UK tycoon's body found in sunken yacht, one woman still missing

The body of UK tech tycoon Mike Lynch was recovered Thursday from his sunken yacht off Sicily, as the search continued for the last of the six people missing -- his teenage daughter.

Specialist divers were still looking for a missing woman, a coastguard official told AFP, with a source close to the investigation having earlier indicated Lynch's 18-year-old daughter Hannah had yet to be found.

On Wednesday they pulled up four bodies from the wreck of the "Bayesian", while another was brought on land in Porticello, on the north shore of the Italian island near Palermo, Thursday morning.

The latest grim discovery brings the death toll to six, after the body of a man believed to be the yacht's chef was found shortly after the ship went down in a storm before dawn on Monday.

The 56-meter (185 feet) British-flagged sailing boat had been anchored some 700 meters off Porticello when it was struck by a waterspout -- akin to a mini-tornado.

It sank within minutes.

Fifteen people were rescued, including Lynch's wife, but the businessman and his daughter were among six people reported missing.

Unimaginable grief

The passengers were guests of 59-year-old Lynch -- a celebrated technology entrepreneur and investor sometimes referred to as the UK's answer to Bill Gates -- celebrating his recent acquittal in a massive US fraud case.

Lynch's lawyer Christopher Morvillo and his wife Neda, and Jonathan Bloomer, the chair of Morgan Stanley International, and his wife Judy, were also among the missing.

"This is an unimaginable grief to shoulder," the Bloomer family said in a statement Thursday.

Jonathan and Judy "were incredible people and an inspiration to many, but first and foremost they were focused on and loved their family and spending time with their new grandchildren", it said.

"Together for five decades, our only comfort is that they are still together now."

Emergency workers brought a hyperbaric chamber to the quayside Thursday, and could be seen performing a test run.

The chambers are used to treat or prevent decompression sickness in divers, commonly known as the bends.

"I would think the hyperbaric chamber has been brought in as a precaution" as the divers searching the yacht are descending to a great depth, Matthew Schanck from the Maritime Search and Rescue Council, told AFP.

Errors

Many questions remain about why the yacht sank, and on Thursday the head of the company which built the boat said the tragedy could have been avoided.

"Everything that was done reveals a very long summation of errors," said Giovanni Costantino, head of the Italian Sea Group, which includes the Perini Navi company that built "Bayesian" in 2008.

He told Italy's Corriere della Sera newspaper that bad weather was forecast and all the passengers should have been gathered at a pre-arranged assembly point, with all the doors and hatches closed.

Security camera footage of the ship from the shore showed the lights on its mast going out, which Costantino said indicated a short circuit, meaning that the ship had already taken on water.

"A Perini ship resisted Hurricane Katrina, a category 5 (hurricane). Does it seem to you that it can't resist a tornado from here?" he told the newspaper.

Trapped like mice

Costantino said it was "good practice when the ship is at anchor to have a guard on the bridge, and if there was one he could not have failed to see the storm coming".

"Instead it took on water with the guests still in the cabin. They ended up in a trap, those poor people ended up like mice in a trap," he said.

The "Bayesian" boasted a 75-meter mast, the tallest aluminium sailing mast in the world, according to the Charter World website.

It was reportedly owned by Lynch's family.

Lynch was acquitted on all charges in a San Francisco court in June after he was accused of analuminum $11 billion fraud linked to the sale of his software firm Autonomy to Hewlett-Packard.

A co-defendant, former Autonomy executive Stephen Chamberlain, died after being hit by a car on Saturday in England.

Italian authorities have opened a probe into the sinking, while the UK's marine accident investigation branch sent four inspectors to Palermo.