A fifth body has been recovered from tech tycoon Mike Lynch’s superyacht in Sicily.
Divers and members of the coastguard and fire service were seen transporting a body bag from the wreck site just before 9am local time. The grim discovery means five missing yacht guests have now been found, and one remains missing.
Six people, including Mr Lynch, were unaccounted for after the vessel – named Bayesian – sank at around 5am on Monday . Salvatore Cocina, the head of Sicily’s civil protection agency, confirmed that of the five bodies were found on Wednesday and the whereabouts of the missing sixth person remain unknown.
Four of those five bodies were retrieved yesterday and now the other has also been taken to the port while the search continues for the other person missing.
Identities of the recovered bodies have not been confirmed by authorities, despite local and international media reporting some had been identified. Body bags were seen being taken to the port of Porticello on Wednesday afternoon.
Among those also named as missing were Mr Lynch’s 18-year-old daughter Hannah; Morgan Stanley International bank chairman Jonathan Bloomer; his wife, Judy Bloomer; Clifford Chance lawyer Chris Morvillo; and his wife, Neda Morvillo.
The body of Canadian-Antiguan national Recaldo Thomas, who was working as a chef on the Bayesian superyacht, was recovered at the scene of the sinking on Monday.
Of the 22 passengers and crew on board, 15 – including Mr Lynch’s wife, Angela Bacares – were rescued after escaping onto a lifeboat. The captain of a yacht, the Sir Robert BP, who helped to rescue them, described how those aboard his vessel spotted the distress flare set off from a life raft.
Karsten Borner said his crew noticed the Bayesian had disappeared before a passenger spotted the flare. He told Sky News: “We couldn’t see them any more and they disappeared from the radar, we were busy keeping our own ship sailing. We couldn’t see the ship again so we were aware something was very wrong.”
He said it was only when the tender set out that they found the life raft. Mr Borner continued: “It turned out to be the life raft, a 12-person life raft with 15 people inside including one baby. They stepped over to our tender and we brought them back to our ship. There we took good care of them, gave them dry clothes, towels, blankets, tea and coffee and so on and took care of them.”
One of the survivors, British tourist Charlotte Emsley, held her one-year-old daughter, Sofia, above the waves to stop her from drowning. Dr Domenico Cipolla, of Di Cristina Children’s Hospital in Palermo where the mother and child were taken, told the PA news agency: “The child and the mother went to the hotel near Porticello on Tuesday, they are both in a good condition.
“Obviously the mother and the husband were so shaken by what has happened, it was a tragedy for them. She told me that two minutes after falling asleep with her baby they were in the water, she did not understand how this happened, it went dark. Her partner was not with her, he was in another room. She held the child high in her arms above the waves, for a few seconds the baby was in the water but she saved her.
“She sometimes cried for her friends in the hospital.” Inspections of the yacht’s internal hull took place on Wednesday morning. A team of four British inspectors from the Marine Accident Investigation Branch (MAIB) also arrived in Porticello to look at the site of the sinking. The MAIB is looking into what happened because the yacht Bayesian was flying a British flag, it is understood. The Italian Coastguard said the MAIB is not involved in the search for the missing people, and that it has not been requested to assist.
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