Reports from Italy on the Bayesian tragedy

With thanks for the information from Corriera della Sera

Corriere della Sera 25.8.2024 headline Bayesian shipwreck, "no crew alarm to 12 guests". Emergency flare fired when the sailing ship had already sank

PORTICELLO (PALERMO) 'No one gave us the alarm'.

The passengers who survived the shipwreck of the Bayesiantold this to the investigators who heard them on the record. The only alarm that appears to have been raised by the crew of the sailing ship was that of the emergency flare, at 4.38am, when by then the superyacht had sunk 50 metres and laid on the seabed.

Before that flare, nothing. Not a sailor running to knock on the cabins, not the order to go on deck, not directions shouted over the loudspeaker. Those who found themselves outside their cabins and saved themselves did so on their own initiative: because they were frightened by the ship's constant tilting (like the two Englishmen with their small child in tow), because they went upstairs to see what was going on, or because, when the water had reached the sleeping quarters, they made it out in time.

An inexplicable silence, that of the crew on the alarm. Especially since the New Zealand captain, James Cutfield, had posted a bridge watch, i.e. one of his men on sentry duty during the night.

How was it possible that the guard did not see the storm coming?

The Automatic Identification System (AIS) tracking says that at 3.50am the sailing ship was already battling the wind and water. The storm - or downburst, as the prosecutor specifies - was shaking it while it was at anchor. This can be clearly seen from the 'squiggle' drawn on the charts: the Bayesian is held to the chain by the anchor and 'dances' a lot, moving frantically for the few metres that the anchor allows it.

The Ais shows that in the next few minutes theanchor no longer holds and the boat ends up out of control, pushed by the wind towards the point where it will sink.

Only a few minutes remain before the disaster: at 4.05 the last centimetre of the sailing ship ends up underwater and a few seconds later (it's 4.06) its emergency device 'Epirb' detaches itself from the top of the mast and automatically sends the alarm, for sinking, to the 'Cospas Sarsat' satellite station in Bari, managed by the Coast Guard.

Why between 3.50 and 4.05, but especially at the beginning of this time, when the Bayesian was at anchor, were the passengers in the cabins not herded into the safer area of the saloon?

Commander Cutfield in his initial contact with the Coast Guard said generically 'we have 12 people at sea'. He did not specify whether they were in the hull or not. He spoke, already safe as were almost all his crew (only the cook died), from the life raft of the sailing ship.

There, on that raft, which opened automatically, 11 people got on at first of the 15 who were saved. The other four swam to it from the point where the sailing ship sank.

The law of the sea, but above all the code of navigation, would have it that the captain was the last to leave the ship. Was he?

Was he one of the four who reached the raft when the Bayesian had sunk?

'That is one of the aspects we are investigating,' said yesterday public prosecutor Raffaele Cammarano.

And again on the crew: the public prosecutor's office makes it known that none of them were 'subjected to an alcohol test and drugtest. They were very tried and under shock and needed treatment'.

All of them have been in the Domina Zagarella hotel in Santa Flavia since dawn on Monday (the site of the shipwreck, Porticello, is a hamlet of Santa Flavia). It was there that the public prosecutor and the Coast Guard men took the first statements on the tragedy.

The captain has so far been heard as a person informed of the facts and the chief prosecutor of Termini Imerese himself, Ambrogio Cartosio, announced yesterday that 'we should ask him some more questions'.

Theoretically, he, like all the others, would not be required to stay in our country for the investigation but, says the prosecutor, 'we expect that before leaving Italy he will wait for the outcome of the investigations'. Until yesterday he was not under investigation, but it would not be a surprise to discover that he is at the end of his next deposition.

His name is at the top of the list of possible next inquiries. It will then be seen whether and what role the other crew members may have played in the shipwreck.

They are second-in-command Tijs Koopmans, born in 1991; boatswain Htun Mynt Kyaw, born in Myanmar in 1985; sailor Leo Eppel, Spanish, 20 years old; another sailor Matthew Griffiths, 22 years old, French; chief engineer Tim Parker Eaton, born in 1968, British. And then three stewardesses: Sasha Murray, 29, from Ireland; Katjia Chicken, 23, from Germany; and Lea Randall, 20, from South Africa. ?There is the enquiry looming over their lives, of course. But it is nothing compared to the memories of that night.

Translation vrom Italian to English (British) via DeepL

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