Oof, the loss of the vessel may or may not be causing “reputational damage” to TISG/Perini yet, but the arrogance and boneheaded actions of their CEO definitely is.
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I anticipate interesting conversations around the docks, bars and bazaars of the Monaco Yacht Show this week!
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Reporting here that Lynch’s widow may have survived because she had concerns about her own safety.
Stephen Edwards, who was the captain of the Bayesian for five years until 2020, suggested that she may have survived because her tendency to be concerned about safety onboard led her to leave her cabin before the boat began its fatal rollover.
I was at Cannes and nobody saying much including buyers
The
That turkey has already come home to roost:
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Latest article on Corriere della Sera (Translation courtesy of Google) with possibly few interesting new details.
A little over a month after the sinking of the Bayesian, the sailing ship of the English magnate Mike Lynch that sank in 16 minutes on August 19, during a violent summer storm in the sea of Porticello, a seaside village half an hour from Palermo, the shadow of the conspiracy is thinning.
Investigators are becoming convinced that the vessel, a technological jewel worth 30 million euros, ended up at the bottom of the sea due to a tragic chain of errors. Even if not all the doubts fueled by the caliber of the victims - billionaires with ties to the 007s, wealthy lawyers and bankers - and by a series of coincidences have been resolved.
Including those related to the death, a few days before the shipwreck, of Lynch’s partner, Stephen Chamberlain, hit by a car while jogging in the county of Cambridgeshire, in England. The two, who ended up together in the dock in a fraud trial, born in the US from the sale of the software company Autonomy, had just been acquitted. And the trip to Sicily on the Bayesian had been organized by the tycoon precisely to leave the judicial odyssey behind him. But the two partners had no time to celebrate the end of the legal affair together.
The yacht’s safe at 50 meters of depth
The latest mystery of the Bayesian is kept at 50 meters of depth, where the sailing ship of the tycoon who died in the shipwreck lies together with his eighteen-year-old daughter Hannah, the lawyer who owed him the acquittal Chris Morvillo and his wife Neda, the president of Morgan Stanley Jonathan Bloomer and his wife Judith and the ship’s cook Recaldo Thomas, the only member of the crew to lose his life.
The wreck’s watertight safes would be storing hard disks with sensitive data of interest to foreign governments such as those of Russia and China. Lynch himself, founder of the cybersecurity company Darktrace which collaborated with the intelligence services of several Western countries, would have kept them safe on the yacht. The two encrypted hard disks would contain highly confidential material: classified information, including access codes and sensitive data. And the risk that someone might try to take possession of it has pushed the navy, which will coordinate the recovery of the yacht, to strengthen surveillance of the body of water where the sailing ship sank. Enough to understand the value that is given to the material.
The unsinkable sailing ship
A month after the accident, the magistrates of the Termini Imerese Public Prosecutor’s Office are starting to put the pieces of the puzzle together to try to understand how a ship considered unsinkable, first and foremost by the company that built it, could have sunk in the space of a quarter of an hour. And how, moreover, it was possible that no one took action knowing that a violent storm was about to hit Porticello. A disturbance that was far from unexpected, which, that night, had forced the fishermen not to go out.
In the days following the shipwreck, also in the wake of the testimonies acquired from the crew and the survivors, the first entries in the register of suspects arrived: the accused were the commander James Cutfield, the engineer officer Tim Parker Eaton and the sailor on duty on the bridge the night of the accident, Matthew Griffiths. All are charged with multiple manslaughter and shipwreck. The skipper, questioned by the prosecutors, availed himself of the right to remain silent. The co-investigators were heard before being charged, therefore without their lawyers. Any new interrogations will have to be done abroad, because the entire crew left Italy weeks ago. No one, moreover, was subjected to alcohol and toxicology tests: “They were in shock,” the magistrates said.
The engine room, the blackout
But what are the culprits of Cutfield and the others, according to the investigators? The magistrates accuse the skipper of not having taken the necessary measures to secure the vessel (starting the engines and pulling up the anchor or automatically releasing it and putting the bow into the wind) and of not having provided adequate assistance to the passengers. Eaton also failed to activate the systems for closing the ship’s doors. A carelessness that allowed an avalanche of water to enter, probably from the side bulkhead that closes the room where the tender is stored. First into the engine room, causing a blackout, and then into the entire sailing ship, which sank in a few minutes. The sailor on the bridge, on the other hand, is accused of not having warned the passengers of the storm in time. The Bayesian would have ended up in the middle of a downburst, a meteorological phenomenon with descending gusts of wind that can exceed 100 km per hour.
The compensation war
An incredible chain of errors, in short, «denounced» immediately after the shipwreck also by the entrepreneur of The Italian Sea Group, Giovanni Costantino, who in 2021 took over the Perini Navi brand, the company that built the 56-meter long sailing ship with a 75-meter aluminum mainmast. «It was all predictable. I have the weather maps right in front of me», Costantino told Corriere della Sera. In recent days, the news that the Sea Group would have sued the company Revtom Ltd, headed by Angela Bacares, Lynch’s wife who survived the shipwreck and who would represent the shipowner and the property, and Camper & Nicholsons International which had the task of selecting the captain and crew.
And it presented a bill of 222 million euros in compensation for the damage to its image resulting from the sinking of the vessel. The news was later denied by The Italian Sea Group, which however admitted to having given its lawyers “a generic mandate”. In reality, the summons, filed with the Termini Imerese court, exists, but there is the intention to withdraw it. The sudden change of course was also influenced by the immediate reaction of the Lynch family, who let all their irritation filter through to the British press, saying they were “very sorry” for the request made.
“The hatches were closed”
However, the three suspects are not prepared to be considered responsible. “As soon as I saw the wind pick up, I raised the alarm. No delay, no fault,” said Matthew Griffiths, through his lawyers, who said he warned the captain when the wind was 20 knots. “He - he reported - gave the order to wake up everyone else. I put away the cushions and plants, closed the windows of the bow lounge and some hatches.” The sailor would not have said anything about the doors, which were not his job to control, and which, according to prosecutors, remained open. “The ship tilted,” Griffiths continued, “and we were thrown into the sea. Then we managed to get back on board and tried to save those we could.” Like Charlotte Golunski and her daughter Sophia, who survived with her husband James Emsilie.
The recovery operations
Certain of finding the answers they need in the wreck, the investigators, awaiting the recovery plan that, after the first surveys, will be submitted to the Coast Guard, have had pieces of the bridge, computer equipment and video surveillance systems brought back to land and sent to specialized laboratories for examination. Data that, together with the forensic medical examinations, could indicate to prosecutors the path to take.
The autopsies on the 7 bodies confirmed that some victims died from drowning, while those who managed to find an air bubble, when they tried in vain to reach the deck from the cabin, suffocated due to oxygen exhaustion. Putting everything together will not be easy, however. Just as it will not be easy to calculate the incidence and probability of each cause. A bit like Bayes’ theorem, the formula enunciated over three centuries ago by the Reverend Bayes, the subject of Lynch’s degree thesis that inspired the magnate to name his sailing ship.
What an incredible load of horse shit!
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It has actually been proven, via photographic evidence taken by returning guests boarding the “Sir Robert Baden Powell”, that both the “Bayesian” port side and rear shell doors were fully secured prior to the downburst.
I’m just copying what was reported in the paper.
I had not heard that there is photographic evidence about the doors being closed. Have these photos been posted somewhere?
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Why? Especially when the “report” doesn’t contain new information and simply regurgitates what has long been debunked and known to anyone who is interested enough to access proven reliable and/or industry sources.
Corriere della Sera might be one of the oldest or largest newspapers in Italy but that article proves it may also have the laziest reporters and incompetent editors or might even have an agenda that ignores facts for its own purposes.
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Yes.
Firstly, go to the video that I posted 6 days ago and start at 6:20. Secondly, the Master of the “Sir Robert Baden Powell” has allegedly posted all the photographs that he collected off the returning guests on a German forum to which I do not have the link.
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No significant news or info at Monaco Show. Bad jokes - “Perini has a bit of turnover I hear”
Oops! Who said that?
Interesting internal diving footage negating some of the scuttlebutt regarding watertight doors and shell openings.
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This video also raises some questions. If, indeed, the ER WT door was hydraulically/electrically closed and locked either remotely from the bridge or locally………how did the divers get it open in order to get an jack under it. Also, the blown out control room window may indicate positive water pressure within the control room. More questions than answers unfortunately.