A British tech magnate and several other people are missing after a luxury superyacht sank near Sicily’s main city, Palermo, during a violent storm, Italian officials and sources familiar with the matter told CNBC. At least one person was killed.
Mike Lynch, who was regularly described in U.K. media as “Britain’s Bill Gates,” was not among those rescued, said the sources, who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the situation. They added that Angela Bacares, Lynch’s wife, had been plucked from the waters off the Italian island.
Lynch was among six people who were unaccounted for, The Associated Press quoted Salvo Cocina of Sicily’s civil protection agency as saying. “They were in the wrong place at the wrong time,” he said. Cocina also confirmed that Bacares had survived.
Italy's coast guard said in a statement that the 184-foot sailboat, named the Bayesian, sank “due to a violent storm” off Palermo at around 5 a.m. local time (11 p.m. ET) with 22 people on board. Fifteen people were rescued, and six passengers were missing, it said.
American, British and Canadian citizens were among the missing, the statement said. The coast guard said in later statement that the ship’s cook had died. It did not give the cook's nationality.
Karsten Borner, the captain of a ship that rescued the survivors, told reporters that there was a “strong hurricane gust, and we had to start the engine to keep the ship in an angled position,” according to Reuters.
He added that they had “watched the ship behind us not to touch them and we managed to keep the ship in position.” After the storm was over, he said, “we noticed that the ship behind us was gone.”
“Fifteen people inside. Four people were injured, three heavily injured, and we brought them to our ship, he said. “Then we communicated with the coast guard, and after some time, the coast guard came and later picked up injured people.”
One of the survivors, identified as Charlotte Emsley, 35, told the Italian news agency ANSA that she had momentarily lost hold of her 1-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.
“I immediately hugged her again amid the fury of the waves. I held her tight, close to me, while the sea was stormy,” she said. “Many were screaming. Luckily, the lifeboat inflated, and 11 of us managed to get on it.”
The City Council of Bagheria said in a statement that a child of that age was being treated at a children’s hospital. It said that seven adults were taken to the emergency room but that “it seems that none are in serious conditions.”
Lynch, 59, the missing tech entrepreneur, founded the enterprise software firm Autonomy and became the target of a protracted legal battle with Hewlett-Packard after the U.S. tech giant accused him of inflating the company’s value in an $11 billion sale. Extradited from Britain to the U.S. last year to stand trial, he was acquitted of fraud after a three-month trial.
Italy’s national fire department said in a statement that “divers, a motorboat and a helicopter” had been deployed to help with the search.The wreck was at a depth of around 165 feet, the statement said.
Divers from the Sicilian city of Sassri and Naples, a city on the Italian mainland, were “arriving on site to search inside the sunken vessel,” it said.
Built by Italian shipbuilder Perini in 2008, the U.K.-registered Bayesian has an aluminum hull and can carry 12 guests and a crew of up to 10, according to online specialist yacht sites. Online sites list the luxury vessel for charter for up to 195,000 euros (about $215,000) a week, the AP reported.
The boat left the Sicilian port of Milazzo on Wednesday and was last tracked east of Palermo on Sunday evening, with a navigation status of “at anchor,” according to the vessel tracking app Vesselfinder.
Fabio La Bianca, 40, took a picture of the boat at around 10 p.m. local time Sunday shortly after he closed his bar in nearby Santa Flavia. “Absurd tragedy tonight. I am lost for words,” he said Monday on Facebook.
