Mike Lynch yacht probe: Passengers were likely asleep as storm hit

The dynamic of what happened to those killed isn’t fully clear, deputy prosecutor Raffaele Cammarano told reporters on Saturday. Autopsies are due to take place soon. 

“Their position could lead us to think that they tried to escape, but this isn’t demonstrable in a preliminary phase,” he said of the bodies, found inside the ship, on the side closest to the surface. “The bodies might also have been grouped there, floating.”

“The passengers likely weren’t awake,” when the storm struck in the early hours of the morning, he added.

Authorities in Sicily have opened a manslaughter and negligent shipwreck probe into the Aug. 19 sinking of British tech tycoon Mike Lynch’s yacht, chief prosecutor Ambrogio Cartosio said at the same briefing.

There are currently no suspects, he said at a press conference in Termini Imerese, with the probe being conducted against “persons unknown.” 

Cartosio, who said prosecutors aren’t ruling anything out, expressed sympathy for the families of the seven victims, saying it would be “even more painful” if the probe showed the wreck was caused by not following procedures properly.

The wreck’s survivors – including the ship’s captain, crew and passengers – weren’t tested for alcohol or drugs, Cammarano said, adding that first aid was the priority, including tending to some “serious” wounds among survivors “in a state of shock.”

Prosecutors had kept quiet in recent days about the developing probe, with Cartosio explaining on Saturday that communications on the matter were strictly regulated by Italian law, despite significant interest domestically and internationally in the death of Lynch, the 59-year-old British tech tycoon, and six others. 

Coast guard admiral Raffaele Macauda said the owners of the ship had announced their intention to retrieve the relic from the seabed, and that the costs would come at their expense. It wasn’t clear when this would happen, he said. But Cartosio said it was a fundamental step in the investigation.

The prosecutor said the emergency began at 4:38 a.m. local time, when a red flare was launched and seen by the coast guard. 

Divers from the local firefighter corps spent most of the week attempting to retrieve six bodies stuck inside the ship, which sank to a depth of about 50 meters (164 feet) about a half mile off the coast of Porticello. The body of a seventh victim, the yacht’s chef, had been retrieved earlier. 

Cammarano said the probe had so far focused on those who’d been rescued alive. It wasn’t clear whether the ship had the equivalent of a black box, he said, with access made significantly more difficult by the position of the sunken relic. He added a crew member had been on duty, as required by procedure, when the “truly sudden” storm, or “more likely a downburst,” struck the luxury vessel.  

Speculation has surrounded the incident, with the chief executive officer of the company that made the yacht, Italian Sea Group, positing that human error was involved. It was clear the ship had taken on water and that its electrics failed, Giovanni Costantino told Bloomberg News in an interview.

UK authorities are also probing the incident.

AIS data, a tracking system used by ships, shows the Bayesian started to drift from anchor just before 4 a.m., traveling for about five minutes for about 360 meters to the spot where it eventually sank about 15 minutes later, Costantino said. 

The coast guard on Saturday said there were no bans on being at anchor where the Bayesian was situated. Prosecutors declined to say whether any of the hatches were open, which could allow the yacht to quickly take on water, saying this would prejudge the probe.

Cammarano added that James Cutfield, the New Zealand captain of the Bayesian, had been “very collaborative” in answering prosecutors’ questions. Cartosio said it was “likely” he would have to answer more questions.

The 56-meter long Bayesian had been carrying 22 passengers and crew, of whom 15 were rescued, including Lynch’s wife, Angela Bacares. 

Girolamo Bentivoglio Fiandra, from the firefighting unit, told reporters that the first five bodies were retrieved from a cabin on the left-hand side of the ship, closest to the water.

The final body – that of Lynch’s 18-year-old daughter Hannah, was retrieved on Friday in the third cabin on the left-hand side, “all on the high side of the ship, toward the surface” of the sea, he said.

Lynch and his family had been celebrating his recent acquittal from fraud charges with a small group of advisers when the violent storm struck. The charges stemmed from Lynch’s sale of his software firm Autonomy Corp. to Hewlett Packard Co. in 2011. The Silicon Valley giant went on to accuse Lynch of accounting failures. He’d spent years working to clear his name in court and restore his reputation as one of Europe’s most successful entrepreneurs.