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The late British tycoon Mike Lynch’s sunken superyacht Bayesian is set to be lifted from the bottom of the sea with operations starting by the end of the month, as authorities seek to gather new evidence about the accident that killed him and six other people last year.
The 56-metre vessel — whose builder described it as “unsinkable” — tipped over and sank while anchored a few hundred metres off the Sicilian coast last August, when it was hit by a violent storm — with winds of up to 110km an hour — at about 4am.
Italian authorities have recently approved a plan that will see two Dutch salvage companies lift the 540-tonne wreck, which lies 49m under the sea surface, as they attempt to gather evidence about the sinking.
The death of Lynch, his daughter, his friends and a crew member, has led to criminal investigations against multiple crew members, and other litigation, as Italian criminal prosecutors seek to determine what went wrong and who was responsible for an accident that shocked UK tech investors and the tight-knit yachting world.
The Italian Sea Group, the company that built the yacht, has denied that the boat had any design flaws and has sought to pin the blame on the crew, suggesting that someone left a hatch open near the waterline that may have allowed large quantities of water to enter the hull.
The prosecutor’s office of Termini Imerese on the Sicilian coast has been investigating James Cutfield, the yacht’s captain, as well as engineer Tim Parker Eaton and crew member Matthew Griffith for potential manslaughter and ‘’negligent shipwreck’’, but no formal charges have been brought against them. Those under investigation have not publicly commented on the investigation.
The lifting is set to turn into a media spectacle with the Italian press reporting that tourists and television crews from all over the world have booked out local hotels to watch the salvage.
A first barge will reach Termini Imerese on April 26 and position itself near the wreck to begin preliminary safety operations, a coastguard official said. A second barge with a crane to pull up the wreck will arrive later.
The lifting of the hull will probably take place around mid-May, officials said. The recovery is expected to help gather additional evidence in the case and to allow local fishermen and residents to return to an area marked by a wreck whose tanks — although secured — contain 18,000 litres of diesel.
Bayesian will be lifted by a joint venture of Dutch salvage companies HEBO Maritiemservice and Smit Salvage, according to people familiar with the matter. The companies, neither of which commented on the forthcoming operation, were chosen by British consultancy firm TMC Marine, which was appointed by Bayesian’s insurer British Marine.
The companies involved have plenty of experience. In 2021, Smit refloated and dislodged the 200,000-tonne container vessel Ever Given, which was stuck in the Suez Canal disrupting global shipping traffic, while the following year it led the operations to recover a ship loaded with 4,000 cars — Bentleys, Audis and Porsches — on fire near the Azores.
The plan was approved by the Termini Imerese criminal prosecutor and the Italian Coast Guard. The cost will be borne by British Marine.
According to people familiar with the plan, the boat will be lifted with all the fuel by a crane operated from a platform, with the help of inflatable balloons. The 72m mast, for which the yacht was famous as it was reportedly considered to be the tallest in the world, will be cut beforehand by a robot equipped with a remotely controlled saw.
A barge will then transport the yacht to a warehouse nearby where investigators will finally be able to inspect the relic directly and gather any evidence that was previously difficult to recover under water.
Inspectors from the Marine Accident Investigation Branch (MAIB), a UK government organisation tasked with investigating accidents involving UK registered vessels, are also expected to land in Sicily to examine the wreck.
The group of guests aboard the Bayesian was on holiday to celebrate Lynch’s acquittal in a US federal court after a 12-year legal battle over fraud charges for the $11bn sale of his software group Autonomy to Hewlett-Packard. The group included Lynch’s family and members of his legal team and their wives.
Of the 22 passengers and crew on board that night, fifteen people, including Lynch’s wife Angela Bacares, were rescued by a yacht anchored nearby, which was unscathed by the violent storm.
Of the seven who died, five were recovered trapped in a single cabin, while Lynch’s 18-year-old daughter Hannah was found in another. The body of a crew member, the yacht’s chef, was recovered from the water.
