Six presumed dead after sinking of superyacht

Six people are now presumed dead after the superyacht they were onboard sank in a sudden, violent storm off the coast of Sicily.

- Jamie Grierson, Lorenzo Tondo and Matthew Weaver

Divers yesterday tried in vain to gain access to the inside of the sunken 56-metre luxury vessel Bayesian, where rescue crews believe those missing may have been trapped.

Those unaccounted for are the tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch, his teenage daughter Hannah Lynch, the Morgan Stanley International bank chairman, Jonathan Bloomer, his wife, Judy Bloomer, the lawyer Chris Morvillo and his wife, Neda Morvillo.

Rescuers said they were working on the assumption that the boat sank quickly after being hit by a waterspout in a storm at about 5am on Monday. Vincenzo Zagarola of the Italian coastguard confirmed there had been no sign of the missing passengers more than 36 hours into the rescue mission.

He said: "We do not exclude that they are not inside the boat, but we know the boat sank quickly. We suppose that the six people missing may not have had time to get out." Asked about the likelihood of them being alive, he said: "Never say never, but reasonably the answer should be not."

The national director of Italy's firefighting department divers, Giuseppe Petrone, told the Guardian his team of specialist divers had managed to locate a breach in the boat's hull and was working to open a passage to reach the cabins, where they hoped to find the bodies of the missing.

The divers - who have arrived from Rome, Sassari, Cagliari and Palermo - are hampered by debris obstructing the boat's cabins and they need to surface after 11 minutes because the wreck is lying about 50 metres below the surface.