Why did the Bayesian cruise ship sink in 16 minutes?

Until midnight last Sunday, Matteo Cannia was sitting on a bench overlooking the sea at Porticello. It was too hot to sleep.

The 78-year-old, a fisherman since he was 10, saw the first lightning strikes. “I heard the thunder and the wind and decided to go home,” he told me.

“As the storm grew, everyone woke up. Water was pouring into my friend’s house.”

At around 4:15 local time, Fabio Cefalù – a fisherman who had planned to set sail on a stormy Monday morning but, like others, decided not to – suddenly saw a fire break out.

He changed his mind and set out to sea to find out what was going on – but found only floating mattresses and wooden planks.

A luxury superyacht named Bayesian, moored just a few hundred metres away, sank.

It all happened in one 16 Minute Disaster WindowChaos and misery have thrust a peaceful Sicilian fishing port into the centre of world news.

All but seven of the Bayesian’s 22 passengers struggled to get into life rafts as the cruise ship began to capsize. The others never made it out.

Charlotte Golunski, a British woman, was thrown into the water with her one-year-old daughter, Sophie. She said she had to use all her strength to hold her child in the air to stop her from drowning. “It was black all around me,” she said, “and the only thing I could hear was other people screaming.”

She, her child and her husband, James, were among those rescued by a nearby sailing ship captain. Trapped inside the sinking Bayesian boat was her colleague Mike Lynch – one of the UK’s leading technology entrepreneurs, dubbed the “Britain’s Bill Gates”.

Mr. Lynch gathered family, friends and colleagues for an ideal vacation aboard his luxury yacht: a 56-meter (184-foot) luxury sailing yacht that has won design awards and features the world’s tallest aluminum mast.

In June, he was acquitted after a lengthy trial in the United States on charges of fraudulently inflating the value of his company Autonomy before it was sold to Hewlett Packard in 2011. The trip was planned as a free-for-all celebration to mark his recovery in public opinion.

Three days after the yacht sank, his body was recovered from the wreckage by divers.

A day later, the body of his 18-year-old daughter Hannah, who was due to start studying at Oxford University next month, was found.

Among the others killed were Morgan Stanley investment bank chairman Jonathan Bloomer and his wife Judy; lawyer Chris Morvillo and Mr Lynch’s wife Neda; and yacht chef Recaldo Thomas. Mr Lynch’s wife, Angela Bacares, survived.

The family released a statement speaking of their “unspeakable grief”, adding that they were “deeply saddened and shocked”.

Experts were amazed to see the superyacht sink so quickly while smaller vessels nearby survived the storm without damage.

In one press conference this weekend – in the first public statement from officials since the disaster – local prosecutors said they had begun an investigation into charges of manslaughter and shipwreck by negligence.

The region’s state prosecutor Ambrogio Cartosio told reporters that while the investigation was still at a very early stage and no one in particular was being investigated, there were “many possibilities of culpability. It could be just the captain. It could be the entire crew… we absolutely do not rule out any possibility”.

A small team of British maritime investigators was also sent to Sicily to work with their Italian counterparts.

Prosecutors said they now believe that a downburst is a weather phenomenon attacked the ship: a local gale that arose from a thunderstorm and spread unpredictably.

That contrasts with previous reports that identified the cause as water tapor small tornado at sea.

Regardless, it’s clear that severe weather played a major role.

Much of the investigation team’s focus is of course on the actions of the captain, James Cutfield, 51, from New Zealand. He survived, along with eight of his crew, and is being questioned.

“We didn’t see it coming,” he told Italian media, referring to the storm, in his only public comments to date.

The problem was: so many others had done so. Strong winds and rain were forecast, after days of scorching heat. The head of the company that built Bayesian, Giovanni Costantino, told me he believed there had been a series of errors on board.

“At the back of the boat, there was probably a hatch that opened,” he said, “but there could also have been a side entrance for water to get inside.

“Before a storm, the captain must close all the doors, weigh anchor, start the engine, head into the wind and lower the keel.”

The keel is the large fin-like part of the boat that protrudes from the bottom of the boat.

“That will help stabilize the ship, they can weather the storm and continue their journey comfortably,” he said.

Instead, rescuers found the Bayesian wreck 50 meters underwater. Its nearly 10-meter-long keel was raised..

If deployed, it could help counteract the force of the wind hitting the Bayesian’s 75-metre-high aluminium mast and keep the ship stable. But without it, experts told La Repubblica newspaper that gusts of 100 kilometres per hour (62mph) would be enough to capsize the ship – and Monday’s storm far exceeded that.

“The Bayesian is a model for many other boats because of its extreme stability and performance,” said Costantino. “There is absolutely no problem with it. If it doesn’t get water in it, it won’t sink.”

He told me there were 16 minutes between the ship losing power at 03:56 – suggesting water had flooded areas with electrical circuits – and the GPS signal being lost, indicating the time the ship sank.

That time period, along with any measures taken to mitigate the severe weather, will be closely scrutinized by investigators, especially if they find the ship’s black box data recorders.

Rino Casilli, one of Sicily’s leading ship surveyors, also believes the flaws could have left the yacht vulnerable to severe weather.

“There should have been two crew members on duty overnight, because of the storm warning,” he told me as he took me out to his boat – about a third the size of the Bayesian. “And it should have been anchored in the harbor, not out at sea.”

It is not yet known how many people were on duty that night, if any.

From his sailboat we had a rare opportunity to approach the site where the Bayesian sank.

Around us, an Italian police boat patrolled, warning us to turn back. Suddenly, there was a flurry of activity among the divers, as other rescue boats arrived.

We didn’t know it at the time – but they just found more bodies.

It was an incredibly challenging operation for the rescue teams to extract those trapped in the wreck. At a depth of 50 metres, each diver was allowed 10 minutes before surfacing for their own safety – a total of 120 dives. They were assisted by remotely operated vehicles that could operate on the seabed for much longer periods.

Passengers trapped inside the ship as it sank took refuge in cabins on the port side of the ship, where air bubbles eventually formed, rescuers said at a press conference this weekend.

Five bodies have been found. They said the body was in the first cabin on the left, while the last body – confirmed to be Hannah Lynch – was in the third cabin on the left.

Access for rescue teams is extremely difficult because the yacht is still intact but the furniture inside hinders entry.

The coastguard compared it to “an 18-story building full of water”. As Ms Lynch’s body was brought ashore, lifeguards at the port applauded their colleagues.

All seven dead people have been taken to the morgue for autopsies.

Rescuers will now need to decide whether – and how – to salvage the wreckage, which will undoubtedly provide vital clues about what happened. But bringing the Bayesian to the surface could take six to eight weeks and cost €15m (£12.7m) by some estimates.

While the divers’ painstaking work in searching for the dead is over, investigators’ agonizing hunt for answers is just beginning.

They and the survivors were holed up in a hotel near Porticello, which was strictly off-limits to journalists. Security guards quickly asked us to leave.

Solving the mystery of what happened with the Bayesian will be crucial not only to helping the victims’ loved ones gain some closure, but also to helping the maritime industry come to a conclusion.

James Cutfield, the captain’s brother, said he was a “respected” sailor who had worked on the ship all his life. Could the experienced sailor have made a series of serious mistakes? The Nautilus union, which represents sailors and captains, has called for restraint in passing judgment on the Bayesian crew.

“Any attempt to question their conduct without full facts is not only unfair but also detrimental to the process of uncovering the truth and learning from this tragedy,” the report said.

The world’s media has begun to leave Porticello, which is slowly returning to a pre-Bayesian tranquility. Feral cats roam among old fishing boats, and children play while their families eat out at a few waterfront restaurants.

But what happened last week has left many here shocked and frightened.

“Last Sunday, we saw the end of the world in Porticello,” said resident Maria Vizzo. “We have never seen anything like this. Everyone here is in shock – and everyone is crying.”