British tech tycoon Mike Lynch and his daughter are among six people still missing after a tornado sank their luxury superyacht off the coast of Sicily in the early hours of Monday morning.
Two Americans and two Britons are also missing after the 184-foot sailing ship, the Baysian, sank off the coast of Palermo at about 5 a.m. Local media reported that 15 passengers and crew, including a one-year-old girl, were rescued and the body of one man was recovered.
Lynch, 59, was missing during the incident but his wife, Angela Bacalez, was rescued and told La Repubblica newspaper that she suffered abrasions to her leg in the chaos and is now unable to walk.
Mike Lynch is pictured leaving a London courthouse in 2019.
Henry Nichols/Reuters
The Daily Mail reported that Lynch’s 18-year-old daughter, Hannah, and at least one of her lawyers remained missing as of Monday evening. It was unclear whether Lynch’s younger daughter was in the car.
In June, a San Francisco jury found Lynch not guilty of 15 counts of fraud in connection with the 2011 sale of his company, Autonomy, to Hewlett-Packard for $11 billion.
Lynch, once known in Britain as the “British Bill Gates,” thanked the jury at the end of a decade-long legal battle to clear his name. “I look forward to returning to the UK and getting back to what I love most – my family and innovating in my field,” he said after the acquittal.
According to the Telegraph, the lawyer aboard the Baysian on the ill-fated trip was 36-year-old Ira Ronald. Her father, Lynn Ronald, told the paper that the trip was to celebrate Lynch’s acquittal.
The 56-metre sailing ship, the Baysian, was photographed off the coast of Palermo just hours before it sank (left).
Baia Santa Nicolichia/Fabio La Bianca
Italian authorities said the reality that the missing were likely dead was beginning to sink in among survivors of the tragedy by Monday afternoon.
“We have given this information to the survivors, who are constantly talking and crying as they realise there is little hope that their friends are alive,” Domenico Cipolla, a doctor at a hospital treating victims, told Reuters.
The Baysian was built in 2008 at Italy’s Perini Navi shipyard and was refurbished in 2020. According to Boat International, the vessel boasts the world’s tallest aluminum mast, measuring over 240 feet. The maritime news site reported that the iconic vessel is one of the 50 largest yachts on the planet.
Divers were dispatched to the site of the Basian wreck. By Monday evening, six people, including two Americans, remained missing.
Courtesy of Reuters
Divers reached the wreckage of the British-flagged yacht 160 feet below the surface. According to Corriere della Sera, they found a man’s body alongside the boat, with more bodies visible through the vessel’s portholes. La Repubblica, citing local fire officials, reported that the man whose body was recovered was the boat’s chef. The Mail reported that the chef “is believed to be of Canadian nationality.”
A one-year-old British girl survived the disaster and was taken to hospital uninjured.
“I used all my strength to keep her in the water and stretch her arms out to stop her drowning. It was pitch black,” her mother, who gave her name as Charlotte Gornski, told La Repubblica newspaper. “I couldn’t keep my eyes open in the water. I screamed for help but all I could hear were other people screaming around me.”
Charlotte Gornski recounted to an Italian newspaper how she saved her one-year-old baby from drowning.
Gornski reportedly required stitches for a wound in her chest and her husband suffered minor injuries.
The passengers on board were mostly British, but also from Sri Lanka, New Zealand and Ireland, ANSA news agency said. Some witnesses told the agency that the ship was anchored in front of the port of Porticello when the tornado struck.
Karsten Borner, the captain of another ship that was in the area when the storm hit, said he started his ship’s engines to maintain control and avoid colliding with the Baysian.
“We managed to hold the boat in place and after the storm passed we noticed the boat behind us had disappeared,” he said, according to Reuters. The other boat “overturned on its side in the water and then sank,” he added.
Borner said crew members then found several survivors in a life raft, three of whom were seriously injured, and they were hoisted aboard Borner’s boat before the Coast Guard arrived and rescued them.
According to shippotting.com, the Baysian is owned by a company called Revtom Limited. Lynch’s wife, Baccares, is the company’s sole shareholder, according to Reuters.
The news agency said Lynch’s doctorate from Cambridge and the software on which he made his fortune were both based on Bayesian theorem.
“A beautiful ship on which a party was being held. A normal, fun holiday at sea turned into a tragedy,” one witness told the ANSA news agency.
Local restaurant BAIA Santa Nicolicia shared a photo on Facebook that appears to show Baisian at around 10pm on Sunday night. The account also posted security camera footage showing high winds causing damage outside the restaurant in the early hours of the morning.
Italy’s fire and rescue services released separate footage showing rescue operations using helicopters and boats at the scene of the sinking.
“I was at home when the tornado hit,” local fisherman Pietro Assiut told ANSA. “I immediately closed all the windows and then I saw the boat. It had only one mast and was very big. Then I saw it suddenly sinking.”
One witness, the captain of a trawler, said he had been heading out to fish early in the morning but had stayed in port after seeing lightning at sea.
“At about 4:15am we saw flames on the sea and we waited for this water tornado to pass,” Fabio Cefalu said, according to the BBC.
According to NOAA’s National Ocean Service, a tornado-generating waterspout is one that either originates over water or moves from land into a body of water.
Cefalu said all they found on the way out to sea were cushions and other flotsam they had salvaged from the deck of the sunken ship.