PORTICELLO, Italy (Reuters) -Italian rescue divers were scouring the sunken family yacht of British tech magnate Mike Lynch on Thursday for one last missing body, three days after the luxury vessel capsized in a violent storm off the coast of Sicily. Earlier in the morning members of the fire brigade and the coast guard recovered a fifth corpse, after four bodies were retrieved from the wreck on Wednesday and transported to nearby hospitals, in the city of Palermo. Italian authorities did not officially identify the corpses, but Britain's Daily Telegraph reported that two of the dead were Lynch and his 18-year-old daughter.
Italy's Corriere della Sera said the only bodies identified so far were Morgan Stanley banker Jonathan Bloomer and U.S. lawyer Chris Morvillo.
The British-flagged Bayesian, a 56-metre-long (184-ft) superyacht carrying 22 passengers and crew, was anchored off the port of Porticello, near Palermo, when it disappeared beneath the waves in a matter of minutes after a fierce storm struck. Fifteen people, including Lynch's wife, managed to escape the boat before it capsized, while the body of the onboard chef, Canadian-Antiguan national Recaldo Thomas, was found near the wreck hours after the disaster. Operations have been challenging due to the depth and the narrowness of the places that the divers are scouring, the fire brigade said in a statement.
It compared the efforts to those carried out, on a larger scale, for the Costa Concordia, the luxury cruise liner.