Four unidentified bodies were found on Wednesday August 21 in the wreck of the luxury yacht Bayesian, of British tech tycoon Mike Lynch, which sank on Monday, August 19 in Sicily. The search continues for two other missing passengers. The sailboat is now lying on its right side at a depth of 50 meters, 700 meters from the port of Porticello. But the operation is “long and complicated”, according to the firefighters.
Divers and rescuers unloaded two body bags from the rescue ships that arrived at the port of Porticello. Salvatore Cocina, head of Sicilian civil protection, also said that two more bodies had been found in the wreck on Wednesday, bringing the total to four. After the discovery of the first body, that of a man, on Monday, the death toll from the shipwreck has now risen to five.
The six people missing Wednesday morning were Mike Lynch and his daughter Hannah, Jonathan Bloomer, chairman of the board of Morgan Stanley International, a branch of the American bank, and of the insurer Hiscox, as well as his wife, and Chris Morvillo, a lawyer who defended Mike Lynch in his trial in the United States, as well as his wife.
On Wednesday morning, in calm seas, the divers reached the search area in small inflatable boats, taking turns in teams of two. A coastguard official, Captain Vincenzo Zagarola, had however declared on Italian radio on Tuesday that he was “hard to imagine” that the research may end well.
Experts have pointed out, however, that yachts such as the Bayesian were designed with watertight doors that could create air pockets allowing a chance of survival for a certain time. “There have been cases of survivors in these types of air pockets.”recalled Jean-Baptiste Souppez, a British engineering expert and member of the Royal Institution of Naval Architects, in a commentary provided by the Science Media Centre.
He cited the case of Nigerian sailor Harrison Okene, who was rescued in 2013 after spending nearly three days trapped in an air pocket after his ship capsized in rough seas off Nigeria. “It is simply impossible to predict whether air pockets have formed on the Bayesian »he added, however.
Apocalyptic scenes
Hours before the tornado struck at dawn on Monday, the party was in full swing on the Bayesiana 56-metre-long yacht flying the British flag with twelve passengers and ten crew members on board.
Mike Lynch, a wealthy businessman nicknamed the “British Bill Gates”, celebrated with his friends, colleagues and lawyers his acquittal in June in a fraud trial in the United States that could have cost him many years in prison.
The ship sank within minutes and fifteen people, including six passengers, including a mother and her one-year-old daughter, were rescued, while one crew member was found dead. “The word that the mother and all the wounded kept repeating was 'darkness', the darkness they experienced during the shipwreck.”Fabio Genco, head of the Palermo emergency services who provided first aid to the survivors, told the BBC.
“They talked about five minutes, maybe three to five minutes, between the time the boat was lifted by the waves and the time it sank. (…). There were some truly apocalyptic scenes where everyone was searching and hoping to find.” the missing people, he added.
Source: Lemonde
