Who are the American citizens missing after the sinking of a boat in Sicily?
Six people are missing including two Americans after a superyacht sank during a sudden storm off the coast of Sicily, fifteen others have been saved.
Tragedy struck off the coast of Sicily when a superyacht with 22 onboard was caught in a sudden freak storm and sank sometime after 4 am on Monday. One body has been recovered and authorities are conducting a search and rescue mission in the location where the vessel was anchored to recover the six people still missing.
Divers spent Monday trying to reach the hull some 160 feet down resting on the seabed. The Bayesian, a British-flagged 180-ft luxury sailboat, was moored roughly half a mile from Porticello, a city about 15 miles from Palermo.
The exact cause of the ship’s sinking is yet to be determined but it is believed that it was struck by a waterspout. However, Salvatore Cocina of Sicily’s civil protection agency said simply to that the Bayesian was at “the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Who are the American citizens missing after the sinking of a boat in Sicily?
According Luciano Pischedda, the Italian Coast Guard official overseeing the rescue operations, among the dead and missing are Mike Lynch, a British tech mogul, , as well as two Americans, three other Brits and a dual Canadian Antiguan national.
Cocina informed that the body recovered belonged to the yacht’s cook. The Italian civil protection official also confirmed that Hannah Lynch, the tech magnate’s 18-year-old daughter, and Chris Morvillo, an American lawyer at Clifford Chance who defended Lynch in his recent acquittal in a US criminal fraud trail, were also among those missing.
Furthermore, authorities said that Jonathan Bloomer, chairman of Morgan Stanley International and insurance company Hiscox was one of the people unaccounted for. The BBC reports that Hiscox confirmed that Bloomer’s wife Judy Bloomer was also among the missing.
The Daily Mail reports that Chance’s wife, who owns her own luxury jewelry line under her maiden name Neda Nassiri, also hasn’t been seen since the Bayesian sank. The identity of the other individual has not been revealed yet.
Among the 15 rescued by another ship that was nearby when the violent storm hit was Lynch’s wife, Angela Bacares. As well, a one-year-old named Sophie and her mother Charlotte, who kept her daughter above the waves until they were able to get on a lifeboat. They were reunited with Sophie’s father, who had also been aboard the doomed vessel, at hospital where he was being treated for his injuries sustained.
When the Bayesian went down, it had a crew of 10 and 12 passengers aboard. According to Cocina the other nationalities aboard included people from France, Germany, Ireland, Myanmar, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Spain.
The superyacht, which was built in 2008 by the Italian firm Perini Navi, was singular for having one of the world’s tallest masts. The single mast measured over 240 feet tall.