Maritime Accidents and Safety

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      Divers Find 2 Bodies From Yacht That Sank Off Sicily

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      The discovery came after the vessel sank this week in what some witnesses described as a waterspout, or a small tornado, during a violent downpour. No names were immediately released.After three days of searching the hull of a sailing yacht that sank off the coast of Sicily, divers on Wednesday recovered the bodies of two passengers who were believed to have been trapped inside their cabins when the vessel went down, officials in Sicily said.The yacht, the Bayesian, with 12 crew members and 10 passengers, was caught in what some witnesses described as a waterspout, essentially a small tornado on water, during a sudden and violent downpour in the pre-dawn hours of Monday.The recovery of the two bodies was confirmed by Salvatore Cocina, head of Sicily’s civil protection agency. What looked like a green body bag was lifted from a vessel in Porticello, Sicily, on Wednesday afternoon and loaded onto a waiting ambulance as a large group of rescuers stood by in their uniforms.On the dock, a crowd of reporters and bystanders watched on in near complete silence, as a church bell tolled in the background.Although 15 people made it to safety and the yacht’s cook was confirmed dead, the fate of the remaining six people, including a British tech entrepreneur, Mike Lynch, had been formally unresolved until the update on Wednesday.In addition to Mr. Lynch, the remaining people who had been identified as missing by the authorities were his daughter Hannah; Jonathan Bloomer, the chairman of Morgan Stanley International; his wife, Judy Bloomer; Christopher J. Morvillo, a lawyer at Clifford Chance; and his wife, Neda Morvillo.Mike Lynch in 2011. Pool photo by Ben GurrThey were part of a group of people celebrating a legal victory for Mr. Lynch, who was acquitted in June of fraud charges tied to the sale of his company, Autonomy, to the tech giant Hewlett-Packard.The body of the yacht’s cook, Recaldo Thomas, who held Canadian and Antiguan citizenship, was recovered earlier from the water, the Sicilian civil protection agency said.Deep sea divers with the Vigili del Fuoco, Italy’s firefighting corps, were able to reach the bodies after dealing with what Luca Cari, their spokesman, described as “very difficult” conditions.The yacht had settled on its side, about 165 feet below the surface, and divers could only remain underwater for a limited amount of time. To complicate matters, they had to navigate through broken furnishings and electrical wiring that blocked the tight spaces inside the hull. More

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      What to Know About the Sunken Sicily Yacht’s Missing Passengers, Including Mike Lynch

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      Mr. Lynch, the former chief executive of the software firm Autonomy, who was acquitted on fraud charges in June, was with friends and family when the yacht went down in a severe storm.A cruise on the Mediterranean Sea aboard a superyacht was supposed to be a celebratory event for the British tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch, who was acquitted in June of fraud charges tied to the sale of his company, Autonomy, to the tech giant Hewlett-Packard.Instead, it turned into a disaster after the yacht, a 180-foot boat called the Bayesian, sank off the coast of Sicily in a violent storm. Of the 22 passengers aboard, 15 were rescued, one body was recovered and six were still missing. Search operations at the site of the sunken yacht were continuing on Tuesday.Here’s what we know about the passengers.Mike Lynch and his familyMr. Lynch, 59, is a British software entrepreneur who had once been described as his country’s Bill Gates. He founded the software firm Autonomy, which analyzed clients’ unorganized data, and turned it into one of the most prominent British technology companies of its time. He became a widely known corporate leader, who advised David Cameron, the British prime minister at the time, and joined the board of the BBC.In 2011, Mr. Lynch sold Autonomy to Hewlett-Packard for $11 billion, which was far above its market value, earning him hundreds of millions. But HP investors almost immediately soured on the transaction, and the American tech giant quickly fired its chief executive — and then Mr. Lynch.HP later accused Mr. Lynch of misleading it about the state of Autonomy’s business, setting off a decade-long legal ordeal for the British executive, who denied the accusations. U.S. prosecutors charged him and other executives with fraud, and Autonomy’s chief financial officer was convicted in 2018.Despite appeals to the British government, Mr. Lynch was extradited to the United States last year and was confined to a townhouse in San Francisco ahead of his criminal trial, which began in March. Facing the possibility of decades in prison if convicted, Mr. Lynch and another colleague were instead acquitted of all charges.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Family of Titan Crew Member Sues OceanGate

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      Paul-Henri Nargeolet, a French explorer, died along with four other crew members when OceanGate’s Titan craft imploded on its journey to the Titanic.The family of a French explorer who was aboard the Titan submersible, the vessel that imploded last year during its failed mission to explore the Titanic wreckage, killing all five people aboard, has filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against the craft’s manufacturer, OceanGate Expeditions.Paul-Henri Nargeolet, a French explorer whose deep knowledge of the sunken ship earned him the nickname “Mr. Titanic,” was hired to assist OceanGate, a Washington State-based ocean exploration company, during the Titan’s journey to the Titanic.But the company and its founder, Richard Stockton Rush III, who also died aboard the vessel, misled Mr. Nargeolet about how the submersible was built, according to the lawsuit filed in King County, Wash.“Mr. Rush confessed to a ‘mission specialist’ on one Titanic voyage that he had ‘gotten the carbon fiber used to make the Titan at a big discount from Boeing because it was past its shelf life for use in airplanes,’” according to the lawsuit, which the Houston-based law firms Buzbee Law Firm and Schecter, Shaffer & Harris said was filed on Tuesday.The French deep sea explorer and Titanic expert Paul-Henri Nargeolet with a miniature version of the sunken ship.Joel Saget/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe lawsuit also accuses Mr. Rush of negligence for a variety of reasons, including falsely advertising a “crackling noise” that was said to be an advanced “safety” feature to alert crew members when to abort a mission. In reality, the lawsuit says that sound “is nothing more than the detection of a possibly imminent failure of the carbon fiber hull.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Billionaire Plans Dive to the Titanic in a Newly Designed Submersible

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      Larry Connor, 74, who made his wealth in real estate, said he’s building a new acrylic-hulled submersible that will be certified and rigorously tested to show that deep sea exploration is safe.A real estate billionaire in Ohio is planning an underwater voyage to the site of the Titanic shipwreck, where a submersible imploded on its approach to the sea floor a year ago, killing all five passengers on board.Shortly after the OceanGate disaster, Larry Connor, 74, a real estate investor and amateur adventurer, contacted the co-founder of Triton Submarines, Patrick Lahey, imploring him to build a submarine that could reach the depths of the Titanic safely and repeatedly, according to The Wall Street Journal.The two men aim to explore and conduct scientific research at the site, located off the coast of Newfoundland, 12,500 feet under the sea, in a two-person submersible that Triton is designing in the summer of 2026.“Ours is just not a trip to the Titanic,” Mr. Connor said in an interview on Tuesday. “It’s a research mission.”“The other purpose is to demonstrate to people around the globe that you can build a revolutionary, first-of-its-kind sub and dive it safely and successfully to great depths,” he added.The custom sub, which Mr. Connor plans to call “The Explorer — Return to the Titanic,” is still in the design phase and will be based on an existing submarine design that Mr. Lahey had worked on for years. It is listed on the Triton website as the Abyssal Explorer, an acrylic-hulled vessel than can reach depths of 13,000 feet, “the perfect submersible for repeated trips to the deep ocean.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Dozens of Major Bridges Lack Shields to Block Wayward Ships

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      Ben Franklin Bridge Crescent City Connection Dolphin Expressway Bridge Kingston-Rhinecliff Bridge Lewis and Clark Bridge Memphis-Arkansas Bridge Mid-Hudson Bridge Newburgh-Beacon Bridge Robert C. Byrd Bridge Sherman Minton Bridge Tobin Bridge Veterans Memorial Bridge Aerial photos by Nearmap and Vexcel Imaging More

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      Tangled in Steel With No Way Out: How the Crew Stuck in Baltimore Is Faring

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      Twenty-two seafarers from India find themselves not only trapped in the ship that struck the Francis Scott Key Bridge, but also in an unexpected spotlight.Even from miles away, the destruction of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore is a jarring visual: Chunks of steel jut above the water like metallic icebergs. Twisted gray beams protrude in crooked positions. From a park near Fort McHenry, visitors can see the giant cargo ship that struck the bridge and remains lodged in the wreckage.Less visible, however, are the 22 crew members from India who have remained on the ship, named the Dali, since the disaster on Tuesday.Little is publicly known about them other than that they are seafarers who embarked on a journey aboard the 985-foot-long cargo ship that was on its way to Sri Lanka, carrying 4,700 shipping containers, when it lost power and struck the Key Bridge, causing the structure to collapse.Since the accident, which killed six construction workers, the crew members have found themselves in an unexpected spotlight. While keeping the ship operable, they are answering a deluge of questions from officials investigating the nighttime catastrophe, as the evidence of what occurred lays around them in mangled ruins stretching across the bow and deck.While officials investigate what could have caused the tragedy, another question has emerged this week: What could the crew members, who have limited access to the outside world, be going through right now?“They must feel this weight of responsibility that they couldn’t stop it from happening,” said Joshua Messick, the executive director of the Baltimore International Seafarers’ Center, a religious nonprofit that seeks to protect the rights of mariners.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      A Close-Up View of the Baltimore Bridge Collapse

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      From roughly 100 yards away, the site of one of the worst bridge collapses in the country’s history is haunting. Maroon containers larger than a car sat twisted and crushed. Massive beams of steel warped into crooked arches. Pillars of jagged concrete poked out from the water — a tomb of wreckage that dimly reflected on the gray-toned river. From roughly 100 yards away, deep into the Patapsco River in Baltimore, the site of one of the worst bridge collapses in the country’s history is a haunting scene. The U.S. Coast Guard allowed The New York Times to ride aboard a response boat on Saturday afternoon to witness up close the destruction of the Francis Scott Key Bridge, which was struck by the cargo ship Dali on Tuesday, killing six men, all construction workers who were working on filling potholes on the bridge.As the 45-foot-long Coast Guard vessel neared the scene of the disaster, a service member who had made several trips to the site braced passengers for the view to come. “It’s still shocking every time.”The Coast Guard boat initially neared the cargo ship on the rear side, the stern, which was spared from much of the impact of the collapse. Two people could be seen walking along the starboard, though it was unclear if they were investigators or crew members, all of whom are from India and have remained on the ship to keep it operable. An anchor that the crew members had used in desperation to keep the ship from hitting the bridge was visible, submerged in calm water. A thin and yellow boom floated around the ship to contain spills. It looked similar to crime-scene tape. The gray and red shipping containers were stacked up to nine rows high, partly shielding for a moment the wreckage that lay behind it.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Crews at Site of Bridge Collapse Work on Removing First Piece of Debris

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      The governor of Maryland said that the search for missing victims would resume when the conditions for divers improve.Crews in Baltimore on Saturday were working on pulling the first piece of wreckage out of the water after the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge, a tangible sign of progress in the daunting effort to reopen the busy waterway.Rear Adm. Shannon Gilreath of the U.S. Coast Guard said at a news conference that his crew was aiming to lift the first segment of the bridge “just north of that deep draft shipping channel.” He added, “Much like when you run a marathon, you’ve got to take the first few steps.”The bridge was a critical transportation link to one of the largest ports in the United States, and the collapse is costing the region and the country millions of dollars the longer it is out of operation. More than 8,000 workers on the docks have been directly affected, Gov. Wes Moore of Maryland said.Mr. Moore said cutting up and removing the north sections of the bridge “will eventually allow us to open up a temporary restricted channel that will help us to get more vessels in the water around the site of the collapse.”Officials overseeing the cleanup added on Saturday that salvage teams will use gas-powered cutters to systematically separate sections of the steel bridge, which will then be taken to a disposal site.The work was occurring less than a week after a giant container ship known as the Dali suffered a complete blackout and struck the bridge, killing six construction workers and bringing the bridge down into the Patapsco River.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More