Search continues for final missing body on Bayesian

Divers searching for six missing people following the sinking of a superyacht off Sicily's coast have recovered five bodies, Italian authorities said on Thursday.

There were four Britons and two Americans left missing after the luxury Bayesian yacht sank during a violent storm at dawn on Monday.

They were UK tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch, his teenage daughter Hannah, Morgan Stanley International bank chairman Jonathan Bloomer and his wife Judy, and Clifford Chance lawyer Chris Morvillo and his wife Neda.

Italian news agency ANSA and state broadcaster RAI News report that the four bodies recovered on Wednesday belonged to Bloomer and Morvillo and their respective wives, however authorities have yet to confirm the identities.

Italian media reported that the fifth body brought ashore on Thursday morning belonged to Mike Lynch, with the body of his 18-year-old daughter Hannah still unaccounted for.

There were 10 crew members and 12 passengers onboard the British-flagged yacht when it was hit by a waterspout, similar to a tornado, as it lay anchored just off Porticello, east of Palermo.

There were 15 survivors who were thrown from the deck into the sea before the luxury yacht sank to a depth of about 50 metres. The body of the yacht's chef, Recaldo Thomas, was recovered on Monday.

As prosecutors investigate whether the captain and crew took all the necessary safety measures to prevent the disaster, questions remain over how the luxury yacht sank.

Giovanni Costantino, founder and CEO of The Italian Sea Group, the parent company of Perini Navi which built the Bayesian in Viareggio in 2008, told Corriere della Sera that the yacht was "unsinkable" and suggested that human error might be to blame.

The Bayesian was owned by Revtom, a firm controlled by Mike Lynch's wife Angela Bacares who was among the 15 survivors of the tragedy.

Known as the "British Bill Gates", Lynch was reportedly celebrating his recent acquittal in a high-profile US court case when the Bayesian sank.

Lynch, 59, had been accused by Hewlett-Packard (HP) of inflating the value of his software company Autonomy which he sold to the tech giant for $11 billion in 2011.

The entrepreneur, who always denied any wrongdoing, was acquitted in the US in June on multiple fraud charges, over which he had faced two decades in jail.

In a strange coincidence, Stephen Chamberlain, Autonomy's former vice-president and Lynch's co-defendant in the US fraud case, died after being hit by a car while out running on Saturday.