Rescuers continued their search on Tuesday for six people missing after a luxury superyacht sank off the coast of Sicily during a freak storm at around 04.30 on Monday. Four Britons and two Americans are missing, including British tech tycoon Mike Lynch and his teenage daughter Hannah; Morgan Stanley International bank chairman Jonathan Bloomer and his wife Judy; and Chris Morvillo, an American lawyer for Clifford Chance, and his wife Neda.

There were 10 crew members and 12 passengers onboard when the British-flagged Bayesian yacht was hit by a waterspout, similar to a tornado, as it lay anchored off Porticello, east of Palermo. Emergency services rescued 15 people, including Lynch's wife Angela Bacares and a one-year-old girl whose mother Charlotte Golunski held her above the waves after being thrown off the deck of the 56-m vessel. The 15 people flung into the sea during the storm took refuge in lifeboats and were taken aboard a nearby boat before emergency services took them to hospital.

Specialist divers on Tuesday were inspecting the wreckage of the yacht at a depth of 49 metres as part of a major search operation conducted by the Italian coastguard. Mike Lynch Entrepreneur Mike Lynch, known as "the British Bill Gates", co-founded software company Autonomy which was bought in 2011 by tech giant Hewlett-Packard (HP) for $11 billion. For more than a decade Lynch, 59, was embroiled in a legal battle related to the high-profile sale, with HP accusing him of inflating the val.