Italian firefighters’ divers are tirelessly continuing their arduous search for the six people who disappeared early Monday morning after the luxury yacht they were travelling on sank off the coast of Sicily. According to the regional civil protection chief, Salvo Cocina, the missing are two American citizens and four British citizens. They are the tycoon Mike Lynch, his 18-year-old daughter Hannah, the banker and president of Morgan Stanley International, Jonathan Bloomer, his wife Judy, and Lynch’s lawyer, Chris Morvillo and his wife Neda. Of the other 16 people on board, one crew member was found dead and the other 15 were rescued alive.
The search for the missing people is focusing on the interior of the sunken sailboat, which is 50 metres deep, as it is believed they were trapped there.
The underwater rescue team, which arrived from Rome and Sardinia, resumed the complex search operation early on Tuesday morning, after it was suspended overnight. Some of the group’s specialist divers already took part in the rescue of the Costa Concordia cruise ship, which sank in 2012. As a spokesman for the fire brigade, Luca Cari, explained to the media, the search work is complicated because it takes place at great depth, where the wreck of the sunken sailboat is located. At this depth, the divers have only 12 minutes for each dive and two of them must use them to descend and to ascend, so the actual search time is 10 minutes for each dive.
“Inside the ship, the spaces are very small and if you find an obstacle, it is very difficult to move forward, just as it is very difficult to find alternative routes,” Cari said. The spokesman said that after initially inspecting the area of the sailboat’s bridge, “which is full of electrical cables,” after several hours of work in shifts, the divers managed to open a space to enter the other rooms of the ship safely.
The luxury sailing vessel, the Bayesian, measuring 56 metres in length and 11 metres in width, was travelling at full capacity, with 10 crew members and 12 passengers, mostly British and American, accommodated in six cabins, including a sumptuous master suite. The vessel had been built in 2008 and renovated in 2020; according to local media reports, it had the tallest aluminium mast in the world, at 75 metres. The vessel also had two three-seater jet skis, four underwater jet skis and state-of-the-art diving equipment.
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Violent storm
According to Italian media reports, after the first inspection, the hypothesis is taking shape that during the storm that hit northern Sicily with violence, a huge amount of water entered through the stern or the bow in a very short time, causing the hull to tilt and sink. Several survivors have reported that the boat “tilted and sank in a few seconds.”
His version coincides with that of some witnesses of the shipwreck who say that the sailboat “disappeared” from the surface in just a few moments. A fisherman from Porticello, the town in the province of Palermo where the shipwreck occurred, Fabio Cefalù, who was in the area at the time of the storm, told local media that he saw the strong whirlwind in the sea that swept away the sailboat and that it lasted about 10 minutes and shortly after he saw a distress flare. When the wind died down he made his way to the site as best he could. But when he arrived he only found “cushions and tables from the boat floating.”
The crew of another ship, the Sir Robert Baden Powell, flying the Dutch flag, which was anchored near the sinking area, initially rescued the survivors of the Bayesian. The captain of the first ship, Karsent Börner, told the newspaper The Republic He said that early on Monday morning, when he noticed that the wind was getting stronger, he decided to start the engines to better control the boat, stabilise it and avoid a collision with the Bayesian, which was behind them. “When the storm passed we realised that the boat behind us had disappeared. Then we saw a distress flare and quickly went to the spot and found only one lifeboat adrift with 15 people on board, including a little girl. It was a huge disaster,” said the sailor.
The survivors, who have been accommodated in a local hotel and are receiving psychological care, were initially transferred to medical centres in Palermo to treat their wounds, most of which were superficial, and were still kept warm with towels and jumpers bearing the Sir Robert Baden Powell logo.
One of the survivors is Charlotte Golunski, a partner in one of Lynch’s companies and mother of a one-year-old girl who also survived the shipwreck. “I kept my daughter afloat with all my strength, with my arms up so she wouldn’t drown. It was dark, I couldn’t keep my eyes open. I was screaming for help, but I only heard the screams of others,” she told the doctors who treated her, according to Italian media.
Golunski has given some details of the tragedy: “We were sleeping in the cabin when suddenly the boat turned upside down. All the furniture fell on us, the light went out. Suddenly we found ourselves outside. The girl and I in the bow, my husband in the stern. We didn’t even have time to put on our life jackets. We were in the water for a few seconds, then they put us in a rubber dinghy with 11 other people,” among whom was also her husband, James Emslie.
The passengers were on the yacht as guests of English technology magnate Mike Lynch, 59, who had invited them on holiday to the island of Sicily to celebrate his acquittal a couple of months ago in a long US trial in which he was accused of fraud linked to the sale of his company. softwareAutonomy to Hewlett-Packard. Hanna, the daughter of the businessman, nicknamed “the British Bill Gates” is also among the missing, while his wife, Angela Bacares, was rescued and is in good physical condition.
Also missing are the chairman of US investment bank Morgan Stanley International, Jonathan Bloomer, 70, a veteran of British finance with a long and prestigious business career, and his wife Judy. Local media say Bloomer was close friends with Lynch and testified in her favour at the US trial.
Lynch’s lawyer at that trial, Christopher Morvillo, a renowned attorney who was a prosecutor in New York and participated in the investigation of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, was also on the boat with his wife and both are missing.
The captain of the sunken sailboat, who will testify in the coming days to the Italian judicial authorities investigating what happened, has told doctors that he did not see the storm coming.
The Italian news agency Ansa claims that one of the security cameras in a villa near the site of the shipwreck recorded the tragedy. In the videos, according to the owner, “you can see how the boat sinks in just 60 seconds.” The owner explained that the only camera of the 20 in the house that was not affected by the rain and wind clearly recorded what happened. “There was nothing to be done. The boat disappeared in a flash,” he said.
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