Latest news with #ChrisMorvillo
The Sun
4 days ago
- The Sun
Bayesian's interior finally revealed as luxury superyacht turned into chaotic mess after being raised from seabed
HAUNTING pictures of the Bayesian superyacht's wrecked interior have been revealed - after it sank off the coast off Sicily last summer. Tech tycoon Mike Lynch, 59, and his daughter Hannah, 18, were among those on board the doomed vessel when it plummeted to the bottom of the Mediterranean. 9 9 9 9 It comes after the £14million luxury vessel was lifted from the depths of the sea as part of a gruelling recovery operation which began in May. The new photographs reveal the watery grave of the tragic entrepreneur's yacht. A ruined reception area holds soaked furniture scattered across one side of the dilapidated room. Waterlogged armchairs and pillows thrown all over the eerie compartment sit next to ghastly tables which have been soaked under water for the last 10 months. The once sumptuous interior now rotten with grime is a harrowing reminder of the tragic day on August 19 2024 when the ship sank in just 16 minutes after being hit by a violent downburst. The freak accident also took the lives of banker Jonathan Bloomer, 70, and his wife Judy Bloomer, 71, as well as US lawyer Chris Morvillo and his wife Neda Morvillo, and Canadian-Antiguan chef Recaldo Thomas. A further 15 people were rescued following the ship's horror plummet. Last week, chilling pictures showed the Bayesian resurface for the first time in nearly a year as bystanders watched one of Europe 's biggest cranes lift the yacht up from 150ft below the water. The Bayesian was then transported about 15 miles along the coast to the port of Termini Imerese. The multimillion-pound vessel was pulled onto a specially made steel cradle at the port. I found doomed Bayesian I saw still haunts me It is currently being examined by investigators, who are trying to work out what caused it to sink so rapidly. Italian builders insisted the ship was virtually unsinkable and suggested the crew may have been at fault. Speculation circulated that someone could have left a hatch open during the storm. But after it was hauled up last week, investigators found every hatch was shut tight. It comes after a bombshell report revealed the astonishing "vulnerability" of Lynch's "unsinkable" Bayesian superyacht which led to its tragic demise. After examining the sinking of the 180ft Bayesian off Sicily last year, investigators now say the ship was knocked over by 'extreme wind' and could not recover. 9 9 9 And they confirmed the vessel's critical weakness was that the ship was vulnerable to wind. An interim report by the Marine Accident Investigation Branch said the yacht had a 'vulnerability' to lighter winds but the owner and crew would not have known. It added it had 'limited verified evidence' as the criminal probe in Italy had restricted its access. Italian prosecutors are conducting a criminal investigation into the yacht's sudden sinking. They are probing the ship's skipper New Zealand national James Cutfield, Brit chief engineer Tim Parker Eaton, and deckhand Matthew Griffiths, for potential manslaughter and causing a shipwreck. Inside the Bayesian's final 16 minutes By Ellie Doughty, Foreign News Reporter Data recovered from the Bayesian's Automatic Identification System (AIS) breaks down exactly how it sank in a painful minute-by-minute timeline. At 3.50am on Monday August 19 the Bayesian began to shake "dangerously" during a fierce storm, Italian outlet Corriere revealed. Just minutes later at 3.59am the boat's anchor gave way, with a source saying the data showed there was "no anchor left to hold". After the ferocious weather ripped away the boat's mooring it was dragged some 358 metres through the water. By 4am it had began to take on water and was plunged into a blackout, indicating that the waves had reached its generator or even engine room. At 4.05am the Bayesian fully disappeared underneath the waves. An emergency GPS signal was finally emitted at 4.06am to the coastguard station in Bari, a city nearby, alerting them that the vessel had sunk. Early reports suggested the disaster struck around 5am local time off the coast of Porticello Harbour in Palermo, Sicily. The new data pulled from the boat's AIS appears to suggest it happened an hour earlier at around 4am. Some 15 of the 22 onboard were rescued, 11 of them scrambling onto an inflatable life raft that sprung up on the deck. A smaller nearby boat - named Sir Robert Baden Powell - then helped take those people to shore. The huge £20million recovery undertaking was plagued by delays and more tragedy - after a diver working on the operation died last month. Robcornelis Maria Huijben Uiben, 39, died when working 160ft below the ocean alongside other workers - just days after recovery operations began. This prompted some locals to believe that the sunken ship is "cursed". Floating cranes, remote-controlled robots, and specialist divers amongst other marine experts were brought in to recover the vessel. Billionaire Dr Lynch was celebrating being cleared of a massive fraud over the sale of Autonomy to computer giant Hewlett-Packard in 2011 when the Bayesian went down. 9 9
BBC News
21-06-2025
- BBC News
Sunken Bayesian superyacht raised from seabed near Sicily
The Bayesian had been anchored off the port of a small fishing village, Porticello, when it sank in the early hours of 19 August last year. Witnesses at the time recalled watching it disappear within "a few minutes" during freak weather. Among the victims were Mr Lynch, 59, and his daughter Hannah; Morgan Stanley International bank chairman Jonathan Bloomer, 70, and his wife, Judy Bloomer, 71, who were all British nationals. US lawyer Chris Morvillo and his wife Neda Morvillo, and Canadian-Antiguan national Recaldo Thomas, who was working as a chef on the vessel, also died in the sinking. Fifteen people, including Mr Lynch's wife, Angela Bacares, were rescued.
The Independent
21-06-2025
- The Independent
Water pumped from Bayesian superyacht as it is seen for first time since sinking
The superyacht Bayesian, owned by Mike Lynch, has been seen upright off the coast of Sicily for the first time since it tragically sank last month, resulting in seven deaths. The 56-metre vessel was spotted near Porticello, held by a powerful sea crane, as salvage workers continued to pump Water from it in preparation for full recovery. The sinking on August 19 claimed the lives of Mike Lynch, his daughter Hannah, Jonathan and Judy Bloomer, US lawyer Chris Morvillo and his wife Neda Morvillo, and chef Recaldo Thomas. Investigators from the UK and Italy are raising the vessel to fully understand the incident, with an interim report indicating it was knocked over by "extreme wind" due to an unknown vulnerability. The yacht is expected to be brought to Termini Imerese for further investigation, following earlier delays in salvage efforts due to a diver's death in May.
CBS News
10-05-2025
- Business
- CBS News
Diver dies during operation to recover superyacht that sank off Sicily, killing tycoon and 6 others
Work to raise a superyacht that sank in Sicily last year, killing a U.K. tech mogul and six others, was suspended Saturday after the death of a specialized diver, according to local news reports. The diver was part of a team working to raise the 185-foot "Bayesian" yacht that was struck by a pre-dawn storm in August last year while anchored off Porticello, near Palermo. The yacht sunk within minutes after being struck by something akin to a mini-tornado, killing British tech tycoon Mike Lynch, his teenage daughter and five others — Morgan Stanley International bank chairman Jonathan Bloomer and his wife, Judy, U.S. lawyer Chris Morvillo, his wife Neda Morvillo and the yacht's chef Recaldo Thomas, the BBC reported. Fifteen people managed to escape on a lifeboat, including a one-year-old child and Lynch's wife, Angela Bacares. Authorities suspended work on raising the vessel after prosecutors opened an investigation Friday into the death of a 39-year-old diver, according to Italian media. According to initial reports, the diver was part of a team working to cut and remove the 75-meter mast, a first step before recovery of the yacht itself, which is lying on its side on the seabed some 50 meters down. Crew members, working aboard the floating crane ship HEBO, walk at the port after a diver died during preliminary operations to recover British tech tycoon Mike Lynch's superyacht from the waters off the coast of Porticello, near Palermo, Italy, May 9, 2025. Igor Petyx / REUTERS TMC Marine, the British company working to raise the superyacht, did not immediately respond to an AFP request for more information. In a statement Friday cited by news reports, TMC Marine said it was cooperating with the probe and that "the circumstances of the accident are currently being investigated by the authorities." Work to bring up the yacht began last week, with Italy's coastguard saying it would take up to 25 days. Inquests into the deaths of the four British victims of the yacht sinking are currently being held in Ipswich, in eastern England. In Italy, prosecutors in Termini Imerese have opened investigations into the captain and three others on suspicion of manslaughter and the crime of negligent shipwreck. Lynch, the 59-year-old founder of software firm Autonomy, had invited friends and family onto the boat to celebrate his recent acquittal in a huge U.S. fraud case. Who was Mike Lynch? Lynch, once hailed as "Britain's Bill Gates," rose to prominence in the late 1990s with the development of his software company, Autonomy, which helped businesses quickly find information buried in email and other digital documents. In 2011, Lynch sold the business to Hewlett-Packard for $11 billion, giving him a $800 million payday and cementing him as one of the U.K.'s richest people. But the acquisition was later called one of the "most notorious failed mergers and acquisitions" after HP discovered alleged accounting issues, leading to Lynch's firing by HP's then-CEO, Meg Whitman. HP claimed that Autonomy had used accounting improprieties to bolster its underlying financials ahead of the acquisition, charges that Lynch steadfastly denied. The case stretched into a 12-year legal fight that ended in June 2024 when a federal court jury in San Francisco delivered not-guilty verdicts. Mike Lynch, former chief executive officer of Autonomy Corp., arrives at federal court in San Francisco, California, on Monday, March 18, 2024. Loren Elliott/Bloomberg via Getty Images Lynch, who earned a PhD in mathematical computing from the U.K.'s Cambridge University, first cofounded a company called Cambridge Neurodynamics, based on the cofounders' work with pattern recognition. The firm used the tech to match fingerprints and car license plates, according to a 1997 article in The Guardian. From there, Lynch cofounded Autonomy in 1996, which relied on a statistical model called Bayesian inference, named after a theorem developed by the 18th century statistician Thomas Bayes. (Lynch's luxury yacht was christened the "Bayesian.") The company tapped into the growing need of businesses to sort through and find information within the vast reams of data created by the increasing use of computers and digital documents. Autonomy's steady growth during its first decade resulted in Lynch being awarded one of the U.K's highest honors, the Office of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire in 2006. Lynch told The Guardian in 1997 that people didn't quite believe that a growing tech business could emerge from the U.K. "I have actually heard the comment, 'England, software? I thought you made bone china,'" he told the newspaper. contributed to this report.
