The 184-foot the Bayesian superyacht sank off the coast of Sicily Monday, taking seven people down with it including a billionaire tech CEO and his young daughter. What may seem like a tragic act of God might actually be the result of a string of very bad decisions, and Italian officials are investigating the sinking now as a suspicious act.
To be clear, there suspicion is not based on Mike Lynch’s recent win in court on fraud charges, which the yacht trip was meant to celebrate. A witness who testified in Lynch’s defense and Lynch’s lawyer and their families were also aboard the yacht and made up the majority of the victims. What the police are interested in are the choices of the crew aboard the Bayesian superyacht. From Daily Beast:
Authorities are now probing whether Lynch, her father, and five other deceased victims, including Morgan Stanley International chairman Jonathan Bloomer, could have been saved if not for a chain of human errors in advance of the disastrous shipwreck.
According to the Italian newspaper la Repubblica, investigators are looking at how the Bayesian’s crew responded to worsening sea conditions before the 180-ft sailing vessel sank in little more than a minute at 4:06 a.m. in the early hours of Monday.
The paper reported that the vessel’s captain, James Cutfield, was heard repeating “we didn’t see the storm coming” when he was treated in hospital after the shipwreck.
However, la Repubblica reported that investigators have reviewed Automatic identification system (AIS) data that, along with witness interviews, suggests the crew had over 15 minutes to plan for and respond to the inclement weather, including rising wind and waves. “It was a fast but progressive worsening of the sea and wind conditions,” one source told the paper. The superyacht became unmoored and was overwhelmed by 100-mile-per-hour wind gusts.
“Everything that was done reveals a very long tally of errors,” Giovanni Costantino, the CEO of Italian Sea Group, which owns the shipyard where the Bayesian was built, told Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera. “The passengers should not have been in the cabins, the boat should not have been at anchor. And why didn’t the crew know about the incoming storm?”
The Termini Imerese Public Prosecutor’s Office is investigating possibly multiple manslaughter charges in connection with the sinking. Lynch’s 18-year-old daughter Hannah Lynch was the last person still missing and the last body found Thursday. Divers found Hannah still in her bedroom aboard the Bayesian 150 feet below the surface of the ocean.
