The captain of a superyacht that sank off the coast of Sicily has issued a brief but tragic statement about the incident.
Six people remain missing after the luxury yacht was consumed by the waves, with hopes for their rescue all but vanished.
Early on Monday morning (19 August), the £30 million boat was decimated by a freak tornado over the sea, known as a waterspout, as a sudden and violent storm hit the region.
Fifteen of the 22 people on board survived the disaster by boarding a lifeboat, including a mother who clutched her one-year-old daughter over the waves to save her.
So far, one body has been recovered from the wreckage – believed to be the yacht’s Canadian-Antiguan chef, Recaldo Thomas.
The rest of the 10-person crew survived, including the captain, James Catfield, whom investigators now plan to interview as part of their official inquiry into the tragedy.
Catfield was described by reporters as “limping from an injury” as he waited outside a hospital emergency room in the Sicilian town of Termini Imerese.
However, he managed to utter five devastating words about the fatal storm, saying simply: “We didn’t see it coming.”
The Bayesian was owned by the British tech magnate Mike Lynch, who is among the six people missing and now presumed dead.
He, his 18-year-old daughter Hannah and his lawyer Christopher Morvilla were among those on board, with the trip allegedly organised to celebrate Lynch’s recent acquittal on fraud charges .
Lynch, who was once hailed as Britain’s king of technology, was cleared in June of fraud and conspiracy charges in a US federal trial related to Hewlett Packard’s $11 billion takeover of his company, Autonomy Corp.
His wife, Angela Bacares, survived the sinking, while Hannah, like her dad, remains unaccounted for.
Also missing are Morvillo and his wife Neda, and Jonathan Bloomer – a chairman at Morgan Stanley who testified in Lynch’s defence.
The outing was intended not only as a celebration of Lynch’s legal victory but also as a “looking forward to what was coming next,” said Washington attorney Reid Weingarten, a member of Lynch’s defence team who was not on the yacht.
“A lot of people went, a lot of people were planning to go and then, of course, this happened,” Weingarten told the Associated Press .
The Bayesian, a 56-metre (184-foot) British-flagged yacht, was moored about a kilometre (a half-mile) offshore when a storm rolled in before 4 am (local time) on Monday.
Grainy CCTV camera footage taken from the shore and broadcast online, showed the boat’s 75-metre (246-foot)-long mast weathering the wind and rain before disappearing, all within the space of a minute.
Karsten Borner, the captain of the Sir Robert Baden Powell, which rescued the survivors, said he was close enough to see the Bayesian as the storm came in.
“A moment later, she was gone,” he said.
Luca Cari, a spokesman for the rescue teams, said the search was proceeding slowly because of the depth of the wreck and the limited space in which divers are able to manoeuvre.
The Bayesian now lies around 50 metres (164 feet) underwater – far deeper than most recreational divers are certified to reach.
Indeed, the depth is such that recovery crews have been forced to carry out their work in 12-minute shifts.
At the time of writing, they hadn’t yet managed to access the below-deck cabins because they were blocked by furniture that shifted during the violent storm.
Rescue crews said they assume the missing six are in those cabins because the storm struck when most would be sleeping, but the teams haven’t verified their presence there through portholes.
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