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Who Was on the Sunken Yacht? Tech Mogul Mike Lynch, His Family and Friends.

Mr. Lynch, the former chief executive of the software firm Autonomy, who was acquitted on fraud charges in June, was with friends and family when the yacht went down in a severe storm.

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By Michael J. de la Merced

Michael de la Merced reported on Mike Lynch’s career and legal battles over the course of 13 years across two continents.

A cruise on the Mediterranean Sea aboard a superyacht was supposed to be a celebratory event for the British tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch , who was acquitted in June of fraud charges tied to the sale of his company, Autonomy, to the tech giant Hewlett-Packard.

Instead, it turned into a disaster after the yacht, a 180-foot boat called the Bayesian, sank off the coast of Sicily in a violent storm. Of the 22 people aboard, 15 were rescued and seven others died . Search operations ended on Friday after the final body was recovered from the site of the sunken yacht .

Here’s what we know about the passengers.

Mike Lynch and his family

Mr. Lynch, 59, is a British software entrepreneur who had once been described as his country’s Bill Gates. He founded the software firm Autonomy, which analyzed clients’ unorganized data, and turned it into one of the most prominent British technology companies of its time. He became a widely known corporate leader, who advised David Cameron, the British prime minister at the time, and joined the board of the BBC.

In 2011, Mr. Lynch sold Autonomy to Hewlett-Packard for $11 billion, which was far above its market value, earning him hundreds of millions. But HP investors almost immediately soured on the transaction, and the American tech giant quickly fired its chief executive — and then Mr. Lynch.

HP later accused Mr. Lynch of misleading it about the state of Autonomy’s business, setting off a decade-long legal ordeal for the British executive, who denied the accusations. U.S. prosecutors charged him and other executives with fraud, and Autonomy’s chief financial officer was convicted in 2018.

Despite appeals to the British government, Mr. Lynch was extradited to the United States last year and was confined to a townhouse in San Francisco ahead of his criminal trial, which began in March. Facing the possibility of decades in prison if convicted, Mr. Lynch and another colleague were instead acquitted of all charges.

An official in Palermo, Sicily’s capital, said on Thursday that Mr. Lynch’s body had been recovered. His wife, Angela Bacares, 57, accompanied him on the yacht, and she was rescued on Monday when it sank. She was a consistent presence at his trial in the United States. Records show that she controlled Revtom, the company listed as the owner of the Bayesian.

The body of Hannah Lynch , Mr. Lynch and Ms. Bacares’s 18-year-old daughter, was thought to be recovered on Friday.

The other guests

Jonathan Bloomer, 70, chair of Morgan Stanley’s international arm and the chairman of Hiscox, an insurance provider that trades on the London Stock Exchange, was on the yacht when it sank, along with his wife, Judy Bloomer, 71. Their bodies are thought to be among those recovered, but Italian authorities have not identified them.

Christopher J. Morvillo, 59, a New York-based partner at the international law firm Clifford Chance, was also on the yacht. A former federal prosecutor who comes from a family of prominent lawyers, Mr. Morvillo represented Mr. Lynch during his criminal trial in San Francisco. His wife, Neda, 57, was with him on the yacht. Their bodies are also assumed to be among those recovered.

“We are in shock and deeply saddened by this tragic incident,” a representative of Clifford Chance said in a statement.

Surviving passengers rescued from the yacht include Charlotte Golunski, a partner at Mr. Lynch’s venture firm, Invoke Capital; Ms. Golunski’s husband, James Emslie; and their one-year-old daughter Sophie. Also rescued were Ayla Ronald, a lawyer at Clifford Chance, and her partner, Matthew Fletcher.

The yacht had a crew of 10, and nine were rescued. The body of the chef, Recaldo Thomas, was recovered from the water, the Sicilian Civil Protection Department said.

Elisabetta Povoledo contributed reporting, and Kitty Bennett and Susan Campbell Beachy contributed research.

Michael J. de la Merced has covered global business and finance news for The Times since 2006. More about Michael J. de la Merced

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5th body recovered from Mike Lynch's family yacht off Sicily as questions mount over luxury vessel's sinking

By Anna Matranga

Updated on: August 22, 2024 / 10:48 AM EDT / CBS News

Rome — Divers recovered the body of a fifth victim of the Bayesian superyacht wreck Thursday morning, Sicily Civil Protection Chief Salvo Cocina confirmed to CBS News, and the Reuters news agency cited Italian Interior Ministry official Massimo Mariani as saying it was the body of Mike Lynch, the British tech magnate whose wife owned the vessel.

Italian Coast Guard spokesperson Vincenzo Zagarola told CBS News that teams were still working to recover the body of the sixth and final person left missing when the boat went down. The six bodies had remained stuck inside the 184-foot luxury yacht for days after it sank early Monday morning off the coast of Palermo, Sicily in a severe thunderstorm.

Four bodies were retrieved Wednesday from the Bayesian, which was resting on the seafloor at a 90 degree angle at a depth of over 160 feet. The vessel's position and items that moved around inside the ill-fated yacht made recovery efforts slow and hazardous.

Italian authorities have not officially identified the remains recovered from the Bayesian, which belonged to Lynch's wife Angela Bacares. She was among the 15 people who managed to escape from the boat as it sank quickly on Monday morning, but Lynch and his 18-year-old daughter Hannah were among those left missing.

Another victim, the Bayesian superyacht's chef, was found dead soon after the boat capsized. 

Along with Lynch and his daughter, the technology mogul's American lawyer Chris Morvillo and his wife Neda, and British banker Jonathan Bloomer and his wife, were believed to have been trapped in the yacht when it sank.

Questions as to how the state-of-the-art boat could have gone down so quickly have mounted steadily since the accident. 

Italian media were reporting Thursday that, after questioning survivors and witnesses, Italian prosecutors had opened an official investigation into a possible "culpable shipwreck." No individuals had been named as potential suspects.

On Thursday, Giovanni Costantino, head of the Italian Sea Group, which owns the company Perini Navi, which built the Bayesian in 2008, blamed human error.

"A Perini ship resisted Hurricane Katrina, a Category 5 [hurricane]. Does it seem to you that it can't resist a tornado from here?" he remarked to the newspaper Corriere della Sera. "It is good practice when the ship is at anchor to have a guard on the bridge, and if there was one he could not have failed to see the storm coming. Instead, it took on water with the guests still in the cabin. ... They ended up in a trap, those poor people ended up like mice."

One possible factor could have been that the ship's keel — a fin-like structure that sticks out from the bottom of the boat, designed to provide stability and counterweight to the huge mast — was not fully deployed. The yacht had a retractable keel that could be raised for entry into shallow harbors. But a raised keel at sea would have made the ship much more vulnerable to instability in the strong winds that struck early Monday morning.

When asked whether divers had seen the ship's keel in a raised position, a spokesman for the Italian Coast Guard told CBS News that only the prosecutor investigating the incident could confirm such information but that the Coast Guard "was not denying" it. 

The ship's captain, 51-year-old New Zealand national James Cutfileld, was questioned for two hours by prosecutors on Thursday, according to Italian media.

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Superyacht sinks latest: Investigators reveal where bodies were found as probe looks at 'crew's responsibility'

Italian officials revealed at a news conference there could be "a question of manslaughter" as they opened a shipwreck investigation and said the probe is also looking at the "crew's responsibility".

Saturday 24 August 2024 18:33, UK

• Superyacht sinking

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• Prosecutor: There 'could be a question of manslaughter'
• Probe 'concentrating' on crew's responsibility
• Seven bodies recovered after five-day search of superyacht wreckage off Sicily
• Saturday's papers pay tribute to youngest victim Hannah Lynch
• Hannah's sister pays tribute to 'my little angel'
• Explained: Inside the superyacht | What challenges have faced divers?
• Eyewitness: Sombre scenes greet rescue teams as final body is brought ashore
• Live reporting by Niamh Lynch

We're ending our live coverage for this evening but here is a recap of what we know:

• Prosecutors have opened a manslaughter investigation into the Bayesian sinking;
• Officials have revealed more details on their investigation and the difficult five-day rescue mission;
• The six bodies found during the search in recent days were all in cabins on the left-hand - and highest - side of the ship. Five were found in the first cabin and the sixth was found in the third;
• Prosecutors said the six passengers were most likely asleep when the boat sank;
• The probe is now focusing on the crew and their responsibilities, with the captain set to undergo more questioning.

Monday 19 August

The Bayesian yacht, flying a British flag, sinks at around 5am local time when the area was hit by a tornado.

Fifteen people are rescued from the 56 metre vessel - including a mother and baby - but another seven remain missing.

One body, later confirmed to be the yacht's chef Recaldo Thomas, is found near the wreck.

It emerges that British technology tycoon Mike Lynch and his 18-year-old daughter Hannah are among six people that remain missing.

Tuesday 20 August

The search continues for the six tourists missing.

It is reported that among those missing are Morgan Stanley International chairman Jonathan Bloomer; his wife, Judy Bloomer; Clifford Chance lawyer Chris Morvillo; and his wife, Neda Morvillo.

Police divers try to reach the hull of the ship, resting at a depth of 50 metres.

Italy's fire brigade Vigili del Fuoco say early inspections of the wreck were "unsuccessful" because of limited access to the bridge and furniture obstructing passages.

The operation is later described as "complex", with divers limited to 12-minute underwater shifts.

Tributes pour in for Mr Thomas, with his friend Gareth Williams saying: "I can talk for everyone that knew him when I say he was a well-loved, kind human being with a calm spirit."

Wednesday 21 August

The search for the six people unaccounted for enters a third day, with crews carrying out inspections of the yacht's internal hull.

A team of four British inspectors from the Marine Accident Investigation Branch (MAIB) arrive in Porticello to look at the site of the sinking.

A helicopter is drafted in to help with the search effort and remotely controlled underwater vehicles are being used, with naval units and cave divers also taking part in the search.

Five bodies are found inside the yacht on Wednesday afternoon. Only four of them are brought to shore.

Body bags are seen being taken to Porticello in the afternoon where dozens of emergency services staff wait.

Searches finish for the day just before 7.30pm.

Thursday 22 August

The search resumes for the remaining missing person.

The body of the fifth missing person, found but not recovered the previous day, is brought to shore.

A fire service boat with flashing blue lights returns with a blue body bag to the port of Porticello just after 8.45am local time on Thursday.

Tributes pour in for Mr Lynch and Mr and Mrs Bloomer after they are identified as having died.

The search is called off at around 8pm in Sicily, with divers expected to begin again at 6.30am on Friday.

Friday 23  August

The search continues for the final person missing from the wreck of the Bayesian, Hannah Lynch.

Vincenzo Zagarola, of the Italian Coastguard, says the search for Hannah has not been "easy or quick", comparing the sunken yacht to an "18-storey building full of water".

The coastguard confirms in the late morning that her body has been found.

A green body bag is brought to the port of Porticello from the site of the sinking.

A spokesperson announces on behalf of the Lynch family that they are "devastated" and "in shock" after the deaths of Mike and Hannah.

Hannah's sister Esme pays tribute to her "little angel".

Saturday 24 August

A press conference is held in the court of an Italian town, Termini Imerese.

Public prosecutor Ambrogio Cartosio tells reporters that his office has opened an initial investigation against unknown persons into manslaughter and negligent shipwreck.

As the focus now turns to the manslaughter investigation, here's another reminder of the seven victims of the sinking and the 15 people who survived. 

A close friend of the Lynch family has added to the chorus of tributes for British tech tycoon Mike Lynch, who died in Monday's superyacht sinking.

Susannah Gurdun, who lives in Suffolk, recalled being "daunted" when she first met Mr Lynch at a dinner party, before discovering he was "so much more than the corporate cliche".

"He was riveting.  He was funny, and kind, and endlessly interesting; capable of talking about anything and everything," she said.

Ms Gardun said the businessman also had a "thrilling ability" to make complicated subjects "accessible to those of us less blessed with a science acumen".

"In particular, he was wonderful with children.  I will never forget hearing him explain to a group of them - including our ten year old son - the physics of why the sky went pink at sunset," she said.

She went on describe Mr Lynch as a "true genius" and "phenomenal creative".

Ms Gardun said his daughter Hannah was also showing "serious literary promise", and added that it was "beyond tragic that we will never know where her own particular brilliance might have led".

"I still feel blessed to have shared that time with them in Spain.  Not just because I witnessed Mike’s incredible storytelling; but because I was given a chance of understanding what that moment said about all four of them as a united vibrant loving family," she said.

"He was an extraordinary human being and it was - truly - a privilege to have known him."

A yacht crew member who survived the sinking has paid tribute to Hannah Lynch, calling her a "diamond in a sea of stars".

Sasha Murray, chief stewardess of the Bayesian, has released a statement after divers recovered the final missing body from the wreckage, which is believed to be 18-year-old Hannah.

"Those who knew her will know that Hannah was a diamond in a sea of stars," she said.

"Bright, beautiful and always shining. What most people may not have seen was the extraordinarily strong, deep and loving relationship she shared with her parents, whom she adored more than anything. 

"While swimming with them she often said, if anything ever happened she would save them. 

"I have no doubt that the Irish, Latina fire that burns in her soul kept that spirited determination alive."

Ms Murray's statement comes as a new image of Hannah Lynch and her father Mike Lynch is released:

Prosecutors announced in this morning's news conference that they have opened a manslaughter and negligent shipwreck investigation.

Officials were unable to answer several queries from the media, saying they needed time to establish the facts, but what are the key questions facing prosecutors? 

Why weren't passengers who remained on board the vessel warned about escaping from the yacht?

The prosecutor in charge of the case, Raffaele Cammarano, suggested that some passengers may have been asleep when others were awake.

Asked why they were not woken up or alerted, he said that is something investigators are trying to work out from the statements of the survivors.

He called it an "essential" part of the inquiry.

Why were several of the passengers in one cabin?

The press conference heard several bodies onboard the sunken yacht were found in a single cabin which was not theirs.

Mr Cammarano said investigators currently do not know the reason for them being discovered in the same cabin.

The chief of the Palermo fire service, Bentivoglio Fiandra, said the yacht pinned to the right and suggested people tried to go on the other side, taking refuge in cabins in the higher part of the wreck.

Why did the boat sink?

The vessel had been deemed "unsinkable" by its manufacturer - Italian shipyard Perini Navi.

The Bayesian was hit by a downburst, according to Mr Cammarano, which are powerful winds that descend from a thunderstorm and spread out quickly once they hit the ground.

Officials will look into the safety equipment on the sunken vessel.

Mr Cammarano was asked about whether there is a black box and if the hatches were left open.

He said investigators do not have exact information about the black box and that the first phase of the inquiry will look into it.

Why were nearby vessels not similarly affected?

Another yacht, the Sir Robert BP, was about 150 to 200 metres from the Bayesian when extreme weather hit.

Its crew helped to rescue 15 people from the stricken vessel.

Italian officials said they would be looking at how the downburst could affect one vehicle and not other nearby vessels.

What weather warnings was the Bayesian alerted to?

Maritime director of western Sicily, Rear Admiral Raffaele Macauda, said the weather at the time of the yacht's sinking was abnormal and there was nothing to suggest such an extreme situation would arise.

He said there were forecasts of winds and a storm alert, but there was no warning of a tornado.

"Given that the conditions were such, there wasn't anything to suggest there could be an extreme situation arising," he said.

"There are vessels that can monitor, after all, these events and one would have thought that the captain had taken precautions."

How long will it take to recover the sailing vessel?

Mr Macauda could not confirm how long it would take to retrieve the shipwreck of the sunken yacht.

"Everything depends on the availability of the owners and the timeframe of the retrieval of the wreck and of course all that has to be submitted to the port authorities and in parallel of course there will be the inquiry results and it's only really then that we will be able to authorise the operation," he said.

"I can't say, like some experts who have already spoken on the subject, [said] that it will be eight weeks."

He made clear that the owners will bear the full cost of retrieval, although he could not estimate the figure.

Italian authorities detailed the challenging and meticulous rescue operation to recover the six missing people from the Bayesian wreck (see 9.18am post).

But why was the five-day search so difficult? 

Read more below...

More on this morning's press conference. 

One of the main updates from prosecutors was that they have opened manslaughter and shipwreck investigations after the deaths of seven people in the Bayesian sinking. 

Watch the announcement below...

Prosecutors have given a lengthy news conference this morning on their investigation into the sinking of the Bayesian. 

Read the full report on the prosecutors' probe below...

Marine investigator James Wilkes has been speaking to Sky News after this morning's press conference.

"Naturally, there are more questions than there are substantive answers at the moment - that's the nature of investigative work.

"Something forced that yacht to roll beyond its nominal stability limits, such that it wasn't able to right itself with the ingress of a certain amount of seawater that was coming into the yacht. 

"So the investigators are going to ask themselves one initial question - what must the conditions have been for this to happen? 

"Then they are going to look at the contributing factors to the yacht, sinking, and, and the unfortunate loss of life." 

Prosecutors said this morning that the future of the investigation is reliant on recovering the wreck. 

Mr Wilkes said the yacht is a "major piece of physical evidence in and of itself." 

"It's lying at 50 metres, which is a recoverable depth. 

"If it was significantly deeper, then I'm not sure they'd be considering salvage at this stage or certainly, the salvage question would be a lot more complicated to answer. 

"But if there was the ability to raise that yacht in one piece safely, then it gives the investigators physically more to look at."

Mr Wilkes said he was unsure if the yacht would have a "black box" - called a voyage data recorder in shipping. 

"It would record things like GPS position, heading speed, engine telemetry, whether the radars were on, what they were recording, alarms, communications from the yacht itself, any audio on the bridge.

"But more often than not, these are on merchant ships. The yacht was a commercial yacht in the sense that it could be chartered out so it's quite possible it has a voyage data recorder on, but I'm not sure that it does. I don't know that as a matter of fact," he said.

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Video shows moments before superyacht went down in storm off Sicily

Newly released video captures a luxury superyacht being battered by a violent storm before it suddenly sank off Sicily with 22 people aboard Monday.

The grainy images obtained by NBC News and other outlets were recorded on closed-circuit television not far from where the Bayesian was anchored, about a half-mile from the port of Porticello, on Sicily’s northern coast .

The yacht's 250-foot mast, illuminated with lights and lashed by the storm, appears to bend to one side before it finally disappears and is replaced by darkness.

The speed with which a yacht built to handle the roughest seas capsized stunned maritime experts.  

“I can’t remember the last time I read about a vessel going down quickly like that, you know, completely capsizing and going down that quickly, a vessel of that nature, a yacht of that size,” said Stephen Richter of SAR Marine Consulting.

British tech tycoon Mike Lynch and five of the 22 other people who were aboard the 184-foot vessel remain unaccounted for and are believed to be trapped in the Bayesian’s hull, nearly 170 feet underwater.

Officials confirmed Monday that at least one person, the ship’s cook, had died.  

Superyachts like the Bayesian, which had been available for charters at a rate of $215,000 a week, are designed to stay afloat even as they are taking on water to give the people aboard a chance to escape, Richter said. 

“Boats of this size, they’re taking passengers on an excursion or a holiday,” Richter said. “They are not going to put them in situations where it may be dangerous or it may be uncomfortable, so this storm that popped up was obviously an anomaly. These vessels that carry passengers, they’re typically very well-maintained, very well-appointed.”

Built by Italian shipbuilder Perini Navi in 2008, the U.K.-registered Bayesian could carry 12 guests and a crew of up to 10, according to online specialist yacht sites. Its nearly 250-foot mast is the tallest aluminum sailing mast in the world, according to CharterWorld Luxury Yacht Charters. 

On Tuesday, Italian rescue workers resumed the search for Lynch and the five other passengers still missing: Lynch’s 18-year-old daughter, Hannah; Morgan Stanley International Chairman Jonathan Bloomer and his wife; and Clifford Chance lawyer Chris Morvillo and his wife.

“The fear is that the bodies got trapped inside the vessel,” Salvatore Cocina, the head of civil protection in Sicily, told Reuters .

The Bayesian is owned by a firm linked to Lynch’s wife, Angela Bacares, who was one of the 15 people rescued Monday after it capsized.

“It’s extremely rare for a boat of this size to sink,” Richter said.

What’s not rare is the kind of storm that sank it , said Simon Boxall, senior lecturer in oceanography at Britain’s University of Southampton.

“People assume the Mediterranean is this rather calm and passive place that never gets storms and always blue skies,” Boxall said. “In fact, you get some quite horrendous storms that are not uncommon at this time of year.”

The president of Italy’s meteorological society has said Monday’s violent storm may have involved a waterspout, essentially a tornado over water, or a downburst, which occurs more frequently but doesn’t involve the rotation of the air.

Luca Mercalli, president of the Italian Meteorology Society, also said recent temperatures may have been a factor. 

“The sea surface temperature around Sicily was around 30 degrees Celsius [86 Fahrenheit], which is almost 3 degrees more than normal,” Mercalli told Reuters. “This creates an enormous source of energy that contributes to these storms.”

The Mediterranean sailing vacation was designed to be a celebration for Lynch, who two months ago was acquitted by a San Francisco jury of fraud charges stemming from the 2011 sale of his software company Autonomy to Hewlett-Packard for $11 billion.

Prosecutors alleged that Lynch, dubbed “Britain’s Bill Gates,” and Autonomy’s vice president for finance, Stephen Chamberlain, had padded the firm’s finances ahead of the sale. Lynch’s lawyers argued that HP was so eager to acquire Autonomy that it failed to adequately check the books .

Lynch had taken Morvill, who was one of his defense attorneys, on the luxury trip. 

Chamberlain was not on the Bayesian.

In what appears to be a tragic coincidence, a car struck and killed Chamberlain on Saturday as he was jogging in a village about 68 miles north of London, local police said.

“Steve fought successfully to clear his good name at trial earlier this year, and his good name now lives on through his wonderful family,” Chamberlain’s lawyer, Gary Lincenberg, said in a statement .

Henry Austin reported from London and Corky Siemaszko from New York City.

Henry Austin is a senior editor for NBC News Digital based in London.

Corky Siemaszko is a senior reporter for NBC News Digital.

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Yacht Sank in Sicily Due to ‘Endless Chain of Errors,' Ship Maker's Owner Speculates: ‘Everything Was Predictable’

"A series of activities should have been done to avoid finding oneself in that situation," argues Giovanni Costantino, who owns the firm that built the vessel in 2008

• Giovanni Costantino — who is the CEO of The Italian Sea Group, the company that now owns Perini Navi, which built the  Bayesian  in 2008 — blames an "endless chain of errors" for the luxury yacht’s sinking on Monday, Aug. 19
• "Everything was predictable. I have the weather charts in front of me here," Constantino told Italian newspaper  Corriere della Sera  of the storm the boat was caught in
• "An unsinkable ship but from the crew an endless chain of errors," the CEO claimed to the outlet

The sinking of the luxury Bayesian  yacht off the coast of Sicily this week  resulted from an "endless chain of errors" by the crew, the ship maker's CEO is speculating.

"This episode sounds like an unbelievable story, both technically and as a fact," Giovanni Costantino — who leads The Italian Sea Group, the company that now owns Perini Navi, which built the  Bayesian  in 2008 — said,  according to CNN .

While speaking to  Italian newspaper  Corriere della Sera , Costantino said he believes those on board should not have been in their cabins, as he claims they were, when the Bayesian sank in the early hours of Monday, Aug. 19. 

Many details of why the yacht went into the water so quickly remain unclear and it's not yet known what the passengers and crew were doing before tragedy struck.

PERINI NAVI PRESS OFFICE/HANDOUT/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock

The 183-foot British vessel sank around 5 a.m. local time on Monday after a "violent storm" while near Porticello, the Italian coast guard said in a statement that was previously obtained by PEOPLE.

"Everything that has been done reveals a very long sum of errors. The people should not have been in the cabins, the boat should not have been at anchor. And then why didn't the crew know about the incoming disturbance?" Costantino said in his interview, translated from Italian.

"The passengers reported an absurd thing, namely that the storm came unexpected, suddenly. It's not true. Everything was predictable. I have the weather charts in front of me here. Nothing came suddenly ... Ask yourself, why was no fisherman from Porticello out that night? A fisherman reads the weather conditions and a ship doesn't? The disturbance was fully readable in all the weather charts. One could not not know," he argued.

"An unsinkable ship but from the crew an endless chain of errors," the CEO asserted.

The coast guard has said 22 people were aboard the  Bayesian  when it sank — 12 passengers and 10 crew — and that 15 of those were subsequently rescued.

The body of the yacht's chef, Recaldo Thomas, was recovered nearby. 

ALBERTO PIZZOLI/AFP via Getty

Costantino's comments came as it was reported that five bodies had been found in the search for the missing six people as of Wednesday, Aug. 21, a source close to the rescue operations confirmed to PEOPLE. Authorities have said that their work is ongoing. 

An Italian government official, Massimo Mariani, reportedly named one of the dead as British tech tycoon Mike Lynch . The other bodies have not yet been publicly identified by authorities. 

Lynch was celebrating with family and friends on the yacht following his acquittal in a fraud trial in June, PEOPLE previously reported.

Costantino offered his view of how the tragedy could have been avoided: "To begin with, in a weather alert situation it was inappropriate to have, as I read, a party. Not that evening. The hull and deck needed to be secured by closing all doors and hatches, after putting the guests at the ship's meeting point as per emergency procedure. Then start the engines and pull up the anchor or release it automatically, put the bow to the wind and lower the keel.

"The next morning they would have departed with zero damage." 

Jonathan Brady/PA Images via Getty

When discussing whether the crew were at fault, Costantino reiterated to the Italian outlet that he believes "errors were made."

"A series of activities should have been done to avoid finding oneself in that situation," he said. "I as the ship's captain would have moved, but even if for some reason I had to stay there, I would have managed those weather conditions which then, let's face it, weren't so crazy."

Never miss a story — sign up for  PEOPLE's free daily newsletter  to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.  

Costantino contended that there would have been "a zero risk if the correct maneuvers had been made and if situations that compromised the ship's stability had not occurred," adding to the newspaper that reports that the boat went down in seconds is "nonsense." He believes the yacht would have "went down" after water "started to enter" within "six minutes."

The remaining missing  Bayesian  passengers are Lynch's daughter Hannah as well as Chairman of Morgan Stanley International  Jonathan Bloomer, his wife, Judy , and New York City-based lawyer  Christopher Morvillo and his wife, Neda , sources have said.

Lynch's wife, Angela Bacares, was among those rescued, PEOPLE previously reported.

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A sea tornado just sank a yacht in the Mediterranean. We might be seeing more of them.

A deadly waterspout is strongly suspected of sinking a yacht off the coast of Italy. Scientists weigh in on whether they’ll worsen as the planet warms.

A superyacht carrying 22 people, including British tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch, sank off the coast of Palermo, Italy, in the early hours of August 19.  

The 183-foot Bayesian yacht is believed to have been hit by a waterspout —a tornado that forms over the ocean—and some experts are concerned that climate change could worsen these storms in the Mediterranean and other quickly warming waters.

Here’s what you need to know about waterspouts and whether hotter temperatures could cause more of them.

What is a waterspout?

A waterspout is a tornado that forms over water. “The tornado doesn't really care what surface it’s over,” says David Sills, executive director of the Northern Tornadoes Project at Western University in Ontario, Canada. “Whether it's a city or a forest or crops or water, the tornado is going to do its thing."  

These columns of rotating air “form where an air boundary exists, for example where warm and cold air collide,” says a spokesperson at the Australian Government Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) via email.

Changes in wind direction at different heights can cause a rotation.

“Imagine just above the ocean, the wind is blowing in one direction,” says Peter Inness , meteorologist at the University of Reading. When the wind higher up blows in another direction, “the air between those two levels of wind starts rotating around the horizontal axis.”

The warm air below rises and these “spinning parcels of air are also lifted and stretched in this process and can concentrate on the surface of the water creating a vortex,” says the BOM.

As the air is sucked upwards into the storm, the spinning intensifies like taking the plug out of the bath, says Innes: “the water going down the plughole rotates very intensely because it's being sucked downwards.”

It’s similar to a figure skater, adds Sills: “When they bring in their arms, and then they spin faster and faster.”  

How dangerous are waterspouts for boats?

Although the wind associated with waterspouts can reach 55 miles per hour, they typically move at under 25 miles per hour, are short-lived, and don’t cause much damage. “They usually only impact any single point for a few minutes,” says the BOM.

The Bayesian was moored overnight when it sank. Although people have attributed this to a waterspout, it’s not yet been confirmed.  

“It was dark and there are no images available,” says Luca Mercalli, president of the Italian Meteorological Society , via email.

Boats are designed to right themselves when blown over by strong winds. “Those sailboats have a big, heavy keel so that when you start to go over, it pulls you back up,” says Sills.

But if water gets into the ship, it can lose buoyancy. “It's called a knockdown,” he says. “Time spent over like that means water and waves can get into open doors and it starts to take on water. Then you start to sink.”

The rapid change in wind strength and direction are also dangerous for boats, says Innes, “because it could result in the boat rocking backward and forward very violently.”

Will climate change cause more waterspouts?

One study has found more frequent waterspouts off the coast of Spain’s Balearic Islands when sea surface temperatures are higher, particularly between 73 and 78°F.

This year, “the Mediterranean is [over 5°F] above average,” says Mercalli, which is “an anomaly considered "extreme". These unusually warm waters could be partly due to climate change as well as year-on-year variability.

Some people are concerned that climate change could cause an increase in tornadoes on land and water.

“Global warming will increase all weather extreme events, because it injects more energy into the atmosphere,” says Mercalli.

But experts are wary of confirming a definite link with climate change. “Waterspouts are a very short-lived and local scale phenomena, and therefore difficult to attribute to impacts of climate change,” says the BOM.

The Mediterranean is warming more quickly than the rest of the ocean. Although climate change will make sea surface temperatures warmer, it’s unclear how it will affect the other conditions needed to create waterspouts.

Waterspouts need a temperature difference between air and sea. If the air is warming at the same rate as the bodies of water, an increase in waterspouts is unlikely, says Sills.  

Low pressure is also needed. “Even if the water is really warm, if you've got an area of high pressure over the Mediterranean, you won't get those thunderstorms,” says Inness. “You won't get waterspouts.”

Wind direction also comes into play. In this region, humid air from the north is more likely to cause storms than dry winds coming up from North Africa.    

Due to poor historic data, it’s not possible to confirm that waterspouts are increasing, says Mercalli, “but surely all heavy storms, including thunderstorms that generate strong winds, downbursts, heavy rains and hail are increasing worldwide and in Italy.”

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Unfortunately, this boat is not available for sale. It will be removed from the website soon.

CARVER - available for sale:

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WE'LL SEA - CARVER

Specifications

• All Specifications

Basic Information

Builder: CARVER Category: Cruising Yacht Model Year: 2018 Year Built: 2018 Country: United States

LOA: 34' (10.36mm)

Speed, Capacities and Weight

Accommodations, hull and deck information.

Hull Material: Fiberglass

Engine Information

Engines: 1 Manufacturer: Mercruiser

• Twin MerCruiser 6.2 Liter 300 hp Fresh Water Cooled w/ 450 hours
• Westerbeke 6.5 KW Generator
• Air Conditioning
• Raymarine Navigation
• Joy Stick Controls for Easy Docking
• Built In BBQ Grill

Yacht name «WE'LL SEA» – CARVER is for sale and located in Fort Myers, USA.

Cruising Yacht  «WE'LL SEA» built by manufacturer CARVER in 2018 — available for sale. Yacht location: USA. If you are looking to buy a yacht «WE'LL SEA» or need additional information on the purchase price of this CARVER, please call: +1-954-274-4435 (USA)

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The shepherd of the sea guiding small boats home to safety in South Africa

In the isolated village of Hondeklip Bay, Patrick Rulph is the lone voice on the radio bringing fishers back to shore.

Hondeklip Bay, South Africa – Before day breaks on a cloudy morning in Hondeklip Bay, a small fishing village in South Africa’s semi-arid Namaqualand region, Patrick Rulph rushes out of his front door in track pants, a loose-fitting hoodie and a dark cap.

The 61-year-old moves with urgency as he makes his way down the 200-metre-long dirt road to the beach, hoping to catch the fishers before they head to sea.

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“They don’t go to sea at set times, and I want to see exactly how many fishers are out,” says Rulph, with a knowing smile that reflects the pride he takes in his work monitoring and guiding the small boats that go out to sea.

On the shore, bags holding fishing gear and lunches sit at the high watermark on the sand. The fishers try and warm themselves in pockets of defiant sunlight while their fellow crew members arrive one by one.

Ruins of the old fish canning factory and the remains of a jetty that was destroyed by a storm years ago are evidence of a once-booming fishing industry that employed nearly anyone in the village.

Across the road from the ruins, five orange-coloured boats lie in front of a two-storey, weather-worn building, with a sign that reads: “Hondeklip Bay Small Vessel Safety Monitoring Center”, or VMS, where Rulph spends most of his days.

The VMS has two rooms: a first-floor office that contains the monitoring and communication equipment he uses and a small room on the ground floor, which houses orange electronic devices called locators that help track vessels out at sea. Rulph grabs a few locators from the room and hurries back down to the various fishing crews on the beach, handing them out and making meticulous notes in a pocketbook he carries with him.

He makes sure all the boats that leave in the morning return, and when necessary, he guides them home using the Small Vessel Monitoring System, which uses mapping software to track the locators.

As the only person working at the safety centre, Rulph has become indispensable to the small-scale fishers of Hondeklip Bay. Even after a loss of funding meant he stopped being paid to do the job this year, he has continued out of a strong sense of duty to the community.

At the shore, the crews of two or three men assemble, before rowing out to their anchored ski-boats on worn but sound dinghies. After boarding, they fire up their outboard motors and make their way out to sea, skipping on the incoming waves as they leave the harbour mouth one by one.

Hondeklip Bay has a population of about 540 people, according to the latest census in 2022. Rulph estimates that the size of the community is much larger, based on information he has seen at the local clinic, but he maintains that the community remains very close-knit.

Gainful employment is hard to come by. While some residents work for companies that reprocess overburden from diamond mines, most others work for low-paying municipal projects.

Daniel Ruyter, one of the members of the Hondeklip Bay Small-Scale Fishing Cooperative, says that despite only having 27 members, the co-op provides some form of income to 90-100 people. At the height of the annual snoek fishing season, over the Easter period, travelling fishers from all over the Western Cape visit Hondeklip Bay “chasing the snoek”. During their stay, they rent accommodation from community members and many more are given odd jobs such as cleaning fish.

Hondeklip Bay

Hondeklip Bay was established in the mid-1800s to transport copper ore by sea from its natural harbour to other towns in the Northern Cape. Rulph’s grandparents moved there in the early 1900s to work in the commercial fishing industry. His father was a fisherman and his mother worked in the Namaqua Canning Company’s fish factory.

When Rulph grew up during apartheid, he was classified as “coloured”. The racial discrimination was hard to miss, he recalls. While white residents had electricity and piped water in their homes, non-white residents could only collect drinking water from a reservoir in the village on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, they could only access brackish water.

“My friends and I saw it as a chance to earn pocket money. We delivered buckets of water for our neighbours, and they would give us a few cents that we would use to buy sweets and chocolates,” he laughs.

Conditions improved after Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress was voted into power in 1994, with piped water as well as electricity reaching all residents by 1996. Yet, 30 years later, Hondeklip Bay still has no grocery store, petrol station or high school, and the village remains accessible by gravel roads that stretch through past decommissioned diamond mines for tens of kilometres.

Rulph decided to quit high school when he was 16 to start working. After spending one season at the same canning factory as his mother, he began working for diamond companies, first De Beers and then the Trans Hex Group, when he was retrenched after 20 years. Due to the decline in the diamond industry and the collapse of the commercial fishing industry at home, he sought employment in Cape Town but returned after two years.

Fortunately, the Hondeklip Bay VMS and the monitoring system were donated to the village by the Namaqua District Municipality in 2014 and a post was advertised. Rulph got the job.

In the VMS office, which looks out over the ruins of the canning factory, he has a portable short-range radio, a fixed long-range radio, and two screens on which he can see satellite images of as much of the coastline as he wants to see along with the locations of each of the boats carrying the orange devices.

On days when the coastline is covered in dense fog, Rulph has to keep his eyes on his screens, making sure that all the boats are together. At the start, it was very stressful, as the fog tends to interfere with the satellite imagery, but he has since learned to deal with the quirks of the system.

Rulph recalls one very misty day that could have ended in a disaster. An old fisher went to sea with a young crew member, and when they decided to head home, it was so misty that they ended up arguing about where they were. The young crew member won the argument and thinking they were north of Hondeklip Bay, they headed south. After a while, the old fisher recognised a set of rocks along the shore and realised that they had gone too far south. They had nearly run out of fuel so they headed out into water that was deep enough for them to safely drop anchor and waited for the fog to clear.

Meanwhile, the other fishers that were out with them assuming they had made it home safely were surprised to find them not there. Members of the community built a huge bonfire on the beach hoping that the fishers would see the light from the sea and find their way home.

“I contacted the police and sent two boats with tracking devices out to go and look for them. When the mist cleared at about 11:30pm the old fisher saw that the boats were looking for them, but they didn’t have any way of drawing attention to themselves,” said Rulph.

When the “lost” fishers saw that the rescue boats were heading back home, they decided to row back to Hondeklip Bay.

“They reached the harbour mouth at about 4:30am, they fired up the motor and made it safely to shore. The community was still on the beach when they returned,” says Rulph, with a sense of delayed relief that the worst outcome was avoided.

Reflecting on that situation, Rulph says: “I realised that when the fishers are all at sea together, if a boat leaves, they just assume that it made it safely home, but that isn’t always the case. For that reason, I make sure that I know exactly how many boats go out every morning.”

‘We are making do’

In the decade that Rulph has worked at the safety centre, there have been no instances of fishers drowning at sea in Hondeklip Bay, a statistic he is simultaneously thankful for and proud of.

The Namakwa District Municipality paid Rulph’s salary through an annually renewed contract. But in 2024, his contract was not renewed because of a lack of funds. There is some talk of third parties attempting to secure funding for his position, but there are no concrete plans as yet, he says.

At home, Rulph is the sole breadwinner in his household. His wife and two daughters depend on his state pension. Yet, with the optimism that reveals a deep acknowledgement of the resourcefulness of his community, he says: “We aren’t hungry, we aren’t cold. We are making do.”

And even without a salary, over the last few months, he has continued to perform the role he was once paid to do, in service of the community he has been a part of for six decades.

“Patrick’s work is important. He does it well. We don’t have to ask him to do it, or look for him, he’s always ready,” says Daniel Ruyter, who has known Rulph nearly all his life and has been his friend for decades.

Ruyter has been fishing for over 50 years and knows the surrounding coastline better than almost anyone. Yet he says that even he has been in situations where, due to the thick fog, he got lost while trying to make his way home, instead ending up in a different bay.

“We don’t all have GPS systems. And without the radios, our only means of communication from the sea is our mobile phones. If something out there happens you have to hope that you can access the network,” he said.

Indicating the value of Rulph’s dependability and the value of his work, Ruyter says: “Now we have radios, and we know that if we need help, Patrick will be ready to help us.”

Rulph’s service-oriented approach extends beyond just his profession, and his neighbours say it’s something that comes naturally to him. Ruyter says that when catches are good during the snoek season, Rulph goes around to the fishers asking them to donate some fish to poorer families in the community, before distributing the donations himself.

It’s the same compassion to help those in need that guides his tireless unpaid work at the VMS.

“I understand the risks and the dangers of going to sea,” Rulph says in a lowered voice that conveys the seriousness with which he views his work. “Tomorrow someone could drown just because they didn’t have a locator and there was no one to guide them in. It would be a life that could have been saved.”

Fishing is the only gainful employment in the village, he says, and there are no other vocational opportunities for young men other than to become fishermen.

“My son is also a fisherman. Just as I care about my son, there are other parents that feel the same way about their children,” Rulph adds.

For as long as he is able, he is committed to continuing to shepherd Hondeklip Bay’s fishers home, making sure none get left behind.

“I believe if I bless others, then I will be blessed as well,” he says with a satisfied smile.

Reporting for this story was supported by the Pulitzer Center.

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