The body of technology tycoon Mike Lynch has been recovered after a luxury yacht sank off the coast of Sicily, as his 18-year-old daughter reportedly remains missing. The Italian Coastguard confirmed the news that the sixth and final person yet to be found is a woman. Mr Lynch, his daughter Hannah, Morgan Stanley International bank chairman Jonathan Bloomer, his wife Judy Bloomer, Clifford Chance lawyer Chris Morvillo, and his wife Neda Morvillo were lost when the Bayesian sank at around 5am on Monday.
In a statement confirming their parents’ deaths, the Bloomer family described the couple as “incredible people and an inspiration to many”. They said: “We are grieving for our loved ones and all of those affected by the tragedy. “Our parents were incredible people and an inspiration to many, but first and foremost they were focused on and loved their family and spending time with their new grandchildren.
“Together for five decades, our only comfort is that they are still together now. “This is an unimaginable grief to shoulder.” The body of the fifth person recovered from the yacht’s wreckage was returned in a blue body bag to the port of Porticello on Thursday morning.
Of the 22 passengers and crew on board, 15 – including Mr Lynch’s wife, Angela Bacares – were rescued after escaping on to a lifeboat. The body of Canadian-Antiguan national Recaldo Thomas, who was working as a chef on the superyacht Bayesian, was recovered at the scene of the sinking on Monday. The boat trip was a celebration of Mr Lynch’s acquittal in a fraud case in the US.
Mr Lynch has strong Irish links as his mother was a nurse from Tipperary and his father a fireman from Cork. In a 2015 radio interview, Mr Lynch confirmed that he was born in Ilford in London, despite a number of reports that he was born in Ireland and raised in England. He said during the same interview that he spent childhood summers in Carrick-On-Shannon and Tipperary and has family who still live there.
The businessman, who founded software giant Autonomy in 1996, was cleared in June of carrying out a massive fraud relating to its 11 billion US dollar (£8.64 billion) sale to US company Hewlett Packard. A decision on whether to raise the sunken yacht from the seabed is “not on the agenda”, but will be in the future, a spokesman from the Italian Coastguard has said.
Vincenzo Zagarola told PA: “This is not a topic on the agenda. It will be, but not now.” He also said that the Italian Coastguard’s working theory is still that the missing woman is inside the boat.
The luxury yacht’s captain, James Cutfield, was reportedly questioned by authorities for two hours as they began speaking to all crew members. A helicopter was previously drafted in to help the search effort, and divers from the local fire service have been seen entering the water with torches attached to their headgear. Fire crews from the Vigili del Fuoco said they had been accessing the vessel through natural entrances, without making openings.
Remotely controlled underwater vehicles have been used, with naval units and cave divers also taking part in the search, the Italian Coastguard has said. Bayesian was moored around half a mile off the coast of Porticello when it sank at about 5am local time on Monday as the area was hit by a storm. The wreckage of the Bayesian is resting on the seabed off the coast at a depth of 50 metres (164ft).
Fire crews described the operation as “complex”, with divers limited to 12-minute underwater shifts. Survivors have been recuperating at a hotel complex in Porticello, where authorities are gathering witness statements. An Italian doctor at the hospital where British tourist Charlotte Emsley and her one-year-old daughter were taken said the mother held her baby above the waves after the yacht sank.
Dr Domenico Cipolla, of Di Cristina Children’s Hospital in Palermo, told PA: “Obviously the mother and the husband were so shaken by what has happened, it was a tragedy for them. “She told me that two minutes after falling asleep with her baby they were in the water, she did not understand how this happened, it went dark. “She held the child high in her arms above the waves, for a few seconds the baby was in the water, but she saved her.
“She sometimes cried for her friends in the hospital.”.
