The above was made known by the Italian Coast Guard on Monday (19/8).
British tech tycoon Mike Lynch is among the missing, a person with knowledge of the rescue operation said. Lynch’s wife, Angela Bakaris, was rescued, another source said.
The 56-metre sailing vessel, the British-flagged Bayesian, sank with 22 people on board just before dawn, the coastguard said in a statement.
The missing persons are of British, American and Canadian nationality, according to the same source. Among the 15 rescued is a 1-year-old child.
RPG NEWS
One person has died and four British nationals are missing after a yacht sank off the coast of Sicily, Italian media has reported.
The 50-metre boat, which is called the “Bayesian”, sank at around 5am in the stretch of sea in front of Porticello in the province… pic.twitter.com/XtIxyVonLE
— RPG The Random Post Generator (@JimmyMcSqueezle) August 19, 2024
“There were gale force winds. Bad weather was expected, but not to this extent,” a port officer told Reuters.
Eight of the rescued were taken to local hospitals. All of them are in stable condition, Italian media reports.
Charlotte, a 35-year-old British passenger who was traveling with her husband, colleagues from a London business and friends, described losing her daughter “for two seconds” as they fell into the water, before she managed to catch her .
“I immediately held her in my arms, in the fury of the waves. Many were shouting. Fortunately, the lifeboat opened and 11 of us got in,” she told Italian news agency Ansa. The woman and her baby are being treated, but are out of danger.
Among the rescued, most of them British, are also two French-British, a Sri Lankan, a New Zealander and an Irishman, media reports.
BREAKING: British tech tycoon Mike Lynch is missing after the superyacht sinking, multiple news agencies are reporting
Latest updates:
Sky 501, Virgin 602, Freeview 233 and YouTube pic.twitter.com/uF8uu4RNaZ
— Sky News (@SkyNews) August 19, 2024
The captain of a boat sailing near the Bayesian told Reuters that when the storm hit the area, he turned on the engine so he could keep the ship under control and avoid a collision with the sailboat.
“We managed to keep the boat steady and after the storm ended, we noticed that the ship behind us had disappeared,” Carsten Borner told reporters.
The other boat “disintegrated on the water and then sank,” he added.
He said his crew then found some of the survivors in a lifeboat, including three who were seriously injured and “a small baby and the owner’s wife,” and transferred them to his ship before being picked up by the coast guard.
Lynch, 59, was acquitted in June by a San Francisco jury of fraud charges related to the $11 billion sale of software company Autonomy to Hewlett-Packard in 2011.
At the time he said he was “thrilled” with his acquittal in the criminal trial, during which he had denied any wrongdoing and accused HP of sloppiness in the merger of the two companies.
The Italian Coast Guard announced that divers are conducting searches at the wreck, at a depth of 49 meters.
Prosecutors in the city of Termini Imerese have launched an investigation to determine the cause of the wreck.
Who is Mike Lynch?
Born in Ireland, Lynch grew up near Chelmsford in Essex, where his mother was a nurse and his father a firefighter. He studied physics, mathematics and biochemistry at the University of Cambridge and eventually specialized in adaptive pattern recognition. His doctoral dissertation is reportedly one of the most widely read pieces of research in the university library.
After launching a few early-technology startups – including one that specialized in automatic license plate, fingerprint and facial recognition software for the police – he created Autonomy in 1996. His software was used by companies to analyze huge databases, and he owes in part the its effectiveness in a statistical theory devised by the statistician, philosopher and Presbyterian minister Thomas Bayes in the 18th century. The superyacht that sank off Sicily during a violent storm in the early hours of Monday has been named the Bayesian.
Autonomy was an immediate business success. The company was listed on the Brussels Stock Exchange in 1998, and rapid growth combined with the dotcom boom would lead to a move to the London Stock Exchange, where Autonomy became one of the top 100 UK-listed companies.
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