1 dead, 6 missing after storm sinks luxury superyacht off Sicily

One person is dead and six others are missing after a luxury superyacht was struck by a violent storm off the coast of Sicily on Monday, officials confirmed.

The vessel, a 56-metre-long British-flagged sailboat named “Bayesian,” went down off the Sicilian capital Palermo with 22 people on board shortly before sunrise, the Italian coast guard said in a statement.

A Canadian is among those missing, as well as two Americans and four Britons.

One of the missing people is British tech magnate Mike Lynch, who was acquitted in June in a big U.S. fraud trial that delved into the history of Hewlett Packard’s 2011, US$11 billion acquisition of Autonomy, a business software firm founded by Lynch.

The fraud accusations represented a dramatic turn in the fortunes of an entrepreneur once described as the Bill Gates of Britain — a title he seemed to live up to when he netted $800 million from the Autonomy sale.

It’s reported that Lynch’s wife, Angela Bacares, was among those rescued and taken to shore.

A one-year-old was also among those rescued. Eight people were taken to hospital. The boat’s passengers consisted of 10 crew members and 12 foreign tourists.

One of the survivors, identified as Charlotte Emsley, said she had momentarily lost hold of her baby daughter Sofia in the water, but then managed to hold her up over the waves until a lifeboat inflated and they were both pulled to safety, Italian news agency ANSA reported, quoting the mother. The father, James Emsley, also survived, said Salvo Cocina of Sicily’s civil protection agency.

Cocina said the crew and passengers hailed from a variety of countries: In addition to Britain, passengers and crew were from Antigua, France, Germany, Ireland, Myanmar, the Netherlands, New Zealand and