Captain of sunken superyacht under investigation, source says

Italian prosecutors are investigating the captain of the superyacht that sank off Sicily last week in a storm, killing British tech tycoon Mike Lynch and six others, a judicial source said on Monday.

James Cutfield, a 51-year-old New Zealander, is being investigated for manslaughter and shipwreck, the source said, confirming earlier Italian media reports.

Being under investigation in Italy does not imply guilt and does not necessarily mean that formal charges will follow. Notifications must be sent to those under investigation before authorities can perform autopsies on the bodies of the dead.

Complex rescue operations begin as the last body is recovered from the wrecked superyacht

The decision was made after Cutfield was questioned a second time. Reuters was unable to reach Cutfield.

It is not yet clear whether other crew members or other individuals will also be under investigation along with the captain.

The British-flagged Bayesian, a 56-metre-long (184-foot) yacht, was carrying 22 people when it capsized and sank within minutes on Monday after being hit by a pre-dawn storm while anchored in northern Sicily.

Fifteen people survived, including Lynch’s wife, whose company owned the Bayesian. Lynch’s 18-year-old daughter Hannah was among those who died.

As the yacht was hit by a sudden weather event, it was plausible that crimes of multiple culpable homicide and causing a shipwreck by negligence were committed, Termini Imerese prosecutor’s chief Ambrogio Cartosio said on Saturday.

Maritime law gives the master full responsibility for the ship, crew and all on board.

Cutfield and the eight surviving crew members have yet to make any public comments about the disaster.

“The Bayesian was built to go to sea in any weather,” Franco Romani, a nautical architect who was part of the team that designed it, told La Stampa daily in an interview published Monday.

He said the yacht may have taken on water from a side hatch that was left open.

(Reporting by Giulia Segreti and Giselda Vagnoni in Rome and Wladimiro Pantaleone in Palermo; Editing by Bernadette Baum and Angus MacSwan)

Photo: Italian firefighters and divers bring to shore in a green bag the body of one of the victims of the British-flagged Bayesian ship, Wednesday, Aug. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Salvatore Cavalli)

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