Bayesian superyacht sinking: Horror of those trapped in bedrooms described by former captain
Italian prosecutors continue their investigation after divers recovered video equipment from the luxury yacht
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A former captain of the Bayesian has described the terrifying obstacles facing those trapped in the cabins as the Bayesian superyacht overturned killing seven.
Stephen Edwards, who captained the Bayesian for five years until 2020, told The Telegraph: “Those who stayed curled up in bed were in the worst situation.
“The storm hit hard, placing them in the melee of flying furniture, glass and other items,” he said adding he had spoken to traumatised crew members.
“Inside the cabins, the only way to think of this is that people were lying in their beds one minute, and the next the room was on its side, totally dark, with the door now either in the floor or in the ceiling above.”
It came as divers race to retrieve Mike Lynch’s personal hard drives locked in a safe on the ocean floor, according to reports.
Italian newspaper la Repubblica reported that the tech billionaire, whose clients included MI5, the NSA and the Israeli secret service, didn’t trust confidential documents on the cloud and kept two encrypted hard drives in a safe which now lies 49 metres below sea level.
Bayesian captain said to be ‘living darkest days of his life'
Three crew members including the yacht’s captain are under investigation, with plans being discussed to raise the yacht from the ocean bed to assist enquiries.
Sources close to New Zealander James Cutfield, 51, the captain, told the Italian newspaper Corriere Della Sera that he is living through the darkest days of his life.
Among those killed were Mike Lynch and his 18-year-old daughter Hannah, who had been due to begin studying at Oxford University in September, the yacht’s chef and four other family friends and associates.
Seven key unanswered questions around the sinking of the Bayesian
With the Bayesian lying on her side 50 metres underneath the now gentle waters of the Mediterranean, mystery still surrounds how the 56-metre superyacht, sank in the typhoon off the port of Porticello.
Remotely controlled underwater vehicles and cave divers are looking to raise the yacht.
Will answers to the sinking will rise to the surface with it?
The key unanswered questions around the tragic sinking of the Bayesian
With the search continuing of the sunken Bayesian an investigation has been launched to establish what caused the disaster off the coast of Sicily
Mike Lynch’s co-defendant died from head injury after being hit by car days before yacht sinking
Mike Lynch’s co-defendant Stephen Chamberlain died in hospital three days after being hit by a car on a country road, an inquest heard.
The 52-year-old, from Longstanton in south Cambridgeshire, was struck by a blue Vauxhall Corsa travelling between Stretham and Wicken on the A1123 at about 10.10am on 17 August.
Mr Chamberlain, a former vice president of finance at Mike Lynch’s software firm Autonomy, had been out running at the time, his lawyer Gary Lincenberg said.
Coroner Caroline Jones told the inquest in Alconbury that his medical cause of death was recorded as “traumatic head injury”.
Mike Lynch ‘likely died of suffocation’ after running out of oxygen on sunken yacht
British tech tycoon Mike Lynch is likely to have died of suffocation after running out of oxygen, according to a source close to the investigation.
They cited initial examinations carried out on Saturday after the businessman’s body was recovered from the family yacht that sank off Sicily’s coast last month during a freak weather incident.
Mr Lynch died alongside his 18-year-old daughter, the boat’s chef and four others, who were onboard the British-flagged superyacht Bayesian to celebrate his recent acquittal after a lengthy decade-long legal battle.
Initial results of examinations of Hannah Lynch’s body on Saturday were inconclusive, the source told the Reuters news agency.
Mike Lynch’s yacht was ‘unsinkable’, says boss of company who built boat
Giovanni Costantino, the chief executive of the Italian Sea Group, said there are no flaws with the design and construction of the Bayesian and it is “one of the safest boats in the world”.
The Bayesian, a 184-ft superyacht carrying 22 passengers and crew, was anchored off the port of Porticello, near Palermo, when it disappeared beneath the waves in a matter of minutes after a freak tornado struck.
“The ship sank because it took on water, from where investigators will have to say,” Mr Costantino told television news programme TG1.
He suggested that the sinking was down to a series of human errors.
The CEO said that had the crew shut all doors and hatches, turned on the engine, lifted the anchor, lowered the keel and turned the yacht to face the wind, they would have suffered “zero damage”.
He added that data showed it took 16 minutes from when the wind began for it to sink.
Cartoisio said the tragedy will be even more painful if the sinking was caused by “behaviours that were not aligned to the responsibilities that everyone needs to take in shipping”.
£4billion deal to purchase Mike Lynch’s Darktrace
Darktrace shares are set to stop trading publicly at the end of September, after the company set a timetable for its blockbuster private equity takeover to be completed.
The private equity group Thoma Bravo struck an almost 5.31 billion dollar (£4.3 billion) deal to buy Darktrace in April.
It marks one of the biggest take-private deals for a London-listed company in recent years, and will see Darktrace leave the FTSE 100 on October 1.
Founded in 2013, Cambridge-based Darktrace is a cybersecurity firm best known for using artificial intelligence to scan for hacks and data leaks inside IT networks.
A prominent company in the UK tech landscape, it was among the firms represented at the AI Safety Summit at Bletchley Park in November, where world leaders and major tech firms met to discuss the potential threat of artificial intelligence.
The update comes after Poppy Gustafsson stepped down as chief executive earlier in September amid the takeover.
Ms Gustafsson, who co-founded the business in 2013, will be replaced as chief executive by Jill Popelka, the company said.
Ms Gustafsson helped to set up the Cambridge-based company in 2013 alongside Autonomy founder Mike Lynch.
Mr Lynch, and his daughter Hannah, were among seven people to die after the Bayesian superyacht sank off the coast of Sicily last month.
Professor fears more deaths by ‘medicanes’ after Bayesian tragedy
Professor Yoav Yair, Dean of the School of Sustainability at Reichman University in Israel, told the Mirror that storms dubbed ‘medicanes’ - Mediterranean hurricanes - could cause similar sinkings like the Bayesian superyacht.
He said: “It is not a matter of if this (the Bayesian disaster) will happen again, but rather it’s when and where.
“In the last couple of years we have seen medicanes - which are a new phenomena. These are hurricane-like storms that pack a lot of energy, and create flash flooding, torrential rains, lightning, hail and severe sustained winds. The 2023 “Daniel” medicane destroyed Libya and caused over 30,000 deaths there.
“The sea surface temperature has risen globally and in the Med as well, charging the atmosphere with increased fluxes of water vapor, which means a higher potential for massive storms.”
Bodies of Mike Lynch and daughter Hannah flown back to families after Bayesian superyacht sinking
The bodies of those who died after the billionaire Mike Lynch’s Bayesian superyacht sunk off the coast of Sicily have been flown back to their families by private jet.
Italian publication Giornale di Sicilia reported post-mortem examinations were completed at a Palermo hospital and the bodies have now been returned.
My colleague Tom Watling reports:
Bodies of Mike Lynch and daughter flown back to UK after Bayesian tragedy
Italian media reports the bodies have been returned to their families via private jet
'Mike Lynch files may be target for hostile spy agencies’
Divers are searching the sea floor for Mike Lynch’s high-tech hard drives before they can fall into enemy hands reports La Repubblica - Italy’s second-biggest newspaper.
Sources told the paper the disks held: “the great digital archive of the IT entrepreneur whose clients included the British MI5, the American NSA and the Israeli services”.
The Italian newspaper said the “super drives” are protected by “cutting-edge encryption”.
The Sun reported the drives now could be a target for the hostile spy agencies of Russia, China, and Iran as they seek to steal valuable secrets.
Captain gives his account of tragic sinking
Captain James Cutfield previously gave his terrifying account before invoking his right to remain silent.
According to Correire, he told prosecutors: “Seaman Griffiths came to wake me up and told me that there were 20 knots of wind.
“I looked at the instruments and indeed that was the case. I went out immediately and asked them to warn everyone because I didn’t like the situation.”
He said the Bayesian tilted 45 degrees “and remained like that for a bit and then suddenly fell to the right.
“We were catapulted into the sea”.
Seaman Matthew Griffiths, 22, said: “We somehow climbed back up to the bridge and tried to form a human chain to save those who managed to reach that gap from the accommodation deck ... they were struggling on the walls because the boat was lying in the water.
“The first in the chain was the captain who stretched down. He helped everyone, the ladies, the mother with the little girl ... But we were sinking and unfortunately some didn’t make it .”
Mr Griffiths joins fellow Brit Tim Parker-Eaton, 56, and Kiwi skipper James Cutfield, 51, on the official list of those being formally investigated for shipwreck and multiple manslaughter.
Being investigated does not equate to being charged and is a procedural step.
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