Divers searching for the last person missing after a superyacht sank off the coast of Sicily found a body on Friday believed to be that of the teenage daughter of British technology tycoon Mike Lynch, who also died.
The discovery brings to seven the death toll from the sinking of the Bayesian ship, which sank off an Italian island before dawn on Monday, the Italian coastguard confirmed to AFP.
The bodies of Lynch, a well-known technology entrepreneur and investor, and four other passengers were found on Wednesday and Thursday, and his 18-year-old daughter Hannah is the only passenger still missing.
Emergency services found the body of another man, believed to be the boat’s cook, hours after the boat sank in a sudden storm.
Lynch had recently invited friends and family members on a sailing boat to celebrate his acquittal in a major fraud case in the US.
But while the 56-metre (185ft) long British-flagged yacht was anchored at Porticello, near Palermo, a plume of water smashed upon her – similar to a small tornado.
It sank within a few minutes.
Italian authorities launched a “delicate” search operation, using specialist divers, boats from several emergency services and helicopters.
‘Heartbroken’
Fifteen people from the ship were rescued, including Lynch’s wife, who was presumably at a hotel in Sicily awaiting news of her husband and daughter.
According to British media reports, 18-year-old Hannah had just finished her school exams and had got a place to study English literature at Oxford University.
Friends of the teenager told The Times newspaper that she was kind and smart, as well as a staunch feminist.
The bodies of Lynch lawyer Christopher Morvillo and his wife, Neda, and Morgan Stanley International Chairman Jonathan Bloomer and his wife, Judy, were recovered on Wednesday.
Morvillo’s firm Clifford Chance paid tribute to the lawyer and his wife, saying all were “deeply saddened by the tragic passing… and are still trying to come to terms with this terrible loss”.
The Bloomer family described their “unimaginable grief”, saying Jonathan and Judy had been together for five decades.
“Our only relief is that they are still together,” the family said.
The Lynch family has not yet commented publicly.
Many questions remain about why the boat sank, and so quickly, even though other boats nearby were unaffected.
On Thursday, the head of the boat building company said the tragedy could have been avoided.
“Everything that was done has produced a very long summary of errors,” said Giovanni Costantino, head of the Italian Sea Group, which includes the Perini Navy company that created Bayesian in 2008.
Bad weather forecast
He told Italy’s Corriere della Sera newspaper that bad weather had been forecast and all passengers should have gathered at a pre-arranged location, and all doors and gates should have been closed.
“Instead, the water just flooded the cabin with the guests still inside. They were caught in a trap, those poor guys, like rats in a net,” he said.
Lynch, 59, was acquitted by a San Francisco court in June of all charges he faced in an $11 billion fraud linked to the sale of his software firm Autonomy to Hewlett-Packard.
The Bayesian vessel owned by his family featured a 75-metre mast, the world’s tallest aluminium-framed sailing mast, according to the Charter World website.
According to the salvage engineer leading the operation to remove the Costa Concordia cruise ship, which sank off the coast of Italy in 2012, it will likely cost 15 million euros and take “six to eight weeks”.
South African engineer Nick Sloan told the Republica daily that the mast on the seabed could be removed to free the boat, but the entire boat would have to be raised with the help of a giant crane and a team of 40 specialist divers.
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