THE CAPTAIN of the Bayesian superyacht is due to leave Italy within hours as a police probe into manslaughter continues.
Skipper James Cutfield, 51, came under investigation for shipwreck and manslaughter on Monday, a week after the luxury vessel sank off the coast of Sicily killing seven people.
Cutfield, who lost his passport in the tragedy, has been given a copy by officials so he can leave Italy with his wife and head home to Mallorca.
He is expected to leave by Friday morning at the latest, Italian outlet Giornale Di Sicilia reports.
Prosecutors are also probing two other members of the crew – engineer Tim Parker-Eaton, from Clophill, Beds, and sailor Matthew Griffith, 22.
The investigation into culpable shipwreck and multiple manslaughter does not imply guilt or necessarily mean formal charges will be brought against the three men.
The luxury 184ft superyacht, worth £14million, sank while anchored off the coast of Porticello on August 19 after it was caught up in a freak storm.
Of the 22 onboard, 15 survived and seven died including Brit billionaire Mike Lynch and his daughter Hannah along with yacht chef Recaldo Thomas.
The remaining four victims were two married couples invited on the trip by the Lynch family who were celebrating Mike’s recent acquittal in a US fraud case.
Cutfield’s lawyers this week revealed how he 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.
Under Italian maritime laws, the full responsibility for the welfare of a ship, its crew, and passengers lies with the captain of a vessel.
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.
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.
Divers spent five days scouring the Bayesian wreck to retrieve the bodies of six missing passengers last week.
They found Mike Lynch and his four guests, Chris and Neda Morvillo and Jonathan and Judy Bloomer, in the first cabin on the left.
Lynch’s 18-year-old daughter Hannah was the last passenger to be discovered in the third cabin.
Officials said the victims had scrambled to reach air pockets in the yacht as it sank stern-first before rolling onto its right side on the seabed.
Investigators are understood to be rifling through CCTV footage and photographs taken by locals on the night of the storm to understand why the boat sank so quickly.
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.”
