Even in the dwindling twilight, the divers and patrol boats are still out there off the Sicilian coast, 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. 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 window of time to try to find people”. He added that, since the yacht was on its side and not upright, the prospects of trapped air were much greater.
“The next 24 hours are critical,” he said. Jeremy Bloomer, twin brother of missing passenger Jonathan Bloomer, last night told the BBC: “It’s a slow process and it will take time. So there might be air pockets, but we don’t know.
It’s still wait and see, so fingers crossed.” The authorities have not – quite – abandoned all notions of a miracle, though the.