ROME — Rescue teams and divers were searching Tuesday for six missing people, including a British tech magnate and a Morgan Stanley boss, after a luxury superyacht sank in a storm off Sicily . The identity of those still missing emerged after an initial search of the 184-foot sailboat, named the Bayesian, was unsuccessful on Monday. The British-flagged tourist vessel had 22 people aboard when it sank due to “a violent storm” off Sicily’s main city, Palermo, at around 5 a.
m. local time (11 p.m.
ET) on Monday, the local coast guard said. Fifteen people were rescued by a boat present in the immediate vicinity and then brought ashore by coast guard vessels, but six passengers, including American, British and Canadian citizens, remained missing, it said. They were believed to be trapped in the boat's hull, some 164 feet underwater, posing a challenge to divers who returned to the site Tuesday off Porticello, near Palermo.
Salvatore Cocina, the director of Sicily’s Civil Protection Agency, told NBC News early Tuesday that the missing include British tech magnate Mike Lynch and his daughter, Morgan Stanley International chairman Jonathan Bloomer and his wife as well as Clifford Chance lawyer Chris Morvillo and his wife. Cocina did not specify the nationalities of the missing. He also did not identify Lynch's daughter or the wives of Bloomer and Morvillo.
Italy’s national fire department said that its divers were able to get inside the wreck during a late-night dive on Mo.