Tech Titan Just Cleared of Fraud Is Missing After Luxury Superyacht Hit by Tornado

British tech mogul Mike Lynch and his daughter are among six people missing after a majestic luxury superyacht was sunk by a tornado off the coast of Sicily early Monday.

Two Americans and two other Brits also remain unaccounted for after the 184-foot sailing vessel Bayesian sank to the depths around 5 a.m. just off the coast of Palermo. Fifteen passengers and crew—including a 1-year-old girl—were rescued, according to local media reports, while the body of one man has been recovered.

Lynch, 59, disappeared in the incident but his wife, Angela Bacares, has been rescued. She told La Repubblica that she sustained abrasions to her feet during the chaos and was now unable to walk.

The Daily Mail reported that Lynch’s 18-year-old daughter, Hannah, remained unaccounted for by early Monday evening, as well as at least one of the elder Lynch’s attorneys. It’s unclear if his second daughter was on board or not.

In June, a San Francisco jury found Lynch not guilty on 15 fraud charges brought over the sale of his Autonomy company to Hewlett-Packard for $11 billion in 2011.

Once described in the U.K. as Britain’s Bill Gates, Lynch thanked jurors at the end of his decade-long legal battle to clear his name. “I am looking forward to returning to the U.K. and getting back to what I love most: my family and innovating in my field,” he said after his acquittal.

A lawyer aboard the Bayesian’s ill fated trip was the 36-year-old Ayla Ronald, the The Telegraph reported. Her father, Lin Ronald, told the paper that the trip was to celebrate Lynch’s acquittal.

The reality that those missing are likely dead began setting in for the tragedy’s survivors by Monday afternoon, Italian officials said.

“We have given the survivors this information, but they are talking and crying all the time because they have realized that there is little hope of finding their friends alive,” the doctor Domenico Cipolla told Reuters from a hospital housing victims.

Bayesian was built by the Perini Navi shipyard in Italy in 2008 and refitted in 2020. The vessel boasted the tallest aluminum mast in the world, reaching over 240 feet, according to Boat International. The nautical news site reported that the iconic vessel was one of the 50 largest sailing yachts on Earth.

Divers reached the wreck of the British-flagged yacht over 160 feet below the surface. They found the body of a man alongside the vessel and more bodies were visible through the ship’s portholes, according to the Corriere della Sera newspaper. The man whose remains were recovered was the ship’s chef, La Repubblica reports, citing local fire officials. The Mail reported that the worker is “believed” to be a Canadian national.

The 1-year-old English girl who survived the disaster was taken to a hospital but was unscathed.

“I held her afloat with all my strength, my arms stretched upwards to keep her from drowning. It was all dark,” her mother, identified as Charlotte Golunski, told La Repubblica. “In the water I couldn’t keep my eyes open. I screamed for help but all I could hear around me was the screams of others.”

Golunski required stitches to an injury on her chest, while her husband also reportedly suffered minor injuries.

The passengers on board the boat were mainly from the U.K., though others hailed from Sri Lanka, New Zealand, and Ireland, according to the ANSA news agency. Some witnesses told the agency the ship was anchored in front of the port of Porticello when the tornado hit.

Karsten Borner, the captain of another boat in the area when the storm hit, said he’d fired up his vessel’s engine in order to keep control and avoid hitting the Bayesian.

“We managed to keep the ship in position and after the storm was over, we noticed that the ship behind us was gone,” he said, Reuters reported. The other vessel “went flat on the water, and then down,” he added.

Borner said his crew then found several survivors on a life raft, three of whom were seriously hurt. They were helped onto his vessel before the coast guard arrived to collect them.

The Bayesian is owned by a company called Revtom Limited, according to shipspotting.com. Bacares, Lynch’s wife, is the only shareholder in the business, according to Reuters.

Lynch’s Ph.D. at Cambridge University and the software with which he amassed his fortune were both based on Bayesian theory, according to the news agency.

“A beautiful boat where there had been a party. A normal holiday spent happily at sea turned into a tragedy,” one witness told ANSA.

The local BAIA Santa Nicolicchia restaurant shared on Facebook a picture purportedly showing the Bayesian at around 10 p.m. on Sunday night. The account also posted security camera footage from the early hours showing violent winds causing damage outside the restaurant.

Italy’s fire and rescue service separately shared footage of the recovery operation with helicopters and boats operating in the area of the sinking.

“I was at home when the tornado hit,” local fisherman Pietro Asciutto told Ansa. “I immediately closed all the windows. Then I saw the boat, it had only one mast, it was very large. I saw it sink suddenly.”

One witness—the captain of a trawler—said he was about to go out on a fishing trip in the early hours but stayed in the harbor after seeing lightning over the water.

“At about 4:15 a.m. we saw a flare in the sea,” Fabio Cefalù said, according to the BBC. “We waited for this waterspout to pass.”

A tornadic waterspout is a tornado that either forms over water or moves from land to water, according to the NOAA’s National Ocean Service.

By the time he got out to sea, Cefalù said, all he found were cushions and other flotsam from the deck of the sunken vessel.