Rescuers have recovered the last body from the sunken Bayesian superyacht. The body belonged to 18-year-old Hannah Lynch, the daughter of British billionaire Mike Lynch, Italian newspaper Giornale Di Sicilia reported. Divers found Hanna’s remains on Friday morning near the Yacht’s wreckage.
Her father’s body was found on Thursday afternoon, bringing the total number of confirmed deaths from the sinking to seven. The Italian Coastguard announced on Friday that they had located the sixth and final missing person on the sunken Bayesian. Vincenzo Zagarola of the Italian Coastguard said that the search for Hannah had been neither “easy nor quick,” comparing the submerged yacht to an “18-story building filled with water.”
Grim Discovery
Hannah’s body was pulled out of the waters on Friday morning, bringing an end to a grueling rescue mission that lasted more than 84 hours. Hannah was also the youngest of the seven victims of the superyacht.
The body of Recaldo Thomas, a Canadian-Antiguan national who worked as a chef on the superyacht, was recovered at the site of the sinking on Monday.
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Gareth Williams, a friend of the chef, told the BBC: “I can talk for everyone that knew him when I say he was a well-loved, kind human being with a calm spirit.”
The others identified among the recovered bodies include New York City attorney Christopher Morvillo and his wife Neda, along with Morgan Stanley executive Jonathan Bloomer and his wife Judy, according to The Guardian, which cited reports from Italian media and divers.
Lynch’s wife, Angela Bacares, and 14 others, including a 1-year-old child, were able to escape the ship before it capsized.
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Lynch had invited the group on his family’s yacht to celebrate his recent acquittal in a major U.S. fraud trial. Among his guests were lawyers from the firm that defended him, along with friends and supporters who stood by him during the legal ordeal.
Ending in Tragedy
The search for the sixth and final missing person continued on Thursday, with authorities committed to finding the missing teenager by day’s end. “We are still working on it,” Giuseppe Petrone, the national director of Italy’s firefighting department divers, told The Guardian. “We should be able to recover the sixth body today.”
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Divers spent the last four days searching within the wreckage of the sunken yacht, but their task posed major challenges due to the ship’s depth—around 160 feet underwater.
Given this depth, divers could remain submerged for 12 minutes at a stretch.
It was earlier revealed that the captain of the superyacht, New Zealander James Cutfield, was “questioned for more than two hours” by Italian prosecutors last night.
The “highly respected” seafarer was interrogated by the Termini Imerese Public Prosecutor’s Office as part of their investigation into the incident. It is expected that other passengers and crew members will also be interviewed as part of the inquiry.
Speaking to Italian journalists from the hospital the morning after the incident, Cutfield said, “We didn’t see it coming.”
The investigation will examine whether the crew had left hatches open, potentially causing the boat to sink within minutes.
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The yacht was carrying 10 crew members and 12 passengers when it was struck by tornado-strength winds during a violent thunderstorm at 5 a.m. on Monday, August 19.
The impact was so powerful that the vessel sank beneath the waves, vanishing completely in “just 60 seconds,” leaving those on board in a desperate race for survival.
While 15 people managed to reach safety, including a British mother who bravely kept her baby daughter afloat in the pitch-dark waters, seven people remained unaccounted for.
