Italian officials have launched a shipwreck and manslaughter investigation into the sinking of the luxury Bayesian yacht off the coast of Sicily that left tech tycoon Mike Lynch, his daughter Hannah and five other people dead.
Public prosecutor Ambrogio Cartosio made the announcement at a press conference on Saturday, according to a translation.
The Bayesian superyacht sank in bad weather while moored around half a mile off the coast on Monday morning.
Mr Cartosio told the press conference: “The Termini Imerese prosecution has opened a case hypothesising the crime of shipwreck and of manslaughter but we are only at the initial stage of the inquiry so far.”
He added: “I have to emphasise that the development of the inquiry could actually be of any sort imaginable.”
Mr Cartosio said, through a translation provided by the BBC described the incident as a ‘very grave tragedy’.
He added: “These six persons who tried desperately to save themselves were finally retrieved.
“First of all, four of them. Jonathan Bloomer the banker, Christopher Morvillo the lawyer, and all four of them were retrieved from inside the yacht which was 50 metres down.
“Then, later, the other two were also retrieved.
“Michael Lynch on the 23rd, yesterday, and then the 18-year-old daughter of Michael Lynch, Hannah, was found yesterday morning.
“It is a very grave tragedy and in order to reduce the dimensions of the tragedy, we have called upon the co-operation of the firefighters, firefighting divers, who have shown incredible courage and skill, who carried out a very difficult mission indeed and have allowed us to inspect properly the wreck for bodies.”
The six bodies in the yacht were recovered from cabins on the left side of the vessel, the chief of the Palermo fire service said.
Girolamo Bentivoglio said specialised divers attempting to retrieve the bodies had to deal with “very little visibility due to the weather conditions” and were called in from across the country as part of a search-and-rescue operation which involved “some 70 people” each day.
He added: “The yacht obviously pinned to the right and obviously the (people) tried to go on the other side and then took refuge in their cabins.
“We found four or five bodies in the cabin on the left and there was another one in the third cabin on the left too, and obviously they were in the higher part of the wreck.
“Obviously, emergency procedures were implemented by the divers and obviously we installed cameras and involved further divers.
“And we involved obviously helicopter services and other surveillance cameras.”
The body of the yacht’s chef, Canadian-Antiguan national Recaldo Thomas, was recovered at the scene on Monday.
The other 15 people who had been on the yacht at the time, including Mr Lynch’s wife Angela Becares, were rescued from a liferaft after the Bayesian sank.
A leading coastguard official said he could not confirm how long it would take to retrieve the shipwreck of the sunken yacht, adding that recovering the fuel tanks was a “priority for us because it has environmental knock-on effects”.
Asked about the timeline of recovering the wreck, maritime director of western Sicily Rear Admiral Raffaele Macauda of the coastguard said, through a translation provided by the BBC: “Well, you know, we’re talking about a shipwreck at 50 metres down.
“Everything depends on the availability of the owners and the timeframe of the retrieval of the wreck and of course all that has to be submitted to the port authorities and in parallel of course there will be the inquiry results and it’s only really then that we will be able to authorise the operation.
“I can’t say, like some experts who have already spoken on the subject, that it will be eight weeks.
“But the preliminary phase which we requested was to retrieve the wreck and after that we can proceed with the rest. There are specialised companies after all who can proceed with getting up the fuel tanks, for example, first, so that’s a priority for us because it has environmental knock-on effects and then we’ll work out a proper timeframe – a plan with a timeframe.”
The incident happened “really, really suddenly” and the inquiry will look at how so many members of the crew survived, the prosecutor of this specific case has said.
Raffaele Cammarano was asked at a press conference about how it is possible that most of the crew managed to survive.
According to a translation, he told a press conference: “We have tried to find out maximum information possible from the crew members or the survivors – all I would say is that the incident happened really, really suddenly.
“The inquiry will begin with the facts of the shipwreck – that is all I can say at the moment.”
