Mystery of how ‘unsinkable’ £30,000,000 superyacht crashed to the bottom of the sea

The £30,000,000 Bayesian superyacht was ‘like a beautiful hotel that was floating on water.’

The one-of-a-kind vessel was deemed ‘unsinkable’ by executives.

On August 19, the Bayesian had set sail on a celebratory voyage after its owner’s, Mike Lynch, acquittal following a lengthy fraud trial in the US.

But jovial celebrations turned to disaster in stormy waters off the coast of Sicily, Italy, when the yacht plunged to the bottom of the ocean in just 16 minutes.

Seven people died that night aboard the luxury boat, including Mr Lynch and his daughter, Hannah Lynch, while a nearby sailboat survived the storm largely unscathed.

Here, Metro takes a look at what exactly went wrong that night amid Swirling Sicilian gales.

Nothing but darkness and screaming

The Bayesian chugged into the cove off the coast of Poritcello at around 9pm on August 19, dropping its anchor about half a mile off the coast to begin celebrations half an hour later.

At midnight, the Italian Coast Guard issued a warning that a serious storm was expected to hit, in which winds could reach speeds of 46mph.

Experienced local fisherman who had planned to head out to sea that Sunday cancelled their plans, though the superyacht remained anchored through the storm.

Matteo Cannia, a 78-year-old fisherman, had been sat out on a bench till around midnight overlooking the Italian waters – it was too hot to sleep.

He told the BBC: ‘I heard the thunder and the wind and decided to go home.

‘As the storm grew, everyone woke up. Water was coming into my friend’s house.’

At 3am aboard the Bayesian, a young deckhand, Matthew Griffiths, woke the ship’s captain as the sea began to crash into the boat from all angles.

The ship started to drift at 3.51am, 80 meters one way and then the other, dragging its anchor along the seabed as winds reached nearly 70mph.

The Bayesian began to lean on its side, struggling to stay afloat in the crashing waves, with its lights blinkering before all but one cut out.

At 4:06, the boat’s GPS signal stopped, meaning it had sunk. It took just 16 minutes for the ‘unsinkable’, one-of-a-kind vessel to be engulfed by water.

A British woman, named Charlotte Golunksi, was thrown into the water with her one-year-old daughter, and it took all her strength to keep her and the baby afloat.

She said: ‘It was all black around me.

‘And the only things I could hear were the screams of others.’

She and child survived, along with 15 other passengers and crew members who scrambled to a lifeboat.

The other seven aboard went down with the sinking vessel.

Now, an investigation by the New York Times has explored the dangerous factors on the yacht which may have caused the tragedy.

The aluminum mast

A major feature of the Bayesian was the 237ft aluminum mast and rigging, towering above the boat.

Giovanni Costantino, chief executive of the Italian Sea Group, which owns Perini Navi, the company which made the Bayesian, denies it was a fault.

He told the New York Times: ‘The ship was an unsinkable ship. I say it, I repeat it.’

But the mast weighed an estimated 24 tonnes, which could have challenged the boat’s stability.

Tad Roberts, a naval architect with more than 40 years of experience, told the NYT: ‘When I first saw this, I couldn’t believe it. It made no sense to me.

‘We can look at it in hindsight and say they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. No, that’s not true.

‘This boat had definite shortcomings that kind of uniquely made it vulnerable to what happened.’

Design choices

Small details on the yacht may have contributed to the rapid sinking of the superyacht, experts said.

These include two tall glass doors onboard that could have quickly let water inside the vessel.

Air vents on the boat also could have sped up the sinking of the yacht, given they were nearby the waterline, experts said.

The storm

Another major factor was of course, the weather. Civil protection officials said they believe the ship was struck by a tornado over the water, known as a waterspout.

The Italian Airforce previously said the sinking was most likely caused by a downburst.

Downbursts are powerful winds that descend from a thunderstorm and spread out quickly once they hit the ground.

So, what happened?

At this point, there are multiple factors which could have contributed to the rapid sinking of the Bayesian, but it’s still being investigated.

Both Italian prosecutors and the British Marine Accident Investigation Branch are probing what happened to the superyacht.

The Bayesian is expected to be raised from the seabed costing at least £15 million in order to find more clarity on what led to the disaster.

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