The doomed superyacht of tech tycoon Mike Lynch is set to be raised from the Sicilian seabed next month, an inquest was told today.
The 184ft Bayesian, which sank in August last year with the loss of seven lives including Mr Lynch and his teenage daughter, capsized after she was caught at anchor during a freak storm.
Italian authorities are continuing a manslaughter probe into the deaths on the £30 million vessel, the inquest also heard.
Speculation about the tragedy has centred around claims of human error and design flaws – the latter firmly refuted by the Italian designers, who filed a massive lawsuit for ‘reputational damage’.
The Maritime Coastguard Agency told the hearing in Ipswich today that it had been running an investigation in parallel with the Italian authorities.
An inspector, Mark Cam, said it would be relying on an inspection of the Bayesian as a ‘primary source’ when she has finally been brought ashore by a salvage crew next month. The operation is expected to begin on Sunday.
‘We are looking at whether there has been culpability in breaches of maritime legislation,’ he said.
‘The Italians are conducting a criminal investigation which incorporates the equivalent of manslaughter.’
Marine Accident Investigation Branch investigator Simon Graves told the inquest it had commissioned a report into the weather at the time of the tragedy and another into the ‘stability and windage’ of the Bayesian.
He added: ‘We hope to issue an interim report in four to six weeks which will provide an overview of the accident.’
UK authorities are involved because the Bayesian was a British-registered vessel.
A total of 22 people – 12 crew and ten guests – were aboard the Bayesian when she sank in the early hours of August 19 near Porticello, a small fishing town.
Mr Lynch, 59, was on board his yacht celebrating after a US jury cleared him of fraud and other charges that could have left him in a jail there for 20 years.
The founder of software and data firm Autonomy had been accused of selling the company for a vastly inflated price of £8.3 billion to US company Hewlett Packard.
His daughter Hannah, 18, also died, although her American mother, Angela Bacares, was among those who managed to escape and were picked up by a nearby Dutch sailing ship.
Other victims were Britons Jonathan Bloomer, 70, chairman of Morgan Stanley International bank and his wife Judy, 71, American lawyer Chris Morvillo, his wife Nada, and the yacht’s chef, Recaldo Thomas.
All four British deaths are being looked at by Suffolk coroner Nigel Parsley.
The inquest also heard from James Healy-Pratt, representing the family of Mr Thomas and speaking on behalf of the Bloomer family, who said they had ‘concerns there may be issues with safety’.
He didn’t explain what these were, other than to say points centred around the yacht’s ‘safety booklet’.
‘The owner of the Bayesian had legal obligations, including the seaworthiness of the vessel and due diligence,’ he added.
Mr Parsley adjourned the case for another pre-inquest hearing, probably to take place in September or October.
He said it was impossible to say when a full hearing would take place but he expected it to last between five and ten days.
According to reports, the Bayesian’s anchor was down when the storm hit and broke the mast, causing the vessel to lose its balance and capsize.
Theories about what happened have included the yacht being hit by a downburst, a strong downward and outward gushing wind system which blows down rapidly.
Dr Karsten Haustein, a climate change researcher at Leipzig University, said the average speed of a downburst is 90mph.
Those caught up in one don’t have time to react due to its ‘sudden’ nature, which could explain how the vessel sank so quickly.
There have also been claims that a door had been left open on the Bayesian, allowing water to flood on board.
However, a photo taken 14 minutes before it sank, taken by a neighbouring yacht, appeared to show the door had been closed.
Christopher Deacon, international injury partner at Stewarts Law, said investigations remain at an early stage but investigators ‘have suggested that responsibility… could rest with the captain and his crew for their actions’.
Areas being looked at include human error and operational intelligence, including doors and hatches left open and causing flooding, the keel being retracted, and the captain’s decision on the positioning of the superyacht in light of weather warnings.
There were also the design flaws firmly refuted by manufacturer The Italian Sea Group – whose chief executive previously said the Bayesian was ‘unsinkable’ and alleged the crew were responsible.
Skipper New Zealander James Cutfield, 51, and British duo, chief engineer Tim Parker Eaton, 59, and watchman Matthew Griffiths, 22, have all been placed under formal investigation in Italy for multiple manslaughter charges and causing a disaster.
Desperate searches were launched for the missing after the Bayesian disappeared under the water, with Hannah, who was due to start a degree course at Oxford University weeks later, the last to be found after several days as her ‘petite’ body was hidden behind a mattress.
Born in Ilford, Essex, as the son of an Irish fireman and a nurse, Mr Lynch won a scholarship to Bancroft’s School, a private day school in northeast London, and later read natural sciences at Cambridge.
At university he developed his fascination with technology, completing a doctorate and holding a research fellowship in adaptive pattern recognition.
In 1991, he set up Cambridge Neurodynamics, which specialised in computer-based finger print recognition for the police.
Five years later he founded data analysis company Autonomy, which became one of Britain’s most successful start-ups.
His rise to fame and fortune had been celebrated as a major and pioneering British success story and the married father of two daughters was awarded an OBE in 2006 for services to enterprise.
That same year, he was appointed to the board of the BBC – and was later elected to then-prime minister David Cameron’s council for science and technology in 2011.
He advised Mr Cameron on subjects including ‘the opportunities and risks of the development of artificial intelligence (AI) and the government’s role in the regulation of these technologies’.
One diver described how other victims were found together in a compartment, suggesting they had time to get together as the boat sank, having been sleeping in their cabins moments earlier.
He said: ‘The victims were found in the lower level. We found the people in one room. Bearing in mind the time of the sinking, they were all in their rooms sleeping.
‘The fact they were together means – it’s just a theory – they got together to escape or to comfort each other.’
At a previous inquest hearing in October, Mr Parsley was told by Detective Sergeant Mike Brown of Suffolk Police that the yacht had ‘sunk rapidly for reasons yet to be ascertained’.
DS Brown revealed the post-mortem examination in Italy had established Mr Lynch died from drowning and his daughter’s cause of death remained under investigation.
The cause of Sevenoaks-based Mr Bloomer’s death and that of his wife Judy was also ‘under investigation’.
Italian reports have said the three may have been in airpockets and suffocated, rather than drowned, as no water was found in their lungs. But no evidence of this was heard at the inquest.
DS Brown said ‘further tests were needed’ to establish the cause of the deaths and it was ‘not uncommon’ in such circumstances.
Mr Lynch, once described as ‘Britain’s Bill Gates’, was one of the world’s richest men with an estimated fortune of £852 million.
He had only just returned to the UK following his extradition to the US following a 13-year legal nightmare over the sale of Autonomy.
He lost a three-year battle to avoid extradition under controversial laws considered to be heavily weighted against British citizens and was flown to California in May 2023.
But on June 6 last year, he was acquitted by a jury in San Francisco, while former Autonomy finance executive Stephen Chamberlain, who faced the same charges, was also acquitted on all counts.
In a strange twist of fate, Mr Chamberlain also died in August last year after he was hit by a car while out running in Cambridgeshire.
He was taken to hospital but passed away three days after the August 17 accident.
Describing how he had feared dying in a US jail because medical issues would have made it ‘difficult to survive’, Mr Lynch spoke shortly before his death of seizing the opportunities presented by a ‘second life’.
‘If this had gone the wrong way, it would have been the end of my life as I have known it in any sense,’ he said.
‘It’s bizarre but now you have a second life. The question is, what do you want to do with it?’
Having been living under house arrest with an electronic tag in the US, the entrepreneur celebrated his freedom by flying home and spending time in his luxury property in Chelsea, west London, before heading to his 2,500-acre farm near Wickham Market in Suffolk.
He then headed out to his yacht in the Mediterranean to relax with friends and consider his future.
Mr Lynch had previously lost a 2019 civil fraud case based on similar allegations that Hewlett Packard brought in the UK, with London’s High Court ruling in 2020 that HP had ‘substantially won its case’.
The company is still pursuing damages from his estate as part of its civil case, despite the yachting tragedy. It is claiming £3 billion, although the level of the payout is yet to be decided.