Social media is abuzz with news that billionaire Mike Lynch’s super yacht went down in the Mediterranean on August 19.
This tragic accident was unexpected — and raises some questions that have yet to be answered as the investigation continues.
Officials are blaming a “black swan” weather condition, and noting that there were multiple potentially dangerous “waterspout” formations reported in the area shortly before the boat capsized.
Seven people, including Mike Lynch and his 18-year-old daughter, lost their lives in the highly improbable and rare climate conditions — especially in the area.
Oddly enough, the yacht itself is named ‘Bayesian’ after a mathematical theory on probabilities. Bayensian statistics can integrate highly improbable events into its modeling.
Because the circumstances of the yacht’s sinking may have been the confluence of rare circumstances the yacht’s name has taken on a more haunting meaning in the aftermath.
There’s also the legal context of the story. The yacht’s billionaire owner, Mike Lynch, had won a multi-billion-dollar suit against HP which alleges fraud in his revenue reporting of his company Automony, which HP says led them to buy the company at a far higher valuation than was appropriate. The lawsuit had been dragging on for more than a decade.
Although the fraud case ended with Lynch being absolved on all criminal charges in a U.S. court. HP is still pursuing a civil case, now against his estate. A U.K. court ruled in favor of HP’s civil case, though the amount in damages has yet to be determined. At the time of his death, Mike Lynch was estimated to be worth around $1 billion — less than a quarter of what HP tried to recover through the courts.
Internet sleuths have been reading into a LinkedIn post by Mike Lynch’s lawyer Christopher Morvillo which read like celebratory screed. Morvillo was among the seven who lost their lives aboard the Bayesian yacht.
“Following the jury’s swift exoneration of our client, Mike Lynch, and his colleague, Steven Chamberlain, last week in San Francisco, I finally have something to say that I would like others to hear,” Morvillo writes. “…This thrilling verdict flows directly from years of painstaking work by an extraordinary cross-border team, and I would like to recognize some of them as the Litigators of the Last Decade.”
But the post’s sign off rings haunting and cryptic.
“…and they all lived happily ever after,” Morvillo ends the post with.
Just two months later, both Christopher Morvillo and Mike Lynch would board the Bayesian yacht in Italy, and sail into the (presumed) black swan waterspout event that would claim both their lives.
But the plot would thicken from there.
Less than one week after the Bayesian yacht sank, Stephen Chamberlain, the former VP of finance of Autonomy and Mike Lynch’s codefendant in the multi-billion dollar suit against HP, was fatally struck by a car while out jogging.
If all that isn’t enough, footage captured by CCTV of the Bayesian yacht’s 250-foot mast sinking astounded nautical engineers with the speed at which the boat went down.
Mike Lynch’s wife, Angela Bacaras and 14 others of the 22 people who were aboard the Bayesian yacht survived and were rescued.
Baracas lost both her husband and 18-year-old daughter Hannah Lynch in the accident, and has reportedly be racked with survivor’s guilt.
Was all of this a bizarre spat of coincidences — or something more?
The investigation into the Bayesian yacht’s sinking is still underway, and may reveal more about what went on in the months ahead. As for the lawsuit: HP said they will now be pursing Mike Lynch’s estate for damages.
