One minute the superyacht Bayesian was there. The next it had sunk.

A witness described how the £30 million boat simply disappeared from view, battered by strong winds off the coast of Sicily.

As the sun rose over the fishing village of Porticello, the havoc caused in the wake of what some described as a tornado had become clear. One person dead and six people missing from a yacht that now rests 200ft under the sea.

Mike Lynch, a British tech tycoon, is among those missing. Angela Bacares, his wife, was rescued.

It was only in June that Mr Lynch had been cleared of fraud charges in a US court, after he was found not guilty on all counts of an accusation of inflating the value of Autonomy, the company he sold in 2011 for £8.6 billion to Hewlett-Packard, the US tech giant.

In the wake of his acquittal, Mr Lynch, a tech genius who has been described as Britain’s Bill Gates, is thought to have treated his family and staff at his venture capital firm Invoke Capital to a Mediterranean cruise.

There were 15 survivors, rescued by the Italian coast guard from a life raft put to sea as the 183ft yacht went down. Among them was a one-year-old British baby called Sophie who was saved by her mother, named by one Italian newspaper as Charlotte Golunski, in the most dramatic fashion.

In the dark waters of the Mediterranean, Ms Golunski, an Oxford graduate and senior associate at Invoke, had fought to prevent her child from drowning. While all around her she could hear the screams of the terrified passengers and crew, she kept her grip on her baby to stop her from slipping beneath the waves.

The child’s mother told Republicca, the Italian newspaper: “I held her afloat with all my strength, my arms stretched upwards to keep her from drowning. 

“It was all dark. In the water I couldn’t keep my eyes open. I screamed for help but all I could hear around me was the screams of others.”

Ms Golunski told Giornale Di Sicilia: “For two seconds I lost the baby in the sea, then I immediately held her again in the fury of the waves. I held her tightly, tightly to me, while the sea was raging. So many were screaming. Fortunately, the lifeboat inflated and 11 of us managed to get on it.”

Speaking from the Giovanni di Cristina paediatric hospital in Palermo, Ms Golunski recalled how she “can still hear her little girl crying in her ears as they floated in the waves and their holiday sailboat sank”.

She said she was amazed the child, who had just turned one, had emerged from the water unscathed and without a scratch on her.

The mother reportedly suffered “a graze on her chest that required a few stitches”. She then reportedly phoned her husband, James, who had also survived the disaster, and was being treated for bruises to his limbs and chest at a separate hospital in Palermo.

According to Republicca, as soon as James heard his wife’s voice, he asked: “How is the little girl? Is she there with you?” They were all due to be discharged from hospital on Monday afternoon and will be reunited at a local hotel.

Dr Domenico Cipolla, head of the emergency room at the children’s hospital, told local media: “She [Charlotte] told me that while they were sleeping, at a certain point the yacht overturned due to the tornado, and they found themselves in the water. Some of them immediately managed to get onto the lifeboat. And some, evidently, didn’t make it.

“She told me that she was in the water for no more than two, three seconds, and she managed to save the baby, to keep her arms up, and then, with the others, they were able to get on the lifeboat, and then, I think, they were rescued by the coast guard.

“They are all in good condition. We managed to get the parents to talk (to each other) on the phone, all the doctors and nurses were all very moved, also because the little girl is fine, the prognosis is good and we are carrying out tests just to be careful.”

The violent storm had struck without warning. The Bayesian had been moored offshore, visible with its huge aluminium mast, from Porticello. The yacht had sailed to Porticello from Cefalu, another historic seaside village on Sicliy’s northern shore.

A fisherman, from the safety of his home on shore in Porticello, watched the disaster unfold. Pietro Asciutto told one local news agency: “I was at home when the tornado hit. I immediately closed all the windows. Then I saw the boat, it had only one mast, it was very large. I saw it sink suddenly.”

He added: “I think the tornado came from Porticello. Shortly after I went down to the Bay of Santa Nicolicchia to get a better look at what was happening. The boat was still floating, then suddenly it disappeared. I saw it sink with my own eyes.”

As the yacht started to sink, a member of the crew fired a distress flare into the night sky, its red trail alerting the boats moored nearby.

Karsten Borner, a captain on a Dutch-flagged sailing ship also moored off Porticello, went to the yacht’s rescue, pulling survivors from the lifeboat. He had first struggled to keep his own yacht under control as the storm hit.

“This morning we got this strong hurricane gust and we had to start the engine to keep the ship in an angled position, and we watched the ship behind us not to touch them and we managed to keep the ship in position, and after the storm was over, we noticed that the ship behind us was gone,” said Mr Borner. “And then we saw a red flare so my first mate and I went to the position, and we found this life raft drifting.

“Fifteen people inside. Four people were injured, three heavily injured and we brought them to our ship. Then we communicated with the coast guard and after some time, the coast guard came and later picked up injured people.”

Where the Bayesia had been there was now no trace. Emergency divers, according to the local rescue centre in Sicily, found wreckage at a depth of 187ft where “through the portholes they saw corpses”.

Vigili del Fuoco, Italy’s fire and rescue service, confirmed the body of a male had been recovered from the yacht. In a post on X, formerly Twitter, it said the “lifeless body of a man [has been] recovered from the wreck by the divers.”

It posted the statement alongside a clip of the rescue effort with footage showing helicopters, boats and divers carrying out a search operation.

Investigators will now try to work out why the Bayesian sank when other ships in the vicinity remained afloat. The yacht had the world’s tallest aluminium mast at almost 250ft.

It is owned by Revtom, a company registered on the Isle of Man. According to company documents filed in April, Revtom’s legal owner is Angela Bacares, wife of Mr Lynch.

A former chief stewardess, who had previously crewed the Bayesian, described news of the yacht’s sinking as “strange” because the boat had always withstood the choppiest of seas.

Monica Jensen, 48, told The Telegraph: “It seems a bit strange. We have been in bad weather with it, crossed the Atlantic. It’s been all over. These things definitely don’t happen very often.”

Ms Jensen worked on the superyacht from November 2018 to October 2020 for a private owner and said the boat had since been sold.

She accompanied the boat on two Caribbean seasons and cruised around Italy, Malta, Greece and the Balearics.

Ms Jensen said the crew would have been well-drilled on the evacuation process.

She said: “You can’t work on a boat without the right certificates, training and you do drills monthly.”

In a statement, the Italian coast guard said: “This morning at about 5am, following a violent gale, a 56-metre yacht named Bayesian and flying the UK flag sank off Porticello.

“The first shipwrecked were rescued by a boat in the immediate vicinity and brought ashore by four coast guard vessels, which promptly responded to the scene from Porticello, Termini Imerese and Palermo.

“Initial information received from the yacht crew indicated that 22 people (10 crew members and 12 passengers) were on board the yacht.

“There are currently 15 people rescued and seven missing (one crew member and six passengers), of British, American and Canadian nationality.

“Of the people recovered, eight were transported to local hospitals. The vessel is reported to have sunk on a seabed of about 50 metres.

“The search continues unabated with naval, air and underwater resources, including the Messina coast guard diving unit.”

Filippo Tripoli, the mayor of Bagheria in Sicily, said: “This morning, off the coast of Santa Flavia, a foreign boat sank due to bad weather, 15 people recovered and seven missing. Already all the police forces and emergency services are operational and our Red Cross volunteers are present.”

Bartolomeo Lo Coco, who owns the Tosto Chiosco cafe in Porticello, said it was common for rental yachts and boats to sail through the fishing village, adding that the captain should not be blamed for what had occurred because the weather had been so unpredictable.

“This was a terrible misfortune that no one could have foreseen. It is nobody’s fault, the captain should not be blamed.”

He added: “We are in mourning here, all of us are in mourning. We have never seen anything like this, ever. There is a very serious tragedy.”

His kiosk, which serves snacks and sandwiches, overlooks the water in Porticello.

He said the tornado had not only caused the tragic accident but also widespread damage in the port.

He added: “This wasn’t a thunderstorm, this was a whirlwind. It happened all of a sudden. There is a lot of damage here.  Boats were dislodged from their moorings and restaurant tables were broken within minutes and sent flying several metres.”