THE wreckage of the doomed Bayesian superyacht is set to be salvaged from the sea bed to find the key clues in the mystery disaster.
Seven people, including Brit billionaire Mike Lynch and his daughter Hannah, died after the yacht sank off the coast of Sicily during a storm on August 19 last year.
Authorities in Sicily are now planning to pull out the wreckage of the sunken ship from the sea bed in hopes to find more answers about the disaster – which they are treating as suspected manslaughter.
Salvage experts are set to start the process in April this year, which could take up to three weeks, Italian press agency Ansa reported.
Once raised, the Bayesian will be taken to the nearby port of Termini Imerese for inspection.
Harrowing footage shows a team of brave divers exploring the wreck sat 165ft below the port of Porticello.
One diver can be seen holding a steel tool as he wrenches open what appears to be a hatch on board the £30 million Bayesian.
Eerie remains of the shipwreck are then shown as the crew push through messy corridors and rooms inside the ship which is lying on its starboard side.
Handheld torches are used by the divers as they swim through the yacht, showing several areas including the vessel’s control panel.
Perini Navi company, which built the Bayesian Giovanni Costantino, branded the boat “unsinkable” and slammed the crew for making key “mistakes” and failing to “close the doors and hatches.”
Mr Costantino told The Sun in August: “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.
“However, if the ship takes on water, this stability is compromised.
“Where the water entered will be determined by the investigators.
“What is certain is that the ship took on hundreds of thousands of litres of water.”
He added: “The crew did not handle the adverse weather conditions properly and did not follow the correct procedures to ensure safety.”
Tragically, initial investigations revealed that four victims survived the sinking but died in an air pocket.
Of the 22 onboard, 15 survived with 11 including Mike Lynch’s wife rescued on an inflatable life raft.
Lynch’s 18-year-old daughter Hannah was the last passenger to be discovered in the third cabin.
Three crew members are being investigated in Sicily, accused of leaving open the door at the rear port side, causing water to enter the yacht and flood it.
The captain of the doomed Bayesian, James Cutfield, 51, is being investigated for manslaughter.
Kiwi Cutfield, along with two other members of his crew, are being investigated by Italian authorities for culpable shipwreck and multiple manslaughter.
Just two months before the disaster, Lynch had been cleared of carrying out a massive fraud over the sale of his software firm Autonomy to Hewlett-Packard in 2011.
The boat trip was a celebration of his acquittal in the case in the US.
Inside The Bayesian’s final 16 minutes
By Ellie Doughty, Foreign News Reporter
Data recovered from the Bayesian’s Automatic Identification System (AIS) breaks down exactly how it sank in a painful minute-by-minute timeline.
At 3.50am on Monday August 19 the Bayesian began to shake “dangerously” during a fierce storm, Italian outlet Corriere revealed.
Just minutes later at 3.59am the boat’s anchor gave way, with a source saying the data showed there was “no anchor left to hold”.
After the ferocious weather ripped away the boat’s mooring it was dragged some 358 metres through the water.
By 4am it had began to take on water and was plunged into a blackout, indicating that the waves had reached its generator or even engine room.
At 4.05am the Bayesian fully disappeared underneath the waves.
An emergency GPS signal was finally emitted at 4.06am to the coastguard station in Bari, a city nearby, alerting them that the vessel had sunk.
Early reports suggested the disaster struck around 5am local time off the coast of Porticello Harbour in Palermo, Sicily.
The latest data pulled from the boat’s AIS appears to suggest it happened an hour earlier at around 4am.
Some 15 of the 22 onboard were rescued, 11 of them scrambling onto an inflatable life raft that sprung up on the deck.
A smaller nearby boat – named Sir Robert Baden Powell – then helped take those people to shore.
Divers spent days scouring the wreckage[/caption]
