The salvage operation for the luxury yacht Bayesian, which sank off the coast of Sicily, Italy last summer, has been successfully completed.
Attention is being paid to whether the cause of the accident, which took the lives of seven people including Autonomy founder Mike Lynch, who was called the “British Bill Gates,” and his 18-year-old daughter Hannah, will be solved.
According to Italian daily Corriere della Sera on the 22nd (local time), Bayesian, which was raised to the surface the previous day, was moved to Termini Imerese Port in Palermo, northern Sicily, on the same day. Once the work of placing the hull on a special support is completed, a full-scale investigation into the cause of the accident will begin.
The 56m-long Bayean reportedly capsized in just 15 seconds in strong winds exceeding 130km/h and sank, but Italian investigators are investigating the possibility of a human disaster. Authorities are considering several possibilities, citing the fact that other nearby ships were floating on the sea without sinking despite the strong storm at the time of the accident. There is also interest in what information is contained in the hard drive reportedly stored in a waterproof safe inside the yacht.
CNN reported that the hard drive may contain “sensitive” information that foreign governments such as Russia and China would be interested in. Lynch, a British IT industry magnate, had relationships with American and British intelligence agencies through several companies, including the cybersecurity company Darktrace, which he founded.
Accident survivors testified that Lynch “did not trust cloud services” and carried data storage devices inside the yacht whenever he sailed. The Bayesian, owned by Lynch’s wife’s company, sank about 700 meters off the Porticello Port in Palermo, Sicily, on the morning of August 19th last year.
Of the 22 passengers on board (12 passengers and 10 crew members), only 15, including Lynch’s wife and a one-year-old baby, were rescued. The passengers had gathered to celebrate Lynch’s acquittal on fraud charges that he had inflated the value of Autonomy when it was sold to Hewlett-Packard (HP) in the United States for $11 billion 2011.
To celebrate his acquittal, Lynch invited those who had fought with him in court to a luxury yacht trip, but it ended up being a “death voyage.” The Bayesian was originally scheduled to be salvaged last month, but the salvage schedule was completely suspended on May 9th when one of the divers died while working underwater.
Accordingly, the Italian authorities reviewed safety issues and revised the plan to use unmanned diving equipment, delaying the salvage operation by about a month.