PORTICELLO, Sicily — Two months after being cleared in a bruising legal battle over fraud charges, British tech mogul Mike Lynch celebrated his freedom with a cruise. He invited his family, friends and part of his legal team on board his luxury sailing yacht, a majestic 180-foot vessel named Bayesian after the mathematical theorem around which he had built his empire. On Sunday night, after a tour of the Gulf of Naples, including Capri, and volcanic islands in the Eolian archipelago, the boat anchored half a mile off the Sicilian coast in Porticello, Italy.
It chose a stretch of water favored by the Phoenicians thousands of years ago for its protection from the mistral wind and, in more recent times, by the yachts of tech billionaires. The boat was lit "like a Christmas tree," local residents said, standing out against the full moon. But about 4 a.
m., calamity unfolded. A violent and fast storm hit the area with some of the strongest winds locals said they had ever felt.
Fabio Cefalù, a fisherman, said he saw a flare pierce the darkness shortly after 4. Minutes later, the yacht was underwater. Only dozens of cushions from the boat's deck and a gigantic radar from its mast floated on the surface of the sea, fishermen said.
In all, 22 people were on board, 15 of whom were rescued. Six bodies — five passengers and the ship's cook — had been recovered by Thursday afternoon, including that of Lynch, an Italian government official said, adding that the search was continuing for his daughter. It was a tragic and mystifying turn of events for Lynch, 59, who had spent years seeking to clear his name and was finally inaugurating a new chapter in his life.
Experts wondered how a $40 million yacht, so robust and stable could have been sunk by a storm near a port within minutes. "It drives me insane," said Giovanni Costantino, the chief executive of the Italian Sea Group, which in 2022 bought the company, Perini, that made the Bayesian. "Following all the proper procedures, that boat is unsinkable.
" The aura of misfortune only deepened when it emerged that Stephen Chamberlain, 52, a former vice president of finance for Lynch's former company and a co-defendant in the fraud case, was killed two days earlier, when he was hit by a car while jogging near his house in England. Since June, the two men had been in a jubilant mood. A jury in San Francisco had acquitted both on fraud charges that could have sent them to prison for two decades.
There were hugs and tears, and they and their legal teams went for a celebratory dinner party at a restaurant in the city, said Gary S. Lincenberg, a lawyer for Chamberlain. The sea excursion was meant as a thank-you by Lynch to those who had helped him in his legal travails.
Among the guests was Christopher J. Morvillo, 59, a scion of a prominent New York family of lawyers who had represented Lynch for 12 years. He and his wife, Neda, 57, were among the missing.
So, too, was Jonathan Bloomer, 70, a veteran British insurance executive who chaired Morgan Stanley International and the insurer Hiscox. The body of the ship's cook, Recaldo Thomas, was recovered. All the other crew members survived.
Among them was Leo Eppel, 19, of South Africa, who was on his first yacht voyage working as a deck steward, said a friend, who asked not to be identified. Since the sinking, the recovery effort and investigation have turned the tiny port town of Porticello, a quiet enclave where older men sit bare-chested on balconies, into what feels like the set of a crime movie. Helicopters have flown overhead.
Ambulances have sped by with the sirens blaring. The coast guard has patrolled the waters offshore, within sight of a cordoned-off dock that had been turned into an emergency headquarters. On Wednesday afternoon, a church bell tolled after the first body bag was loaded into an ambulance, a crowd watching in silence.
The survivors were sheltering in a sprawling resort near Porticello, with a view of the shipwreck spot, and had so far declined to comment. Attilio Di Diodato, director of the Italian air force's Center for Aerospace Meteorology and Climatology, said that the yacht had most likely been hit by a fierce "down burst" — when air generated within a thunderstorm descends rapidly — or by a waterspout, similar to a tornado over water. He added that his agency had put out rough-sea warnings the previous evening, alerting sailors about storms and strong winds.
Locals said the winds "felt like an earthquake." Costantino, the boat executive, said the yacht had been specifically designed for having a tall mast — the second-tallest aluminum mast in the world. He said the Bayesian was an extremely safe and secure boat that could list even to 75 degrees without capsizing.
But he said that if some of the hatches on the side and in the stern, or some of the deck doors, had been open, the boat could have taken on water and sunk. Standard procedure in such storms, he said, is to switch on the engine, lift the anchor and turn the boat into the wind, lowering the keel for extra stability, closing doors and gathering the guests in the main hall inside the deck. The New York Times attempted to reach the captain, James Cutfield, who had survived, for comment through social media, his brother and the management company of the yacht (which did not hire the crew), but did not make contact.
So far none of the surviving crew members have made a public statement about what happened that night. Fabio Genco, the director of Palermo's emergency services, who treated some of the survivors, said that the victims had recounted feeling as if the boat was being lifted, then suddenly dropped, with objects from the cabins falling on them. What was certain was that Lynch's death was yet another cruel twist of fate for a man who had spent years seeking to clear his name.
He earned a fortune in technology and was nicknamed Britain's Bill Gates. But for more than a decade, he had been treated as anything but a respected tech leader. He was accused by Hewlett-Packard, the American technological pioneer that had bought his software company, Autonomy, for $11 billion, of misleading it about his company's worth.
(Hewlett-Packard wrote down the value of the transaction by about $8.8 billion, and critics called it one of the worst deals of all time.) He had been increasingly shunned by the British establishment that he sought to break into after growing up working-class outside London.
He was extradited to San Francisco to face criminal charges, and confined to house arrest and 24-hour surveillance on his dime. In a townhouse in the Pacific Heights neighborhood — with security people he jokingly told associates were his "roommates" — he spent his mornings talking with researchers whom he funded personally on new applications for artificial intelligence. Afterward, he devoted hours to discussing legal strategy with his team.
Despite his persistent claims of innocence, even those close to Lynch had believed his odds of victory were slim. Autonomy's chief financial officer, Sushovan Hussain, was convicted in 2018 of similar fraud charges and spent five years in prison. During Lynch's house arrest, his brother and mother died.
His wife, Angela Bacares, frequently flew over from England, and she became a constant presence in the San Francisco courtroom during the trial. After he was finally acquitted, Lynch had his eye on the future. "I am looking forward to returning to the U.
K. and getting back to what I love most: my family and innovating in my field," he said. Be the first to know Get local news delivered to your inbox!.
