Just before midday yesterday, the bells of the Church of Santa Maria del Lume rang out once again over the Sicilian fishing town of Porticello.
They had sounded for every one of the bodies discovered in the Bayesian wreck in recent days. This, though, was the saddest toll of all.
Hannah Lynch, just 18, was the youngest and most tragic victim of this immense disaster. She was also the last to be recovered from the hull of her father’s capsized superyacht, 150 feet beneath the surface and half a mile out to sea.
The body of Mike Lynch, the devoted Dad who had apparently gone looking for her in his final moments, had been recovered the day before. Only now could his poor widow Angela and surviving daughter Esme look towards some sort of closure, after a week of unimaginable pain.
Robert Hardman witnesses the recovery operation from the offshore sinking of the British yacht Bayesian on August 21, 2024
This undated photo provided by the Lynch family shows Hannah Lynch. Her body was recovered yesterday after the Bayesian sank off the coast of Sicily early on Monday morning
The investigation can now head off in a clinical and possibly prosecutorial direction. (Rescue personnel and divers operate in search for the missing)
Rescue personnel of the special unit of divers of the National Fire Brigade and divers of the Italian fire brigade preparing resuming inspections of the Bayesian
Italian divers onboard the boat, ready to inspect the sunken wreck of the superyacht Bayesian
A few minutes later, patrol boat VFR17 of the Italian fire brigade, the Vigili del Fuoco, came alongside, two divers accompanying the green bodybag on the back. All week, the brigade’s specialist cave-diving unit had been out there in their orange wetsuits combing the inside of the yacht.
As they carefully lifted Hannah ashore, they had the forlorn, respectful look of professionals whose grim task was now completed. But there was also something desperately poignant about their demeanour.
For with some of the other recoveries, it had been a struggle lifting the bodybags up off the transom and into the registration tent onshore. Some had needed ropes.
This one was much lighter and no trouble at all, an awful reminder of that youthful life lost, of the luminous talent who had just been celebrating last week’s A-level results. Oxford University beckoned. Clearly as bright as her parents, Hannah had – as a teacher revealed yesterday – previously scored 100 per cent in her English Literature GCSE.
Soon after the discovery, the family issued a statement thanking the rescue teams at a time of ‘unspeakable grief’, along with the sweetest photographs of Hannah with her father and dog.
They also released some of the heartbreaking tributes to her from close friends. ‘Growing up with her and being best friends has been the greatest privilege of my life,’ wrote Angelica Read, 17. ‘She had so much love for poetry and for the natural world, and I really believe she will live on in these things and in our hearts forever.’
Hannah and British tycoon Mike Lynch pictured together. They sadly died when their yacht sank
The investigation can now head off in a clinical and possibly prosecutorial direction, as the authorities in Italy and Britain establish what caused the 183ft superyacht to capsize and sink in a storm in the early hours of Monday morning. As more details have come to light this week, so the questions keep piling up: why did Bayesian go down at anchor when a smaller, older yacht nearby turned on the engines and survived? Why did all the regular crew escape when six passengers died, along with visiting chef Recaldo Thomas?
Why was the retractable keel partially lifted? Crucially, was a door in the hull compartment for the yacht’s tender (support boat) left open, as has been reported by the divers and others? That could have let in a catastrophic flood of water when the yacht was blown on its side by a waterspout.
Meanwhile, the boss of the yard which built the boat has insisted that Bayesian – formerly known as Salute – was ‘unsinkable’ and the victim of ‘human error’. The same claim was made about the Titanic in 1912. Nature has no time for such hubris.
Nor, I am sure, would Mike Lynch, whose grasp of probabilities, physics and maths has earned him glowing tributes from some of the finest brains on the planet, including the British Nobel prizewinner Sir Paul Nurse.
As more details have come to light this week, so the questions keep piling up. (Pictured, a member of the Italian Coast Guard dives into the water as part of rescue operations)
Mr Lynch adored his yacht and, even more, being surrounded by loved ones. After the conclusion in June of a 12-year legal battle which could have meant spending the rest of his days in a US jail, he wanted to celebrate with those who stuck with him through thick and thin (unlike the pusillanimous British government). That is why some of his legal team and inner circle were with him when he died.
This was not a business trip but a heartfelt thank you, amid the stunning islands off the coast of north Sicily
Bayesian might have had the tallest aluminium mast in the world, but she was also the epitome of understated elegance at sea. There were no gold taps or whirlpool baths or helipads. While sailing in the same waters myself this summer, I saw one vast, floating excresence of steel and tinted glass with an outdoor cinema and pool.
The Bayesian (pictured) overturned during a severe thunderstorm on Monday morning
The superyacht (pictured) was docked off the coast of Porticello, near Palermo, when it was hit by an over-sea tornado, known as a waterspout
Mike Lynch’s boat was designed along the lines of a traditional sloop. It just happened to be a very big one. Days would begin with a served breakfast (no buffet) beneath the awning on the forward deck.
Former guests have told me of the well-run informality on board. The Lynches did not want to be addressed as ‘Sir’ or ‘Madam’ by the crew of nine, led by Kiwi skipper James Cutfield, 51. It included long-serving British engineer Tim Parker-Eaton, and a team of younger deck hands and stewards. Lunches would be simple – fish, perhaps, with salads – while dinner might run to two or three courses and wide-ranging conversations about pretty much anything. There might be a glass of champagne before dinner and excellent wine with it but this was no party boat.
As so many of his friends have testified to me, Mr Lynch was nothing like the shy number-cruncher depicted in some profiles. Rather, he was a lively, engaging host with a genuine interest in people, one who enjoyed talking to friends and guests of all ages.
A fire service helicopter flies in the air above Porticello on Wednesday as the search operation takes place
He loved opera, music (he played the saxophone) and art. Trips ashore would not be to glitzy boutiques or casinos but to some interesting landmark or a gallery or a pretty village. There would be a lot of stops for swimming and for fun and games with the ‘toys’ kept in a locker under the stern.
These included windsurfers, a sailing dinghy and an inflatable ‘banana boat’ for towing at speed behind the ship’s tender. It all sounds closer to Swallows And Amazons than Succession.
And then, with the sudden (though not unexpected) arrival of that short, torrential maelstrom on Monday morning, this idyll turned to a nightmare.
There are theories galore doing the rounds in yachting circles this weekend, even if much of it is informed speculation. Different state agencies have given conflicting briefings to different outlets.
At one point, I counted more than half a dozen different uniformed units on the same jetty – including both police forces (the Polizia and the Carabinieri), the Coast Guard, the Fire Brigade, the Guardia di Finanza (financial law enforcement) and the Red Cross. But why no sign of the Italian Navy? With no clear chain of command or information, rumours have been rife.
They have been compounded by the fact that this was the ground-breaking yacht of a rich and brilliant man who had only just won a Herculean victory over an American corporate giant. As if the deaths of Mr Lynch, his daughter and five others were not shocking enough, they came on the same day as the death of his former business colleague and co-defendant.
Tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch was on board the Bayesian (pictured at his renovated mill at his Suffolk farm in 2021)
Stephen Chamberlain had also been acquitted on all charges of fraud dating to the sale of Mr Lynch’s company, Autonomy, to Hewlett-Packard, in 2011. Last Saturday, he was out running when he was involved in what police called a ‘tragic collision’ with a car. The driver remained at the scene and assisted the police with their inquiries.
Inevitably, there are those unable to accept that this was a grotesque coincidence.
However, as so many aspects of this tragedy have become more baffling, others have become very much clearer. Chief among them is the loss to this country of a patriotic genius whose extraordinary talents were about to deliver new breakthoughs. For, make no mistake, words such as ‘tycoon’ and ‘entrepreneur’ do not begin to describe Mike Lynch.
We are not talking about some run-of-the-mill hedge-funder or private equity buccaneer whose wealth derived from creaming off a percentage on a deal.
Nor was this Ilford-raised son of an Irish fireman born with a silver spoon. Rather, he was the innovator who could not stop coming up with new ideas so complex that much of the business world found it hard to keep up.
And he made a demonstrable contribution to the scurity of this country as Jonathan Evans, the former director of MI5 (and now Lord Evans), recalls.
‘When we were looking at the new data challenges facing this country but didn’t know how to do it, Mike and the team from Autonomy worked with us. And it was extremely important work,’ he tells me.
Lord Evans recalls the day when he asked Mike Lynch to address the spooks at MI5. ‘Everyone was gripped. You had the tech guys almost worshipping at his feet,’ he says fondly.
‘Because Mike understood the science of getting meaning out of data and how to use data to safeguard the country. Like all good entrepreneurs, he enjoyed giving his people new problems to solve. But he was also a great patriot.’
And Mr Lynch also went on to employ many former members of the intelligence community in the subsequent businesses which he set up after the sale of Autonomy.
‘He believed that Britain needed to grow technically innovative companies in the defence and security space, just like America has done,’ says Lord Evans, who himself became an adviser to Mr Lynch’s cybersecurity creation, Darktrace.
It is notable that whereas other owners of superyachts often register them in tax havens for tax purposes, Mike Lynch registered Bayesian as a British yacht flying the British flag and named her after the theorem of the 18th Century English mathematician, Thomas Bayes.
He was as proud of receiving his OBE, in 2006, as he was of being appointed one of the Queen’s Deputy Lieutenants of his beloved home county of Suffolk. There, he gave much of his time (and money) to local causes and his rare breeds of cattle. He was also devoted to Christ’s College, Cambridge. The college flag was at half-mast this week.
Not that the British establishment did much to help Mike Lynch when corporate America sought revenge after Hewlett-Packard’s disastrous purchase of Autonomy. The 2011 deal had been signed off by the board of directors, not just by Mr Lynch.
As he argued in court, the problem was that HP did not understand the complex data analytics it was buying.
In its desperate quest to reinvent itself as a leader in cutting edge digital technology, this elderly US manufacturer of laptops and ink printers had lost billions through its own ineptitude. In 2015, Britain’s Serious Fraud Office said there was no case to answer. But America spent years fighting for Mr Lynch’s extradition, using a one-way treaty signed by Tony Blair in 2003.
As the British government stood idly by, Home Secretary Priti Patel approved his extradition in 2022 and, after a year under house arrest, he went on trial in March. Given the nativist, political bias in previous cases of this sort, the odds of him walking free were minuscule.
Yet, rather than enter a plea bargain, whereby he would plead guilty, serve a few years and then go home, Mr Lynch risked all by pleading not guilty.
‘He was phenomenally brave, especially given that he understood probabilities better than anyone,’ says the Tory MP, Sir David Davis, who helped lead the campaign against Mr Lynch’s extradition.
‘He wasn’t a gambler – he kept cattle, not racehorses. And the odds of acquittal were less than one per cent. As he said to me afterwards: ‘We have to stop this extradition treaty’.’
Whenever Mike Lynch had a new idea, he would act on it. He had already invited Sir David to lunch to devise a strategy. The date had been fixed for this Thursday. Now, the MP for Goole and Pocklington, is determined to push for a change in the law in memory of his friend.
In doing so, he will have the full support of one of Britain’s most illustrious scientists. ‘The way Mike was treated by the last government was a national disgrace. We were pathetic,’ says Sir Paul Nurse, Nobel Prize-winner, former president of the Royal Society and chief executive of the Francis Crick Institute FCI.
‘He was a staunch defender of science as a driver of societal good and a generous philanthropist. Mike Lynch was a great family man. But we have all experienced a great loss.’ We have indeed.
