Monday, August 26, 2024-The captain of the Bayesian superyacht is being investigated for 'manslaughter and shipwreck' after the tragedy left seven de@d including British tech millionaire Mike Lynch and his daughter.
James Cutfield, 51, from New Zealand, is
being investigated for manslaughter and shipwreck, La Repubblica and
Corriere della Sera said.
Magistrates reportedly spoke to Cutfield on
Sunday for the second time in a week, questioning him for more than two hours.
Prosecutors may also investigate a crew
member who was on duty when the storm hit and survived the disaster, according
to reports.
The 184ft Bayesian was carrying 22
people when it capsized and sank last Monday within minutes of being hit by a
storm while anchored off northern Sicily.
Brit tech tycoon Mike Lynch and four others were found dead in the first cabin of the luxury yacht’s left side.
Mr Lynch's 18-year-old daughter, Hannah,
was found in the third cabin after it sank stern-first before rolling on to its
right on the seabed. The yacht’s chef also died.
Fifteen of the 22 on board, including Mr
Lynch’s wife Angela Bacares, 57, escaped on a life raft.
Prosecutors said the victims had
attempted to scramble to one side of the doomed £30million, 184ft vessel
in a desperate battle to reach air pockets after it went down in a storm off
Sicily.
Chief Prosecutor Ambrogio Cartosio said the
victims would have been asleep when the freak weather struck at
around 5 am local time on Monday last week, leaving them unable to escape.
Being placed
under investigation in Italy does not imply guilt - and
does not mean formal charges will necessarily follow.
Maritime law gives a captain full
responsibility for the ship and the crew, as well as the safety of all aboard.
In a press conference on Saturday, Mr
Cartosio said there may have been “behaviours that were not perfectly in order
with regard to the responsibility everybody had”.
He added: “There could be in fact the
question of homicide. But this is the beginning of the inquiry, we cannot
exclude anything at all.”
He said one line of inquiry was whether the crew attempted to raise the alarm with passengers before getting on the lifeboat and escaping.
He vowed to “discover how much they
(the crew) knew and to what extent all the people (passengers) were warned.”
He said: “We will establish each element’s
(crew) responsibility. For me, it is probable that offences were committed —
that it could be a case of manslaughter.”
He said Captain Cutfield had been
“extremely cooperative” during questioning and will be quizzed further.
Lead prosecutor Raffaele Cammarano said
Italy’s Air Force found the boat was sunk by a downburst which descended from a
thunderstorm.
He said there were forecasts of
strong winds and a storm alert but good visibility and no suggestion of
a tornado.
He added: “Given the conditions were
such, there wasn’t anything to suggest there could be an extreme situation.
“There are vessels that can monitor these events and one would have thought the captain had taken precautions.”
He said one person was on watch in the
cockpit at the time of the accident.
Bentivoglio Fiandra, chief of Palermo’s
fire brigade and part of the rescue, said the victims “were trying to hide
in the cabins on the left-hand side” where the last air pockets
remained.
Vincenzo Nardoni, inspector at the
Department of Fire Fighters’ Divers in Naples, said: “Inside it was a very
confusing place, with wardrobes and furniture whirling all around us, and lots
of mirrors reflecting back our lights at us.
“The bodies were all wedged in tight spots,
with furniture on top or beside them. They were all stuck there.”
Giovanni Costantino, CEO of The Italian
Sea Group, which manufactured Perini Navi shipyard vessel Bayesian, accused the
crew of failing to “close the doors and hatches” and insisted the boat should
have been “unsinkable”.
Mr Costantino recently told The Sun:
"Modern sailing ships, especially high-tech ones like the Perini, are
designed to be extremely safe and stable.
“Even in very critical conditions, if
procedures are followed, a sailing yacht like the Bayesian will return to an
upright position.
"If the ship takes on water, this stability is compromised ... What is certain is that the ship took on hundreds of thousands of litres of water.
Authorities now face a delicate task in
extracting the wreck from the depths of the sea - intact - so that it can be
properly probed.
Expert diver Bertrand Sciboz said it would
be a "very special operation".
He told BBC on Saturday: “They’ll
have to salvage the wreck intact to then send it back to authorities and police.
“They will need to salvage the boat intact
but I suppose they will have to take off the mast before.
“First, put the boat on its keel and
then take off the mast."
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