UK tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch among missing in Sicily yacht sinking

The British tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch is missing after a superyacht sank off the coast of Sicily during a violent storm.

The British-flagged Bayesian, a 56-metre sailboat, was carrying 22 people and anchored just off shore near the port of Porticello when it was hit by a tornado in the early hours, the Italian coastguard said in a statement.

One man, understood to be the vessel’s chef, was confirmed dead and six others, including Lynch and his 18-year-old daughter, Hannah, remained unaccounted for on Monday evening. The coastguard said the missing had British, American and Canadian nationalities.

Fifteen people were rescued, including Lynch’s wife, Angela Bacares, who owned the boat, and a one-year-old girl who was saved by her mother.

A spokesperson for Lynch declined to comment.

A spokesperson for the UK Foreign Office said: “We are providing consular support to a number of British nationals and their families following an incident in Sicily, and are in contact with the local authorities.”

Lynch co-founded Autonomy, a software firm that became one of the shining lights of the UK tech scene, in the mid-90s.

Once described as Britain’s Bill Gates, Lynch spent much of the last decade in court defending his name against allegations of fraud related to the sale of Autonomy to the US tech company Hewlett-Packard for $11bn.

The 59-year-old was acquitted by a jury in San Francisco in June, after he had spent more than a year living in effect under house arrest.

Upon his acquittal, Lynch told reporters: “I am looking forward to returning to the UK and getting back to what I love most: my family and innovating in my field.”

In a separate development on Monday, Lynch’s co-defendant at that trial, Stephen Chamberlain, died after being hit by a car while out running in Cambridgeshire.

Chamberlain, the former vice-president of finance at Autonomy, was hit on Saturday morning and had been placed on life support, Reuters reported.

In a statement Chamberlain’s lawyer, Gary Lincenberg, said he had died after being “fatally struck” by a car while out running.

Lincenberg added: “He was a courageous man with unparalleled integrity, and we deeply miss him. He fought successfully to clear his good name, which lives on through his wonderful family.”

Lynch was awarded an OBE for services to enterprise in 2006, and appointed in 2011 to the science and technology council of the then prime minister, David Cameron. He was elected as a fellow to the Royal Academy of Engineering in 2008 and the Royal Society in 2014.

The Italian coastguard said: “This morning at about 5am, following a violent storm, a 56-metre yacht called Bayesian flying the British flag sank near Porticello.”

The boat had a crew of 10 people and 12 passengers, it added.

Rescue divers are trying to reach the hull, which sank to approximately 49 metres. The public prosecutor’s office in Termini Imerese was investigating the incident.

Eight of those rescued, including the one-year-old, were transferred to hospitals and were all in a stable condition.

Domenico Cipolla, a chief physician at the Di Cristina hospital in Palermo where the one-year-old girl and her mother were admitted, said: “The baby is doing well. The mother is also in good condition, albeit with some minor abrasions. The father will also be discharged from the hospital soon.

“They have said that most of them were colleagues who worked for Lynch. They are deeply traumatised. As time passes, they realise more and more that this morning they lost many friends.”

The mother of the one-year-old child, Charlotte Golunski, 36, reportedly said she kept her daughter afloat by keeping her arms outstretched upwards to prevent her from drowning.

“It was all dark,” she said, according to Italian media. “In the water, I couldn’t keep my eyes open. I was screaming for help, but all I could hear around me were the screams of others.”

She told Italian media that the passengers – all colleagues of Lynch’s – had travelled to the Aeolian Islands, Milazzo and Cefalù.

The coastguard said the yacht was built by the Italian shipbuilder Perini in 2008. The luxury vessel had an aluminium hull, could reach a maximum speed of 15 knots and could carry 12 guests and a crew of up to 10, according to online specialist yacht sites.

The boat left the Sicilian port of Milazzo on 14 August and was last tracked east of Palermo on Sunday evening, with a navigation status of “at anchor”, according to the tracking app VesselFinder.

Reports in the local media said a waterspout had hit the vessel. A waterspout, which roughly resembles a mini-tornado, is a column that descends from a cloud to form a rotating mixture of wind and water over a body of water.

Some fishers reported spotting a small tornado off the coast at about 3.55am. Shortly after, they witnessed a distress flare allegedly launched from the vessel. The fishers approached but recounted seeing only “scattered remains of the sailboat floating in the water”.

Storms and heavy rainfall have swept through Italy in recent days, with floods and landslides causing severe damage in the north of the country after weeks of scorching heat.

The captain of a nearby boat said that when the winds surged, he had turned the engine on to keep control of his vessel and avoid a collision with the Bayesian, which had been anchored alongside him.

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

He said his crew then found some of the survivors on a life raft – including three who were seriously injured, and a baby girl and her mother – and took them onboard before the coastguard picked them up.