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Blackbox sheds light on tragic final minutes of billionaire’s superyacht trip
Mike lynch had gathered his nearest and dearest to toast walking away a free man from a hp fraud trial, subscribe to independent premium to bookmark this article.
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It was supposed to be a summer celebration.
British tech tycoon Mike Lynch had gathered his tried and trusted lawyers who had been with him every step of the way helping him emerge unscathed from a gruelling 13-year legal battle. Twelve guests had flown into the picturesque Italian port of Porticello, near Palermo from the UK, the US, Canada , New Zealand and Ireland, to mark the end of the fraud trial that had consumed much of their lives.
But now a manslaughter investigation has been launched as Mr Lynch and his 18-year-old daughter Hannah were among the seven people who died after the vessel capsized during bad weather in the early hours of Monday morning.
Morgan Stanley chairman Jonathan Bloomer, his wife Judith Bloomer, Clifford Chance lawyer Christopher Morvillo and his wife Neda Morvillo also died.
Italian public prosecutor Ambrogio Cartosio, from nearby town Termini Imerese said his office has opened an initial investigation into manslaughter and negligent shipwreck .
The group had been welcomed on board the six luxurious suites of Bayesian, a 56-metre-long £30 million superyacht , by the ten crew. Boasting the tallest aluminium mast in the world - higher than Nelson’s Column - experts now speculate it may have caused her to topple and become pinned underwater in an unpredictable, ferocious storm.
The ship was named after the statistical method, the Bayesian inference, an 18th-century theory that helps forecasters predict outcomes more reliably. Mr Lynch based his entire PHD thesis around it, later amassing his huge fortune after selling his company Autonomy to Hewlett-Packard for $11 billion in 2011.
He had improbably beaten the odds in a bitter US legal dispute with the technology giant, convincing a jury that he was not guilty of claims of massive fraud after a long legal fight that finally came to an end in June. Two months ago he emerged from court with tears in his eyes a free man he pledged to restructure extradition laws that brought him to the US in cuffs.
Disaster struck at around 5am when a freak tornado over the sea known as a waterspout rocked the superyacht, according to Sicily ’s civil protection agency. The crew fired off disaster flares causing local fishermen and others to navigate the storm to come to the aid of survivors.
The captain of a nearby boat said that when the winds surged, he had turned on the engine to keep control of his vessel and avoid a collision with the Bayesian, which had been anchored alongside him.
“We managed to keep the ship in position and after the storm was over, we noticed that the ship behind us was gone,” Karsten Borner said.
The other boat “went flat on the water, and then down,” he added. He said his crew then found some of the survivors on a life raft and took them on board before the coast guard picked them up.
This included a one-year-old girl named Sophie one of the 16 survivors, so far.
Her mother, Charlotte Golunski, 36, told how she battled to keep her child above the dark and raging Mediterranean while calling for help amid the awful piercing screams of other struggling guests and crew.
“For two seconds I lost the baby in the sea, then I immediately held her again in the fury of the waves,” she told Giornale di Sicilia. “I held her tightly, tightly to me, while the sea was raging. So many were screaming. Fortunately, the lifeboat inflated and 11 of us managed to get on it.”
This left six passengers unaccounted for - Lynch and his 18-year-old daughter, Morgan Stanley International non-executive chairman Jonathan Bloomer, Clifford Chance lawyer Chris Morvillo, and their wives Judy and Neda.
The worn-out Captain of the yacht , James Catfield said simply: “We didn’t see it coming.”
“The wind was very strong. Bad weather was expected, but not of this magnitude,” a coast guard official in the Sicilian capital Palermo said the next day.
Local fisherman Giuseppe Cefalu told how he saw a “tornado” close to the port on Monday morning. Mr Cefalu said he and his brother Fabio saw a flare in the sky at around 5am.
The pair aided efforts to locate people in the water after the yacht vanished beneath the waves, but Mr Cefalu said he only saw cushions and a buoy.
He said weather conditions on the morning of the sinking were “fierce”, with “very strong” wind and rain.
The luxury superyacht is “practically intact” on the seabed despite sinking, Marco Tilotta, a firefighter diver from Palermo, has told Italian newspaper Il Messaggero.
He said in an interview that the multi-million yacht was lying on its side at a depth of 48 metres, but that divers were unable to gain access because of floating furnishings and other debris inside the yacht.
“The fear is that the bodies got trapped inside the vessel,” which was lying 49 metres deep, Salvatore Cocina, head of civil protection in Sicily , added.
“The biggest difficulty we have is due to the depth, which does not allow long times of intervention,” fire department diver Marco Tilotta told reporters. “We plan ... to search centimetre by centimetre.”
Now they enter a critical 24 hours according to Nick Sloane, a lead diver in the Costa Concordia wreck. He told Sky News that survivors might be trapped in air pockets inside the ship, but that time is running out fast to rescue them.
“They’ve got a very small window of time to try to find people stuck inside with hopefully an air pocket, and they could be rescued.
“If the yacht is on its side, it might have more air pockets than if it’s upright. She’s got quite a large keel, and that will deflect and put her on her side, I’m sure.”
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10 of the most impressive superyachts owned by billionaires
From a sailing yacht owned by a russian billionaire industrialist to the luxury launch of the patek philippe ceo, here are the best billionaire-owned boats on the water….
Words: Jonathan Wells
There’s something about billionaires and big boats . Whether they’re superyachts or megayachts, men with money love to splash out on these sizeable sea-going giants. And that all began in 1954 — with the big dreams of Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis.
Onassis, keen to keep his luxury lifestyle afloat when at sea, bought Canadian anti-submarine frigate HMCS Stormont after World War II. He spent millions turning it into an opulent super yacht, named it after his daughter — and the Christina O kicked off a trend among tycoons. To this day, the world’s richest men remain locked in an arms race to build the biggest, fastest, most impressive superyacht of all. Here are 10 of our favourites…
Eclipse, owned by Roman Abramovich
Built by: Blohm+Voss of Hamburg, with interiors and exteriors designed by Terence Disdale. Launched in 2009, it cost $500 million (the equivalent of £623 million today).
Owned by: Russian businessman Roman Abramovich, the owner of private investment company Millhouse LLC and owner of Chelsea Football Club. His current net worth is $17.4 billion.
Key features: 162.5 metres in length / 9 decks / Top speed of 22 knots / Two swimming pools / Disco hall / Mini submarine / 2 helicopter pads / 24 guest cabins
Sailing Yacht A, owned by Andrey Melnichenko
Built by: Nobiskrug, a shipyard on the Eider River in Germany. The original idea came from Jacques Garcia, with interiors designed by Philippe Starck and a reported price tag of over $400 million.
Owned by: Russian billionaire industrialist Andrey Melnichenko, the main beneficiary of both the fertiliser producing EuroChem Group and the coal energy company SUEK. Though his current net worth is $18.7 billion, Sailing Yacht A was seized in Trieste on 12 March 2022 due to the EU’s sanctions on Russian businessmen.
Key features: 119 metres in length / 8 decks / Top speed of 21 knots / Freestanding carbon-fibre rotating masts / Underwater observation pod / 14 guests
Symphony, owned by Bernard Arnault
Built by: Feadship, the fabled shipyard headquartered in Haarlem in The Netherlands. With an exterior designed by Tim Heywood, it reportedly cost around $150 million to construct.
Owned by: French billionaire businessman and art collector Bernard Arnault. Chairman and chief executive of LVMH, the world’s largest luxury goods company, his current net worth is $145.8 billion.
Key features: 101.5 metres in length / 6 decks / Top speed of 22 knots / 6-metre glass-bottom swimming pool / Outdoor cinema / Sundeck Jacuzzi / 8 guest cabins
Faith, owned by Michael Latifi
Built by: Similarly to Symphony above, also Feadship. With exteriors designed by Beaulieu-based RWD, and interiors by Chahan Design, it cost a reported $200 million to construct in 2017.
Owned by: Until recently, Canadian billionaire and part-owner of the Aston Martin Formula 1 Team , Lawrence Stroll. Recently sold to Michael Latifi, father of F1 star Nicholas , a fellow Canadian businessman with a net worth of just under $2 billion.
Key features: 97 metres in length / 9 guest cabins / Glass-bottom swimming pool — with bar / Bell 429 helicopter
Amevi, owned by Lakshmi Mittal
Built by: The Oceanco shipyard, also in The Netherlands. With exterior design by Nuvolari & Lenard and interior design by Alberto Pinto, it launched in 2007 (and cost around $125 million to construct).
Owned by: Indian steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal, chairman and CEO of Arcelor Mittal, the world’s largest steelmaking company. He owns 20% of Queen Park Rangers, and has a net worth of $18 billion.
Key features: 80 metres in length / 6 decks / Top speed of 18.5 knots / On-deck Jacuzzi / Helipad / Swimming Pool / Tender Garage / 8 guest cabins
Odessa II, owned by Len Blavatnik
Built by: Nobiskrug, the same German shipyard that built Sailing Yacht A . Both interior and exterior were created by Focus Yacht Design, and the yacht was launched in 2013 with a cost of $80 million.
Owned by: British businessman Sir Leonard Blavatnik. Founder of Access Industries — a multinational industrial group with current holdings in Warner Music Group, Spotify and the Grand-Hôtel du Cap-Ferrat — he is worth $39.9 billion.
Key features: 74 metres in length / 6 guest cabins / Top speed of 18 knots / Intimate beach club / Baby grand piano / Private master cabhin terrace / Outdoor cinema
Nautilus, owned by Thierry Stern
Built by: Italian shipyard Perini Navi in 2014. With interiors by Rémi Tessier and exterior design by Philippe Briand, Nautilus was estimated to cost around $90 million to construct.
Owned by: Patek Philippe CEO Thierry Stern. Alongside his Gulstream G650 private jet, Nautilus — named for the famous sports watch — is his most costly mode of transport. His current net worth is $3 billion.
Key features: 73 metres in length / 7 guest cabins / Top speed of 16.5 knots / Dedicated wellness deck / 3.5 metre resistance pool / Underfloor heating / Jet Skis
Silver Angel, owned by Richard Caring
Built by: Luxury Italian boatbuilder Benetti. Launched in 2009, the yacht’s interior has been designed by Argent Design and her exterior styling is by Stefano Natucci.
Owned by: Richard Caring, British businessman and multi-millionaire (his wealth peaked at £1.05 billion, so he still makes the cut). Chairman of Caprice Holdings, he owns The Ivy restaurants.
Key features: 64.5 metres in length / Cruising speed of 15 knots / 7 guest cabins / Lalique decor / 5 decks / Oval Jacuzzi pool / Sun deck bar / Aft deck dining table
Lady Beatrice, owned by Frederick Barclay
Built by: Feadship and Royal Van Lent in 1993. Exteriors were created by De Voogt Naval Architects, with interiors by Bannenberg Designs. She cost the equivalent of £63 million to build.
Owned by: Sir David Barclay and his late brother Sir Frederick. The ‘Barclay Brothers’ had joint business pursuits including The Spectator , The Telegraph and delivery company Yodel. Current net worth: £7 billion.
Key features: 60 metres in length / 18 knots maximum speed / Monaco home port / Named for the brothers’ mother, Beatrice Cecelia Taylor / 8 guest cabins
Space, owned by Laurence Graff
Built by: Space was the first in Feadship’s F45 Vantage series , styled by Sinot Exclusive Yacht Design and launched in 2007. She cost a reported $25 million to construct.
Owned by: Laurence Graff, English jeweller and billionaire businessman. As the founder of Graff Diamonds, he has a global business presence and a current net worth of $6.26 billion.
Key features: 45 metres in length / Top speed of 16 knots / Al fresco dining area / Sun deck Jacuzzi / Breakfast bar / Swimming platform / Steam room
Want more yachts? Here’s the handcradfted, homegrown history of Princess…
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