ROME — Rescue teams and divers were searching Tuesday for six missing people, including a British tech magnate and a Morgan Stanley boss, after a luxury superyacht sank in a storm off Sicily.
The identity of those still missing emerged after an initial search of the 184-foot sailboat, named the Bayesian, was unsuccessful Monday. The British-flagged tourist vessel had 22 people aboard when it sank because of “a violent storm” off Sicily’s main city, Palermo, around 5 a.m. local time (11 p.m. ET) on Monday, the local coast guard said.
Fifteen people were rescued by a boat present in the immediate vicinity and then brought ashore by coast guard vessels, but six passengers, including American, British and Canadian citizens, remained missing, it said. They were believed to be trapped in the boat’s hull, some 164 feet underwater, posing a challenge to divers who returned Tuesday to the site off Porticello, near Palermo.
Salvatore Cocina, director of Sicily’s Civil Protection Agency, told NBC News that the missing include British tech magnate Mike Lynch and his daughter, Morgan Stanley International Chairman Jonathan Bloomer and his wife, as well as Clifford Chance lawyer Chris Morvillo and his wife.
Cocina did not specify the nationalities of the missing. He also did not identify Lynch’s daughter or the wives of Bloomer and Morvillo.
A spokesperson for Clifford Chance, where Morvillo works as a lawyer, confirmed to NBC News Tuesday that he and his wife Neda were among the missing.
Italy’s national fire department said that its divers were able to get inside the wreck during a late-night dive Monday, inspecting some cabins located under the bridge, but were having trouble navigating because of obstructions and narrow access gates.
Rescuers said that there might be bodies inside the cabins but that they had so far been unable to check through the ship’s portholes.
Divers were forced to work in 12-minute underwater search shifts due to the depth, while surface searches continued in the area of the shipwreck with a helicopter and a fire brigade boat, it added.
Mike Lynch, who was regularly described in U.K. media as “Britain’s Bill Gates,” was cleared of fraud charges in a blockbuster U.S. trial earlier this summer. Sources told CNBC on Monday that his wife, Angela Bacares, has been rescued. Italian news agency ANSA identified his daughter, missing alongside her father, as Hannah, 18.
Just days earlier, Lynch’s co-defendant, Stephen Chamberlain, died after being “fatally struck by a car” while out running Saturday, his lawyer Gary Lincenberg told NBC News in an emailed statement.