A twist of fate and a freak of nature: ROBERT HARDMAN reveals a chain of events experts blame for superyacht tragedy. But why were the crew alone in life raft without their passengers?

A twist of fate and a freak of nature: ROBERT HARDMAN reveals a chain of events experts blame for superyacht tragedy. But why were the crew alone in life raft without their passengers? By Robert Hardman Published: 02:03, 21 August 2024 | Updated: 02:27, 21 August 2024 e-mail View comments Even in the dwindling twilight, the divers and the patrol boats are still out there off the Sicilian coast as I write, lending the tiniest credence to that slenderest of hopes: might someone, in some miraculous air pocket, still be alive? It is now two days since the 183ft British superyacht, the Bayesian, capsized in seconds and sank in 150ft of water in the early hours of Monday . Six people are missing, including the owner, British tech guru Mike Lynch, and his 18-year-old daughter, Hannah.

Yet, divers have since reported finding a hull still apparently intact and lying on its ­starboard side with heavy detritus – furniture and so on – blocking their path to some of the cabins within. In the absence of bodies, one expert raised the dim possibility that someone might still be trapped in a submerged pocket of air. Robert Hardman in Porticello, Sicily, with the life raft used by the survivors of the shipwreck Mike Lynch and his 18-year-old daughter, Hannah, are among those missing after the superyacht sank off southern Italy Nick Sloane, a salvage engineer who worked on the wreck of the Italian Costa Concordia cruise ship, told Sky News yesterday that ‘they’ve got a very small windo.