The Lynch Yacht Sailing Off Sicily is as Tragic as it Is Baffling
He invited his family, friends and part of his legal team on board the luxury sailing yacht Bayesian named after the mathematical theorem around which he had built his empire. He invited his family, his friends, and a part of his legal staff on board his luxury yacht, a 180-foot vessel he named Bayesian, after the mathematical theorem based around which he built his empire. It chose an area of water that was popular with the Phoenicians in ancient times for its protection against the mistral winds and, more recently, yachts of tech millionaires. Local residents described the boat as “lit like a Christmas Tree” and standing out against a full moon. A violent storm with strong winds hit the area. Fabio Cefalu said he saw the flare break through the darkness just after 4:00. Fishermen said that only dozens of cushions and a huge radar from the boat’s mast were floating on the surface of sea. An Italian government official confirmed that six bodies, including Mr. Lynch’s, had been recovered as of Thursday afternoon. The search for his daughter is still ongoing. It drives me crazy,” Giovanni Costantino, chief executive of the Italian Sea Group which bought Perini in 2022, the company 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 Mr. 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. Both men were acquitted by a jury in San Francisco of fraud charges that could’ve sent them to jail for 20 years. 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 Mr. Chamberlain.
The sea excursion was meant as a thank-you by Mr. Lynch to those who had helped him in his legal travails. He and his wife, Neda, 57, were among the missing. He and his wife, Neda, 57, were among the missing.
Mike Lynch in 2011.
Credit…
Pool photo by Ben Gurr
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 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 with sirens on have been speeding by. The Coast Guard has patrolled the waters off shore, 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.”
Mr. Costantino, the boat’s executive, said that the yacht was specifically designed to have a tall mast – the second tallest aluminum mast in 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. The Italian Coast Guard has deployed a remotely controlled vehicle that can plow underwater for up seven hours at a maximum depth of 980 feet to record videos and images to help reconstruct the dynamics of sinking. Such devices were used during the search and rescue operations of the Titan vessel that is believed to have imploded last summer near the wreckage of the Titanic.
After rescuers broke inside the yacht, they struggled to navigate the ropes and many pieces of furniture cluttering the vessel, said Luca Cari, a spokesman for Italy’s national firefighter corps.
Finally, as of Thursday morning, they had managed to retrieve all but one of the missing bodies, and hopes of finding the missing person alive were thin. “Can a person be underwater for two full days?” Mr. Cari questioned.
What is certain is that Mr. Lynch died in a cruel twist of fate after spending years trying to clear his reputation.
He was nicknamed Britain’s Bill Gates For more than a century, he was treated as anything other than a respected technology leader. Hewlett-Packard reduced the value of the deal by $8.8 billion and critics called it the worst deal of all time. He was extradited from London to San Francisco, where he faced criminal charges. He was placed under house arrest with 24-hour surveillance at his expense. He spent his mornings in a townhouse near Pacific Heights, where he joked that his security guards were “roommates.” He talked to researchers he had personally funded about new applications of artificial intelligence. Even those closest to Lynch believed that his chances of winning were slim despite his insistence on innocence. Autonomy’s chief financial officer, Sushovan Hussain, was convicted in 2018 of similar fraud charges and spent five years in prison.
During Mr. Lynch’s house arrest, his brother and mother died. Angela Bacares, his wife, regularly flew from England and was a constant presence at the San Francisco courtroom throughout the trial. “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.
Elisabetta Povoledo contributed reporting from Pallanza, Italy.
