectors to Italy to conduct a preliminary assessment.
Source Agencies
