Free Republic

Salvage experts winched Mike Lynch’s sunken superyacht towards the surface on Friday, 10 months after it went down off the coast of Sicily, killing the British tech tycoon, his teenage daughter and five others. The vessel is scheduled to be lifted out of the water in the final phase of the recovery on Saturday, TMC Marine, the company leading the salvage operation, said. “Accelerated progress in salvage works off the coast of northern Sicily mean that all preparations are now nearing completion, ahead of the delicate lifting procedure,” the statement said. The work was briefly halted last month after the...

Three crew members of the Bayesian superyacht are officially under investigation for crimes including negligence, recklessness and failing to save the ship from an oncoming storm, according to Italian prosecutors. Captain James Cutfield, chief engineer Timothy Parker Eaton and deckhand Matthew Griffiths are in line to face criminal charges, according to the public prosecutor of Termini Imerese in Sicily, close to where the yacht sank amid a severe storm. The potential charges were set out as rescue workers strive to raise the vessel, currently 50 meters (164 feet) below the surface, off the coast of Porticello. Allegedly, “through negligence consisting...

British tech magnate Mike Lynch and several other people were among those missing after their luxury superyacht sank during a freak storm off Sicily early Monday, Italy’s civil protection and authorities said. Lynch’s wife and 14 other people survived. Lynch, who was acquitted in June in a big U.S. fraud trial, was among the six people who remain unaccounted for after their chartered sailboat sank off Porticello, when...a waterspout struck the area overnight, said Salvo Cocina of Sicily’s civil protection agency. One body has been recovered, and police divers were trying to reach the hull of the ship, which was...

Unquestionably the most exciting object from the wreck is the bronze bearded head (Fig. 1). From black glaze bowls and lamps recovered from the stern of the ship, we can fix the time of the ship's sinking to the last quarter of the 5th century. The bronze head must, then, have been made no later than some time late in the 5th century, although some scholars, seeing the sculpture out of its archaeological context, would have placed it in the 4th century... Sculpture formed only a small part of the cargo, which included in addition amphoras containing wine and possibly...