Rescue teams and divers were searching Tuesday for six missing people, including a British tech magnate and a Morgan Stanley boss, after a luxury superyacht sank in a storm off Sicily.
The identity of those still missing emerged after an initial search of the 184-foot sailboat, named the Bayesian, was unsuccessful Monday. The British-flagged tourist vessel had 22 people aboard when it sank because of “a violent storm” off Sicily’s main city, Palermo, around 5 a.m. local time (11 p.m. ET) on Monday, the local coast guard said.
Fifteen people were rescued by a boat present in the immediate vicinity and then brought ashore by coast guard vessels, but six passengers, including American, British and Canadian citizens, remained missing, it said. They were believed to be trapped in the boat's hull, some 164 feet underwater, posing a challenge to divers who returned to the site Tuesday off Porticello, near Palermo.
Salvatore Cocina, director of Sicily’s Civil Protection Agency, told NBC News early Tuesday that the missing include British tech magnate Mike Lynch and his daughter, Morgan Stanley International Chairman Jonathan Bloomer and his wife, as well as Clifford Chance lawyer Chris Morvillo and his wife.
Cocina did not specify the nationalities of the missing. He also did not identify Lynch's daughter or the wives of Bloomer and Morvillo.
A spokesperson for Clifford Chance, where Morvillo works as a lawyer, confirmed to NBC News Tuesday that he and his wife Neda were among the missing.
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“Our utmost priority is providing support to the family as well as our colleague Ayla Ronald, who together with her partner, thankfully survived the incident,” the spokesperson said.
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Italy’s national fire department said that its divers were able to get inside the wreck during a late-night dive Monday, inspecting some cabins located under the bridge, but were having trouble navigating because of obstructions and narrow access gates.
Rescuers said that there might be bodies inside the cabins but that they had so far been unable to check through the ship’s portholes.
Divers were working in 12-minute underwater search shifts, while surface searches continued in the area of the shipwreck with a helicopter and a fire brigade boat, it added.
Mike Lynch, who was regularly described in U.K. media as “Britain’s Bill Gates,” was cleared of fraud charges in a blockbuster U.S. trial earlier this summer. Sources told CNBC on Monday that his wife, Angela Bacares, has been rescued. Italian news agency ANSA identified his daughter, missing alongside her father, as Hannah, 18.
Just days before Lynch went missing, his co-defendant, Stephen Chamberlain, died after being “fatally struck by a car” while out running Saturday, his lawyer Gary Lincenberg told NBC News in an emailed statement. Reuters reported that Chamberlain was a former vice president of finance at Autonomy, Lynch’s company at the center of the trial.
The sailing vacation that ended in tragedy appeared to be something of a celebration after Lynch’s acquittal — Morvillo was one of Lynch’s U.S. lawyers and Bloomer testified in his defense.
“We are deeply shocked and saddened by this tragic event. Our thoughts are with all those affected, in particular our Chair, Jonathan Bloomer, and his wife Judy, who are among the missing,” Aki Hussain, the head of insurance company Hiscox, told NBC News in an emailed statement.
A Morgan Stanley spokesperson also said: “Our thoughts are with all those affected, in particular the Bloomer family, as we all wait for further news from this terrible situation.”
Judy Bloomer was described as “a brilliant champion for women’s health and medical research” by The Eve Appeal, a British cancer charity, in an emailed statement to NBC News.
Britain's Marine Accident Investigation Branch said it was deploying a team of four inspectors to Palermo to conduct a preliminary assessment of the incident.
The coast guard said in a statement Monday that the ship’s cook had died. It did not give his nationality. Reuters identified him as Antiguan citizen Ricardo Thomas.
One of the survivors, identified as Charlotte Emsley, 35, told the Italian news agency ANSA that she had momentarily lost hold of her year-old daughter, Sofia, in the water but managed to retrieve her and hold her up over the waves until a lifeboat inflated and they were pulled to safety.
Built by Italian shipbuilder Perini Navi in 2008, the U.K.-registered, Bayesian can carry 12 guests and a crew of up to 10, according to online specialist yacht sites.
The yacht’s nearly 250-foot mast is the tallest aluminum sailing mast in the world, according to CharterWorld Luxury Yacht Charters.
Luca Mercalli, Italian climatologist and president of the country’s meteorological society, told Reuters that the storm could have involved a waterspout, essentially a tornado over water, or a downburst, a more frequent phenomenon that doesn’t involve the rotation of the air.
Storms and heavy rainfall have swept Italy in recent days after weeks of scorching heat.
“The sea surface temperature around Sicily was around 30 degrees Celsius (86 Fahrenheit), which is almost 3 degrees more than normal,” Mercalli said. “This creates an enormous source of energy that contributes to these storms.”
Claudio Lavanga reported from Rome, and Yuliya Talmazan from London.
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