Nearly Two Years On, Expert Analysis Points to Human Error as the Primary Cause of the Sinking That Killed Seven.
Nearly two years after the Bayesian sank off the coast of Sicily on 19 August 2024, killing seven people including British tech magnate Mike Lynch, the expert report commissioned by Italian prosecutors has reached a conclusion that shifts the weight of responsibility decisively away from nature and toward the people on board.
The weather assessment commissioned by the Termini Imerese prosecutor’s office, anticipated by Repubblica, concludes that the storm that struck the superyacht off Porticello was not of the intensity required to make the sinking inevitable. In the words of the experts, at around 4am there was “little more than a weather squall, a sudden increase in wind speed that precedes storms and downpours.” The event was manageable. It was not managed.
The alibi of the perfect storm has fallen. The weight of responsibility shifts to the decisions taken on board in the ten minutes that preceded the disaster.
What the Investigation Has Found
After one year and eight months of investigation, the consolidated thesis is that the causes of the sinking were primarily the consequence of underestimation and crew errors. Three people are under investigation for culpable shipwreck and multiple manslaughter: captain James Cutfield, engineer officer Tim Parker Eaton, and the sailor on watch that night, Matthew Griffiths.
The data recovered from the wreck has been crucial. Hard drives from the control bridge and the engine room were recovered by divers and restored by a German company. Analysis of those drives has established that the Bayesian did not have its bow facing into the wind when it was struck by gusts of up to 100 knots. The weather squall hit the vessel broadside.
Experts have also been examining whether the crew’s emergency response times were adequate and whether standard safety procedures were followed. Analysis has focused on the watertight doors that should have kept certain compartments dry to maintain the vessel’s buoyancy, and simulations have been run to establish which water entry points caused the fatal flooding.
The Wreck and What Comes Next
The Bayesian was raised from the seabed a year ago and is currently under judicial seizure at the port of Termini Imerese. The new chief prosecutor Angelo Cavallo has scheduled an inspection of the wreck in mid-May, accompanied by his deputy, the expert panel and coast guard investigators, to examine the hull directly and assess the condition of the watertight compartments. The goal is to have the final expert report completed by 19 August, the second anniversary of the sinking. Only after that report is delivered can prosecutors conclude their investigation and determine the formal positions of those under investigation.
The British Report and the Structural Question
The Italian investigation does not yet tell the complete story. The UK’s Marine Accident Investigation Branch published an earlier report that pointed to what it described as a significant structural vulnerability in the Bayesian caused by the exceptional height of its 75-metre mast. The new Italian chief prosecutor is still awaiting the results of the separate expert analysis into the dynamics of the sinking itself, which will address whether the vessel’s design contributed to how quickly it went down once flooding began.
The two lines of inquiry are not mutually exclusive. Human error in failing to face the bow into the wind, combined with a potential structural vulnerability in an unusually tall-masted vessel, may together explain how a manageable squall became a catastrophe in under fifteen minutes.
The seven people who died that night were Lynch, his daughter Hannah, the ship’s cook Recaldo Thomas, and four others. The final expert report is expected by the second anniversary of their deaths. The trial, when it comes, will be one of the most closely watched maritime cases in Italian legal history.
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