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The huge ship, which is lying off the Italian Mediterranean island at a depth of around 50 meters, is to be brought to the surface by mid-June.
Image: dpa
The sinking of the superyacht off Sicily made headlines around the world last year. Now a 39-year-old man has died during the salvage work.
New drama surrounding the superyacht "Bayesian", which sank last summer: a diver has died during salvage work off the coast of Sicily. The 39-year-old man from the Netherlands could only be pulled out of the water dead after a dive, as the Italian news agency Ansa reported. The cause of death was initially unclear. It is suspected that he suffered an attack of weakness or that an oxygen cylinder was defective.
The salvage of the huge ship began last weekend. A floating crane belonging to a company from the Netherlands is also being used. The sinking off the Italian Mediterranean island made headlines around the world last summer. Seven people lost their lives.
The "Bayesian" lies about 50 meters deep on the seabed, about one kilometer from the coast. The maneuver is considered extremely complicated. The costs are estimated at several million euros.
The 56-metre yacht, which was declared "unsinkable", sank off the small port of Porticello on the north coast in mid-August - during a storm, within just a quarter of an hour. The fatalities were British software billionaire Mike Lynch, his 18-year-old daughter, two couples who were friends and the ship's cook. Apart from the chef, the entire crew managed to escape. A total of 15 crew members and guests survived.
The public prosecutor's office hopes that the salvage operation will shed light on how the accident could have happened. There is a lot of speculation about this, including links to the secret service milieu. The captain and two other crew members are under investigation. They are accused of ignoring storm warnings and only taking themselves to safety.
The "Bayesian", weighing 473 tons, was one of the largest sailing yachts in the world. Images from underwater cameras show that the ship is still lying quite intact on its right side on the seabed. Divers have already examined it several times in recent months.
The software entrepreneur Mike Lynch became a billionaire when he sold his company Autonomy to the tech group Hewlett Packard (HP). This led to years of litigation, which the Briton eventually won. According to media reports, he wanted to celebrate his success with family and friends on the Mediterranean. This came to a tragic end.
Lynch also had connections to various international secret services via another of his companies, the cyber security firm Darktrace. British newspapers in particular speculate that there are safes on board the ship containing two highly encrypted hard drives and secret papers.
09.05.2025, 19:23
