How heroic Sicily rescue mission became recovery operation as Italian authorities announce they have taken four bodies from the water with one more remaining on tech tycoon Mike Lynch’s sunken superyacht and a further missing passenger unaccounted for

Rescue efforts to save six missing people from Mike Lynch’s sunken superyacht yesterday escalated into a salvage operation that saw four bodies pulled from the water.

A fifth body was found in the wreckage of the Bayesian but has not yet been recovered. A sixth passenger is still missing.

Two of the four bodies found are believed to be those of British tech billionaire Lynch and his 18-year-old daughter Hannah, who was due to study English at Oxford University this year.

Those still missing are Morgan Stanley CEO Jonathan Bloomer, his wife Judy, and U.S. citizens Chris Morvillo and his wife Neda Morvillo, a jewelry designer. The body of a crew member, chef Recaldo Thomas, was found Monday.

Search teams made the tragic discoveries yesterday while combing through the wreckage of the luxury yacht, which sank off the coast of Sicily on Monday morning after being hit by a waterspout.

Four bodies were found on the lower deck of the yacht and taken to Porticello harbour, where a bell rang each time.

The rescue team had hoped that the six passengers would still be alive due to the air bubbles, but they assumed that the chance of survivors was slim.

Attempts to recover a fifth body had to be abandoned last night, while a sixth passenger is still missing. Formal identification will take place in the coming days.

Under Italian law, a body must be identified by a family member or someone close to the victim.

Yesterday’s heartbreaking discovery was made by divers who have been searching the wreck since the £30million yacht sank.

Search teams were reinforced yesterday by a remote-controlled underwater robot and divers who worked on the Costa Concordia disaster in 2012.

Investigators have been interviewing survivors, including Captain James Cutfield, 51, who was questioned for two hours.

A friend of Lynch called the disaster that ensued after the tycoon was acquitted of US fraud a “Shakespearean tragedy”.

The developments yesterday came as Lynch’s wife, Angela Bacares, one of 15 people rescued from the shipwreck, anxiously awaited news of her husband and daughter.

Hannah, who had just secured a place to read English literature at Oxford, had gone with her parents to Bayes University to celebrate her father’s acquittal on fraud charges.

The tech magnate, once dubbed the “British Bill Gates,” made his fortune after founding his software company Autonomy in 1996.

The father-of-two had recently returned to his Loudham Hall estate near Woodbridge, Suffolk, after spending almost a year under house arrest in the US. He was accused of artificially inflating the price of his company when he sold it to Hewlett-Packard for almost £9bn in 2011. He was acquitted by a jury in June.

But the festivities were marred by tragedy when the 183-foot yacht sank within minutes after being engulfed by a freak tornado – a so-called waterspout – half a mile from Porticello at 5 a.m. Monday.

In somber scenes yesterday, search teams returned to the harbor several times to bring the dead to shore. Each time, emergency services formed a guard of honor, shielding the bodies from public view as they were loaded into ambulances.

According to sources, the first bodies were those of a “heavy-built man” and a woman.

Hundreds of locals and tourists gathered to pay their respects, some bowing their heads as church bells rang out over the village near Palermo.

Divers reportedly made the grim discovery after finding bodies in the yacht’s luxury cabins on the hard-to-reach lower deck, one of which was found behind two mattresses. The complex operation to recover the dead had to be carried out in stages, with divers stopping at a depth of 65 feet to depressurize before surfacing, local media reported.

Salvo Cocina, director general of civil protection in Sicily, confirmed that four bodies had been recovered and told the Daily Telegraph: “On behalf of myself and my colleagues, I would like to express my deepest condolences to the families of the victims.”

He later said efforts to bring a fifth body ashore and locate the last missing passenger would resume today.

The development brings the official death toll to six after the body of the yacht’s Canadian chef Recaldo Thomas was found near the wreck on Monday.

The Italian coastguard does not rule out that the missing are still alive. Experts suspect that air bubbles were created during the sinking of the yacht.

But rescue efforts were reportedly hampered because the massive vessel was still intact, full of debris, and lying on the seabed at a depth of more than 150 feet. A breakthrough came when the 20 experienced divers who had been searching tirelessly for two days were joined by the team that worked on the 2012 Costa Concordia disaster.

Their arrival allowed the researchers to extend dive times by up to 20 minutes at a time, thanks to special mixtures in their tanks.

Previously, the depth of the wreck meant that trained divers could stay underwater for up to 12 minutes, two of which are needed to ascend and descend. The divers, working in groups of three, had searched the hull yesterday after pulling out a one-inch-thick window on the side opposite the six luxury guest cabins.

The search was also aided by a remotely operated vehicle that can operate on the seabed at depths of up to 1,000 feet. The robot can record video and take detailed images that are examined by researchers.

Among those celebrating with Dr. Lynch were Mr. Morvillo, who represented the magnate in his trial, and business veteran Mr. Bloomer, who testified for the defense.

Italian media reported last night that the bodies of both men were among those brought ashore.

Dr Lynch’s close friend Brent Hoberman, former CEO of lastminute.com, described the disaster as a “Shakespearean tragedy”.

“Someone who has defended his name for 12 years clears his name and goes on a trip with the team that helped him do it to celebrate. And then something that only happens once in a while happens on his boat,” he said.

Former minister Lord Deben, a Conservative peer and long-time friend of Dr Lynch, told Times Radio that the tycoon was returning to the UK to “start afresh” after winning his fraud case. “Gratitude is a typical word to use for him… the people he brought on board are clearly the people who made his triumph possible,” he added.

Among the partygoers on board was Charlotte Golunski, a senior partner at his firm Involve Capital, who rescued her one-year-old daughter Sofia by clinging to her in the raging waves.

The 35-year-old British woman and her baby were discharged after treatment in hospital, as was Sofia’s father, James Emslie.

Dr Lynch’s Mediterranean party was said to have attracted so many guests and supporters that they had to take turns staying on the Bayesian. Videos from other boats showed the festivities taking place in the days before tragedy struck. Authorities have launched an investigation, with one expert revealing that an initial focus would be on whether the yacht’s crew had closed the boat’s access hatches before the storm.

Prosecutors are already questioning witnesses and survivors, including the captain, Mr Cutfield, 51, from New Zealand.

CCTV footage of the tragedy shows the impressive boat with its 75-metre mast – one of the tallest in the world – disappearing within seconds as a violent storm obscured visibility.

In a separate incident, Lynch’s co-defendant in his fraud case, Stephen Chamberlain, died after being hit by a car while jogging in Cambridgeshire on Saturday.