Bayesian captain ‘says he did everything he could to save passengers & abandoned no one’ as he leaves Italy after horror
THE CAPTAIN of the Bayesian has insisted he did everything he could to save those who died in the tragic shipwreck, sources close to him have said.
James Cutfield, 51, is being investigated for manslaughter as friends told local outlet Corriere that he is living through the darkest days of his life.
The unnamed sources close to Cutfield said he insists he did everything possible to save those onboard, both passengers and crew, and didn’t abandon any of them.
But as the boat took on more and more water, he couldn’t move properly on the yacht.
The £14million vessel was caught up in a storm off the coast of northern Sicily on August 19, capsizing and sinking to the sea floor in mere minutes.
Of the 22 onboard, 15 survived and seven died including Brit billionaire Mike Lynch and his daughter Hannah along with yacht chef Recaldo Thomas.
Kiwi Cutfield, along with two other members of his crew, are being investigated by Italian authorities for culpable shipwreck and multiple manslaughter.
Prosecutors are probing ship engineer Tim Parker-Eaton, from Clophill, Beds, and sailor Matthew Griffith, 22 under the same charges.
The investigation does not imply guilt or mean formal charges will be brought against any of the men.
Cutfield, who lost his passport in the tragedy, was given a copy by officials so he could leave Italy with his wife and head home to Mallorca this week.
Under Italian maritime laws, the full responsibility for the welfare of a ship, its crew, and passengers lies with the captain of a vessel.
Cutfield’s lawyers revealed how the skipper was too “shaken up” to answer questions from officials on Tuesday at a hotel in Palermo.
Solicitor Aldo Mordiglia told The Times he had “exercised his right to remain silent”.
He added: “There were two reasons. He is understandably very shaken up, and secondly, us lawyers were only appointed yesterday and we need to acquire information we do not have in order to defend him.”
Crew member Griffith is understood to have been on watch the night of the tragedy, a judicial source told Reuters on Wednesday.
Parker-Eaton is suspected of having failed to protect the engine room and operating systems when it was hit by a storm.
Reports suggest crew bedrooms have been searched, with at least two phones seized.
The wreck survivors, including Lynch’s wife Angela Bacares, 57, left Sicily in a private jet on Sunday, with most of the crew also set to leave after being grilled by investigators.
At a press conference at the Termini Imerese Courthouse on Saturday, Chief Prosecutor Ambrogio Cartosio said there may have been “behaviours that were not perfectly in order with regard to the responsibility everybody had.”
His team will probe if hatches were left open, allowing water to flood in.
They will also look into whether the crew raised the alarm before escaping.
He vowed to “discover how much they knew and to what extent all the people (passengers) were warned.”
Mr Cartosio added: “There could be in fact the question of homicide. But this is the beginning of the inquiry, we cannot exclude anything at all…We will establish each element’s (crew) responsibility.
“For me, it is probable that offences were committed — that it could be a case of manslaughter.”
Inside The Bayesian's final 16 minutes
By Ellie Doughty, Foreign News Reporter
Data recovered from the Bayesian’s Automatic Identification System (AIS) breaks down exactly how it sank in a painful minute-by-minute timeline.
At 3.50am on Monday August 19 the Bayesian began to shake “dangerously” during a fierce storm, Italian outlet Corriere revealed.
Just minutes later at 3.59am the boat’s anchor gave way, with a source saying the data showed there was “no anchor left to hold”.
After the ferocious weather ripped away the boat’s mooring it was dragged some 358 metres through the water.
By 4am it had began to take on water and was plunged into a blackout, indicating that the waves had reached its generator or even engine room.
At 4.05am the Bayesian fully disappeared underneath the waves.
An emergency GPS signal was finally emitted at 4.06am to the coastguard station in Bari, a city nearby, alerting them that the vessel had sunk.
Early reports suggested the disaster struck around 5am local time off the coast of Porticello Harbour in Palermo, Sicily.
The new data pulled from the boat’s AIS appears to suggest it happened an hour earlier at around 4am.
Some 15 of the 22 onboard were rescued, 11 of them scrambling onto an inflatable life raft that sprung up on the deck.
A smaller nearby boat – named Sir Robert Baden Powell – then helped take those people to shore.