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.
Former captain says surviving crewmembers all have PTSD from sinking
The former captain of the Bayesian superyacht says he has spoken to all of the surviving crew to hear their account of the sinking.
Stephen Edwards said all the crew members who were on deck rescued as many passengers as they could but that heading down towards the flooded lower parts of the yacht “would have meant certain death”.
The former captain told The Telegraph: “They are not doing very well”
“The dominant feeling is still one of shock from the event. They are dealing with what happened, how it happened and how quickly it happened.”
Bayesian yacht sinking: Banking boss among four victims who ‘suffocated in cabin air bubble’
Four of the victims of last month’s Bayesian yacht disaster died after oxygen ran out in an air bubble on the sunken vessel, it has been reported.
Autopsies over the past few days on four of those who died have revealed an absence of water in their lungs, suggesting they suffocated as the air became saturated with carbon dioxide, Italian publication La Repubblica said.
The outlet reported post-mortems showed four people died from “atypical drowning”, with “no water in their lungs, trachea and stomach”. There were no signs of external injuries.
HP looking to recoup £4billion from Mike Lynch’s estate despite Bayesian tragedy
Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) is making the “difficult decision” to pursue Mike Lynch’s estate for £4billion in the interests of shareholders despite the tech billionaire being killed along with his daughter on the Bayesian superyacht.
Antonio Neri, the former engineer turned chief executive at HPE, told the Financial Times: “Obviously my job as a representative of shareholders is to make the difficult decisions.
“These are difficult decisions. But in the end, we are making decisions in the best interest of shareholders.”
Mike Lynch had been celebrating his acquittal from criminal charges on the superyacht when it overturned in a freak storm.
But HPE intends to pursue damages around an earlier UK civil trial in 2022 which found in favor of HPE’s claim that Lynch and ex-CFO Sushovan Hussain had inflated the apparent value of Autonomy during the acquisition.
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.”
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