Body of British businessman Mike Lynch recovered after fatal Italian yacht accident

The Italian coast guard said Thursday that the body of British tech magnate Mike Lynch was among the victims recovered off the coast of Sicily from the wreck of a superyacht that its builders said was unsinkable.

The bodies of Lynch and four others were recovered by rescue teams. One woman is still missing.

The Bayesian, a 180-foot British-flagged yacht, went down in a storm early Monday morning while moored about a mile from shore. Civil defense officials said they believe the vessel was hit by a tornado over the water, known as a waterspout, and sank quickly.

Lynch celebrated his recent acquittal on fraud charges with his family and those who defended him during his trial in the United States.

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Divers have had difficulty finding the bodies.

“It is very difficult to move in the wreckage. It can take up to 24 hours to move one meter,” said Luca Cari, spokesman for the fire department.

Hannah Lynch, the businessman’s 18-year-old daughter, is among those aboard the boat rescue teams have been searching for this week, along with Judy and Jonathan Bloomer and Chris and Neda Morvillo.

Lynch’s wife, Angela Bacares, was among those who managed to escape to safety. The body of the ship’s cook, Recaldo Thomas, was found near the wreckage several hours after the disaster.

Thomas was originally from Antigua but grew up in Calgary, sources in Antigua said.

Questions remain about capsizing

Fifteen of the 22 people on board survived, including a mother who said she held her one-year-old baby above the waves to save her.

They were rescued by the sailboat Sir Robert Baden Powell. The sailboat’s captain, Karsten Borner, said he had remained at anchor with his engines running to try to maintain the ship’s position as the storm raged.

“Another option is to drop anchor before the storm and sail downwind on the open sea,” Borner said in a text message.

But he said this might not be possible for the Bayesian telescope, given its 75-metre-high mast.

“If there had been a stability problem caused by the extremely high mast, it would not have been any better on the open sea,” he said.

Yachts such as the Bayesian yachts must have watertight compartments specially designed to prevent them from sinking quickly and catastrophically, even if some parts fill with water.

Lynch, 59, is the only person confirmed dead; the other bodies have not yet been officially identified by the Italian coast guard.

The Royal Academy of Engineering, where Lynch was a Fellow, said it was “deeply saddened” to hear of his death and that he played an “active role” as a mentor and donor.

Lynch founded Autonomy, a software maker, in 1996. He later founded Invoke Capital, a venture capital firm that co-founded UK cybersecurity firm Darktrace, as well as Luminance, an artificial intelligence platform for the legal sector.

Lynch sold Autonomy to Hewlett-Packard in 2011 for $11 billion. But the deal quickly became a millstone around his neck, after he was accused of manipulating accounting records to close the sale and subsequently fired by HP.

Lynch testified this year at his California trial for fraud in connection with the HP deal. Although he avoided the possibility of a prison sentence and subsequent acquittal, Lynch still faced a potentially costly civil case in London.