In the photograph, the luxury yacht Bayesian is peacefully anchored in the calm waters of Porticello bay, its 75-metre (246ft) mast towering above it. But on the horizon, dark clouds loom. The picture was captured last Sunday night by the owner of a restaurant in Porticello, a fishing village just a few kilometres from Palermo, Sicily. It was one of the last taken of the sailboat before it sank in a violent storm, killing the British tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch and six other people, including his 18-year-old daughter, Hannah.
Once described as Britain’s Bill Gates, Lynch was at the beginning of a new life, after being cleared in June of fraud charges in the US relating to the purchase of his company, Autonomy, by Hewlett-Packard in 2011. The tycoon opted to celebrate in style in Italy alongside Hannah, and his wife, Angela. They were joined by eminent figures including Lynch’s attorney from Clifford Chance, Chris Morvillo, and Morgan Stanley International’s chair, Jonathan Bloomer, along with their respective spouses and other associates. They were enjoying a lavish voyage around Sicily onboard the luxurious, British-flagged Bayesian, a magnificent 56-metre (184ft) sailboat named after 18th-century mathematician Thomas Bayes, whose work on probability informed Lynch’s professional thinking – in a violent storm off the coast of Sicily.
