Bayesian superyacht sinking: Horror of those trapped in bedrooms described by ex-captain

The former captain of the Bayesian superyacht says he has spoken to all of the surviving crew to hear their account of the sinking.

Stephen Edwards said all the crew members who were on deck rescued as many passengers as they could but that heading down towards the flooded lower parts of the yacht “would have meant certain death”.

The former captain told The Telegraph: “They are not doing very well”

“The dominant feeling is still one of shock from the event. They are dealing with what happened, how it happened and how quickly it happened.”

Four of the victims of last month’s Bayesian yacht disaster died after oxygen ran out in an air bubble on the sunken vessel, it has been reported.

Autopsies over the past few days on four of those who died have revealed an absence of water in their lungs, suggesting they suffocated as the air became saturated with carbon dioxide, Italian publication La Repubblica said.

The outlet reported post-mortems showed four people died from “atypical drowning”, with “no water in their lungs, trachea and stomach”. There were no signs of external injuries.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) is making the “difficult decision” to pursue Mike Lynch’s estate for £4billion in the interests of shareholders despite the tech billionaire being killed along with his daughter on the Bayesian superyacht.

Antonio Neri, the former engineer turned chief executive at HPE, told the Financial Times: “Obviously my job as a representative of shareholders is to make the difficult decisions.

“These are difficult decisions. But in the end, we are making decisions in the best interest of shareholders.”

Mike Lynch had been celebrating his acquittal from criminal charges on the superyacht when it overturned in a freak storm.

But HPE intends to pursue damages around an earlier UK civil trial in 2022 which found in favor of HPE’s claim that Lynch and ex-CFO Sushovan Hussain had inflated the apparent value of Autonomy during the acquisition.

Three crew members including the yacht’s captain are under investigation, with plans being discussed to raise the yacht from the ocean bed to assist enquiries.

Among those killed were Mike Lynch and his 18-year-old daughter Hannah, who had been due to begin studying at Oxford University in September, the yacht’s chef and four other family friends and associates.

Remotely controlled underwater vehicles and cave divers are looking to raise the yacht.

Will answers to the sinking will rise to the surface with it?

Mike Lynch’s co-defendant Stephen Chamberlain died in hospital three days after being hit by a car on a country road, an inquest heard.

Mr Chamberlain, a former vice president of finance at Mike Lynch’s software firm Autonomy, had been out running at the time, his lawyer Gary Lincenberg said.

Coroner Caroline Jones told the inquest in Alconbury that his medical cause of death was recorded as “traumatic head injury”.

They cited initial examinations carried out on Saturday after the businessman’s body was recovered from the family yacht that sank off Sicily’s coast last month during a freak weather incident.

Initial results of examinations of Hannah Lynch’s body on Saturday were inconclusive, the source told the Reuters news agency.

The Bayesian, a 184-ft superyacht carrying 22 passengers and crew, was anchored off the port of Porticello, near Palermo, when it disappeared beneath the waves in a matter of minutes after a freak tornado struck.

“The ship sank because it took on water, from where investigators will have to say,” Mr Costantino told television news programme TG1.

He suggested that the sinking was down to a series of human errors.

The CEO said that had the crew shut all doors and hatches, turned on the engine, lifted the anchor, lowered the keel and turned the yacht to face the wind, they would have suffered “zero damage”.

He added that data showed it took 16 minutes from when the wind began for it to sink.

Cartoisio said the tragedy will be even more painful if the sinking was caused by “behaviours that were not aligned to the responsibilities that everyone needs to take in shipping”.

Darktrace shares are set to stop trading publicly at the end of September, after the company set a timetable for its blockbuster private equity takeover to be completed.

The private equity group Thoma Bravo struck an almost 5.31 billion dollar (£4.3 billion) deal to buy Darktrace in April.

It marks one of the biggest take-private deals for a London-listed company in recent years, and will see Darktrace leave the FTSE 100 on October 1.

Founded in 2013, Cambridge-based Darktrace is a cybersecurity firm best known for using artificial intelligence to scan for hacks and data leaks inside IT networks.

A prominent company in the UK tech landscape, it was among the firms represented at the AI Safety Summit at Bletchley Park in November, where world leaders and major tech firms met to discuss the potential threat of artificial intelligence.

The update comes after Poppy Gustafsson stepped down as chief executive earlier in September amid the takeover.

Ms Gustafsson, who co-founded the business in 2013, will be replaced as chief executive by Jill Popelka, the company said.

Ms Gustafsson helped to set up the Cambridge-based company in 2013 alongside Autonomy founder Mike Lynch.

Mr Lynch, and his daughter Hannah, were among seven people to die after the Bayesian superyacht sank off the coast of Sicily last month.

Professor Yoav Yair, Dean of the School of Sustainability at Reichman University in Israel, told the Mirror that storms dubbed ‘medicanes’ – Mediterranean hurricanes – could cause similar sinkings like the Bayesian superyacht.

He said: “It is not a matter of if this (the Bayesian disaster) will happen again, but rather it’s when and where.

“In the last couple of years we have seen medicanes – which are a new phenomena. These are hurricane-like storms that pack a lot of energy, and create flash flooding, torrential rains, lightning, hail and severe sustained winds. The 2023 “Daniel” medicane destroyed Libya and caused over 30,000 deaths there.

“The sea surface temperature has risen globally and in the Med as well, charging the atmosphere with increased fluxes of water vapor, which means a higher potential for massive storms.”