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For a 2,500-year-old religion, Buddhism seems remarkably compatible with our scientifically oriented culture, which may explain its surging popularity here in America. Over the last 15 years, the number of Buddhist centers in the United States has more than doubled, to well over 1,000. As many as 4 million Americans now practice Buddhism, surpassing the total of Episcopalians. Of these Buddhists, half have post-graduate degrees, according to one survey. Recently, convergences between science and Buddhism have been explored in a slew of books—including Zen and the Brain and The Psychology of Awakening—and scholarly meetings. Next fall Harvard will host a colloquium titled “Investigating the Mind,” where leading cognitive scientists will swap theories with the Dalai Lama. Just the other week the New York Times hailed the “rapprochement between modern science and ancient [Buddhist] wisdom.”

Four years ago, I joined a Buddhist meditation class and began talking to (and reading books by) intellectuals sympathetic to Buddhism. Eventually, and regretfully, I concluded that Buddhism is not much more rational than the Catholicism I lapsed from in my youth; Buddhism’s moral and metaphysical worldview cannot easily be reconciled with science—or, more generally, with modern humanistic values.

For many, a chief selling point of Buddhism is its supposed de-emphasis of supernatural notions such as immortal souls and God. Buddhism “rejects the theological impulse,” the philosopher Owen Flanagan declares approvingly in The Problem of the Soul. Actually, Buddhism is functionally theistic, even if it avoids the “G” word. Like its parent religion Hinduism, Buddhism espouses reincarnation, which holds that after death our souls are re-instantiated in new bodies, and karma, the law of moral cause and effect. Together, these tenets imply the existence of some cosmic judge who, like Santa Claus, tallies up our naughtiness and niceness before rewarding us with rebirth as a cockroach or as a saintly lama.

Western Buddhists usually downplay these supernatural elements, insisting that Buddhism isn’t so much a religion as a practical method for achieving happiness. They depict Buddha as a pragmatist who eschewed metaphysical speculation and focused on reducing human suffering. As the Buddhist scholar Robert Thurman put it, Buddhism is an “inner science,” an empirical discipline for fulfilling our minds’ potential. The ultimate goal is the state of preternatural bliss, wisdom, and moral grace sometimes called enlightenment—Buddhism’s version of heaven, except that you don’t have to die to get there.

The major vehicle for achieving enlightenment is meditation, touted by both Buddhists and alternative-medicine gurus as a potent way to calm and comprehend our minds. The trouble is, decades of research have shown meditation’s effects to be highly unreliable, as James Austin, a neurologist and Zen Buddhist, points out in Zen and Brain. Yes, it can reduce stress, but, as it turns out, no more so than simply sitting still does. Meditation can even exacerbate depression, anxiety, and other negative emotions in certain people.

The insights imputed to meditation are questionable, too. Meditation, the brain researcher Francisco Varela told me before he died in 2001, confirms the Buddhist doctrine of anatta, which holds that the self is an illusion. Varela contended that anatta has also been corroborated by cognitive science, which has discovered that our perception of our minds as discrete, unified entities is an illusion foisted upon us by our clever brains. In fact, all that cognitive science has revealed is that the mind is an emergent phenomenon, which is difficult to explain or predict in terms of its parts; few scientists would equate the property of emergence with nonexistence, as anatta does.

Much more dubious is Buddhism’s claim that perceiving yourself as in some sense unreal will make you happier and more compassionate. Ideally, as the British psychologist and Zen practitioner Susan Blackmore writes in The Meme Machine, when you embrace your essential selflessness, “guilt, shame, embarrassment, self-doubt, and fear of failure ebb away and you become, contrary to expectation, a better neighbor.” But most people are distressed by sensations of unreality, which are quite common and can be induced by drugs, fatigue, trauma, and mental illness as well as by meditation.

Even if you achieve a blissful acceptance of the illusory nature of your self, this perspective may not transform you into a saintly bodhisattva, brimming with love and compassion for all other creatures. Far from it—and this is where the distance between certain humanistic values and Buddhism becomes most apparent. To someone who sees himself and others as unreal, human suffering and death may appear laughably trivial. This may explain why some Buddhist masters have behaved more like nihilists than saints. Chogyam Trungpa, who helped introduce Tibetan Buddhism to the United States in the 1970s, was a promiscuous drunk and bully, and he died of alcohol-related illness in 1987. Zen lore celebrates the sadistic or masochistic behavior of sages such as Bodhidharma, who is said to have sat in meditation for so long that his legs became gangrenous.

What’s worse, Buddhism holds that enlightenment makes you morally infallible—like the pope, but more so. Even the otherwise sensible James Austin perpetuates this insidious notion. ” ‘Wrong’ actions won’t arise,” he writes, “when a brain continues truly to express the self-nature intrinsic to its [transcendent] experiences.” Buddhists infected with this belief can easily excuse their teachers’ abusive acts as hallmarks of a “crazy wisdom” that the unenlightened cannot fathom.

But what troubles me most about Buddhism is its implication that detachment from ordinary life is the surest route to salvation. Buddha’s first step toward enlightenment was his abandonment of his wife and child, and Buddhism (like Catholicism) still exalts male monasticism as the epitome of spirituality. It seems legitimate to ask whether a path that turns away from aspects of life as essential as sexuality and parenthood is truly spiritual. From this perspective, the very concept of enlightenment begins to look anti-spiritual: It suggests that life is a problem that can be solved, a cul-de-sac that can be, and should be, escaped.

Some Western Buddhists have argued that principles such as reincarnation, anatta, and enlightenment are not essential to Buddhism. In Buddhism Without Beliefs and The Faith To Doubt, the British teacher Stephen Batchelor eloquently describes his practice as a method for confronting—rather than transcending—the often painful mystery of life. But Batchelor seems to have arrived at what he calls an “agnostic” perspective in spite of his Buddhist training—not because of it. When I asked him why he didn’t just call himself an agnostic, Batchelor shrugged and said he sometimes wondered himself.

All religions, including Buddhism, stem from our narcissistic wish to believe that the universe was created for our benefit, as a stage for our spiritual quests. In contrast, science tells us that we are incidental, accidental. Far from being the raison d’être of the universe, we appeared through sheer happenstance, and we could vanish in the same way. This is not a comforting viewpoint, but science, unlike religion, seeks truth regardless of how it makes us feel. Buddhism raises radical questions about our inner and outer reality, but it is finally not radical enough to accommodate science’s disturbing perspective. The remaining question is whether any form of spirituality can.

Greetings all —

Hope everyone’s as well as can be out there, after The Election. Personally, I spent much of last week sleep-deprived and fried, having come off a week-long flu (during which I streamed a deluge of horror movies) right into the election week chaos. And then I immediately got another nasty cold—the joys have having small kids in school—so I remain uncertain as to what is actually real, and what is a feverish, semi-hallucinated daydream, and I’m just going to revel in that for a while.

I’m working on a longer post about what the coming Trump years might hold for the tech world—the vast majority of it concerning, from an anticipated rise in surveillance tools required to enact mass deportation, the further entrenchment of tech monopolies, Elon Musk’s incipient reign as the nation’s most powerful government tech contractor, and a frenzied boom in crypto and defense tech that has already begun—but in the meantime, I want to touch on a story that’s cause for a bit of hope, in spite of everything.

This newsletter is made possible by subscribers—it’s free to read, but I’m only able to do it thanks to paying supporters. If you find this stuff useful, please consider chipping in:

I’m talking, like so many other tech pundits, about the ascent of Bluesky. The decentralized social network hit 15 million users last week, and claimed the no. 1 spot on the App Store, above ChatGPT and TikTok. At time of writing, it still held that spot, all thanks to users fleeing Musk’s X-né-Twitter, the introduction of some good and innovative features, and the refreshing sense that someone is actually successfully building a place on the internet with users, not consumers, in mind. In 2024, that is enough to qualify it as a nearly utopian project.

So many people were signing up for Bluesky every day last week that its servers were overloaded for intermittent stretches.

Bluesky has spent the last two years or so hovering on the verge of a breakthrough, primarily because it’s the go-to home for Twitter and X refugees. Musk bought Twitter in 2022; when he started re-platforming users previously banned for hate speech and harassment, boosting his own feed, introducing pay-to-play features, and so on, many fled the platform. Bluesky, which was co-founded by Jack Dorsey, had its first big moment in spring 2023, when a group of power users set up shop. I wrote about that moment for the Times; Bluesky felt freewheeling, weird, and open to low-stakes posting in a way social media hadn’t in years.

Since then, it’s grown in spurts and starts, attracted dedicated users, and enjoyed boom periods whenever Musk does something divisive, like taking X offline in Brazil rather than meet with regulators, or removing its blocking feature. But what’s happening now is on a different level. X was already a toxic cesspool, brimming with misogyny, spam porn accounts, and door-to-door AI salesmen. But the fact that Musk helped elect Trump became too much for many users to bear—users are defecting, closing their accounts, and heading to Threads, Mastodon, or Bluesky.

It’s become a badge of honor on Bluesky to post your X account deactivation screenshots, and I’ve lost hundreds, many thousands, of followers since the exodus began. And I’m happy for them! X is a mostly miserable place. But it’s also, as Malcolm Harris once remarked to me over coffee, where the fight is. And that’s never been more true; if you are a semi-unhinged person (like me) who uses the platform to comment, criticize or otherwise yell about the parade of injustices handed down by tech companies and billionaires, it’s still probably the best place to do that; its where your commentary on such matters is most likely to be seen where it might matter. (Whether or not posting has any such utility at all is a question for another day; I have been the butt of much scoffing and many an argument because I actually think it does, to a point.)

But for all other modes of posting—jokes, historical anecdotes, community-building, general news-sharing—Bluesky is better. Much better. And that’s where I hope to be spending most of my time going forward. And there are a few things fueling the boom this go round, besides the fact that it’s a Twitter clone that is not owned by Elon Musk.

Mostly, the starter packs. Bluesky lets users curate easily accessible and shareable lists of recommended users for those just joining the platform. This is a kind of ‘why don’t we put wheels on luggage’ sort of innovation that, in hindsight, it’s wild that no other social network had thought to do before. It serves two purposes: It gives new users a quick onramp onto the platform, and it gives users included in the packs new audiences; everyone wins. The biggest challenge any social media site faces is successfully activating the network effect—sites like Bluesky are only as good as the user bases they can attract, and sustain.

And thus the question of the week was: Does Bluesky have the juice? Max Read asked precisely that in his newsletter, concluding, essentially, that it has some juice but perhaps not quite enough to become whatever Twitter once was:

Bluesky acts more like a particularly large Discord server--a place to socialize, bullshit, banter, and kill time--than it does like a proper Twitter replacement. For many people I think this is fine; I’m not sure how much the world needs a “Twitter replacement” anyway. But the distinction is still important. Part of what’s made Twitter so attractive to journalists is that it’s relatively easy to convince yourself that it’s a map of the world. Bluesky, smaller and more homogenous, is harder to mistake as a scrolling representation of the national or global psyche--which makes it much healthier for media junkies, but also much less attractive.

Aja Romero and Adam Clark Estes are more sanguine at Vox, noting that it delivers the fun, weird vibes of old Twitter, and “could usher in a brighter future for social media.” Ryan Broderick goes further: “I’m comfortable saying that Bluesky won the title of The Next Twitter... Though, there is a bigger question that hangs over Bluesky. Which is, exactly how big can a text-based, non-algorithmic feed actually get?”

Those constraints are, in part, exactly what makes Bluesky appealing, Jason Koebler notes at 404 Media, in a piece called “the Great Migration to Bluesky Gives Me Hope for the Future of the Internet”:

the energy on Bluesky is exciting, that the app and website are very usable, and that, as a journalist, I appreciate a platform that does not and says it will not punish links in any algorithm and which mostly operates in reverse chronological order… What’s happening on Bluesky right now feels organic and it feels real in a way no other Twitter replacement has felt so far, and it feels better than X.com has been ever since Elon Musk took over.

I have used Bluesky a little bit here and there since logging on a year and a half ago, and while it’s always felt better, it’s also been lacking that element that Read highlights; the feeling of universality; that you really are interacting with a broad spectrum of voices. Now it’s getting closer, even if it still maintains an oversampling of a certain type of user—left-liberal, online hyper-literate, etc.

But even more than its relative success, what’s worth underlining, to me, is that it is succeeding amidst a tech ecosystem that is all-in on data extraction, algorithmically optimized ad tech, and the mass distribution of AI content. This is why so many journalists and techies and posters are cheering so loudly for the platform. (Also because the starter packs helped many of them acquire thousands of followers overnight, thus motivating them to write about them; another reason they are genius.)

Bluesky is building something for real people; it’s actually listening to what those users want, and tailoring their product and experience accordingly. Wild. And so you get things like a generally real-time, reverse chronological feed, a very customizable user experience, with a wide array of options for deciding how you want your content to be seen and who you want to be able to follow you, and you get responsive content moderation, even though this is surely abetted by the lower volume of posts.

You get promises that Bluesky will not throttle links, like X does, so creators and writers can share their work without fear of an algorithm penalizing them for doing so. That this is a selling point, three decades into the commercial internet—we will not punish you for sharing hyperlinks—is bleak in its own right, but that’s where we are. Bluesky also has a laudable enough stance on AI, stating that it does not train any AI models on posts, and does not intend to.

All this stuff—user customization, creator-friendly policies, and simple-but-smart ideas like the starter packs—amounts to a blast of fresh air to the face of an online world that is dominated utterly by extractive tech monopolies who long ago waved goodbye to any nominal notion about caring about the user. Mark Zuckerberg just said bring on the AI slop. X is an intensely hostile user experience—share a link to your writing, your artwork, a news article, anything, and its algorithm shows the post to fewer people. That’s to say nothing of the nonexistent content moderation and rampant racism. Google is flooding its search result pages with unreliable AI summaries, further diminishing the standing of news and human-written articles.

The online world has become so hostile to users that Bluesky’s pitch of ‘here is a straightforward feed of text-based user-generated posts that we promise not to mess with’ is revelatory. Its scaling model and raison d’être are a very rejection of the platforms that have colonized the rest of our digital lives, and relentlessly commodified them. No wonder everyone seems to be rooting for its success, even if there are, pointedly, no guarantees those ideals will remain in place.

Because look, Bluesky is far from perfect. It recently raised a $15 million series A funding round led by the ominously-named Blockchain Capital, though leadership promised it would “never hyperfinancialize the user experience” with NFTs or crypto, and stressed it would remain focused on the user. And I wish it would go as far as Mastodon in its federation, allowing users full interoperability, as Cory Doctorow has called for. (Mastodon is, we should note, by any count, the more properly utopian project; more user control, no weird VC cash, etc—for me, at least, it just sadly doesn’t have the same juice. Most of my network simply isn’t there!)

I wish, as I posted on Bluesky, that it would do even more than that, and take this bright opportunity to expand on what it’s already started—and work to ensure that the user experience that has generated so much excitement won’t erode when Blockchain Capital wants to see some returns on its investment. Why not get wild here, and show how truly committed to the user you are: Maybe introduce a mechanism for users to have a direct say in platform governance matters? A Bluesky User Board? Or instead of looking to monetize via paid features or ads, test voluntary subscription offerings, as Signal and Wikipedia do? Lots of users have already signaled they’d pay a monthly fee to keep Bluesky pristine. Look, a luddite can dream here.

I’m in agreement with Rob Horning and Nathan Jurgenson—the better question than ‘is Bluesky the next Twitter’ is ‘what else might Bluesky become’? What possibilities are latent here? There is excitement over a text-based social media network, in 2024, the age of TikTok and streaming; how might that be channeled?

Bluesky is giving hope to people who spend long hours online precisely because it is purporting to be, and so far succeeding, at least in its very short lifespan, in being everything that big tech is not. No AI spam, no glitchy ad tech, no link throttling, no malignant billionaire owner. Bluesky is not just tapping into this wellspring of goodwill because it promises a return to the halcyon days of Twitter—but a return to the days before ossified, rent-seeking tech monopolies drove our collective online experience to hell.

David Hill is in his ninth decade. In a touching tribute to his late friend, he challenges some myths about ‘old farts’.

This seems like it would be a dry read, it's not.

For years, a small but heavily engaged community has gathered online, entirely dedicated to the goal of identifying a single elusive song. On Monday, following an exhaustive search, they announced they’d found it.

Now that "The Most Mysterious Song on the Internet” has been located, it leaves behind an entire subculture of “lostwave” music that stretches from cassette tapes to Spotify. Even amid their success, many investigators are unsure about what happens to the community now that its goal has been achieved. What happens to lost media once it’s been found?

We now know the song in question is called “Subways of Your Mind” by FEX, but until Monday, it had lived up to its sobriquet for 17 years. The song was recorded off the German radio station NDR in the early ’80s and was just a question mark on a cassette case until 2007, when it was digitized and posted to various Usenet newsgroups and music forums along with requests for the internet’s help in identifying the track. No one knew what it was.

A 2019 article in Rolling Stone tracks how the song’s ambiguity and retro charm helped draw in a community of music lovers and amateur researchers. The community would grow and shift along with the internet itself, moving from YouTube to Reddit to Discord, eventually coming back to Paul Baskerville, the DJ who would have played the song in the first place. He couldn’t find it in his collection of over 10,000 vinyl records, and talking to Rolling Stone, he admitted, “I don’t know what all the fuss is about [...] I don’t think it’s a particular [sic] interesting song.”

This is a relatively common reaction to lostwave, the general term for these unidentified pre-internet songs, which didn’t really have a niche before the search for “The Most Mysterious Song” carved one out. But for music lovers who are used to Genius and Shazam, an unidentified song is both a splinter in the mind and an opportunity to delve into a hidden, undigitized culture.

“Lostwave searches promote community collaboration and participation beyond the scope of digital platforms,” says Josh Chapdelaine, a professor of media studies at Queens College. “They provide people a chance to contribute to investigations that anyone with a critical approach can advance.”

The first advancement in years came in May, when a user on the buzzing Reddit community r/TheMysteriousSong found a reference to Hörfest, a contest for amateur bands the radio station held every year in Hamburg, Germany. “It was a very likely way to solve our riddle,” says Arne, a moderator of the subreddit who posts under the handle LordElend (Arne declined to give their last name, citing privacy concerns), “since this was a good explanation as to why an amateur band tape would have been aired on NDR, which usually had high standards.”

A search of local government archives turned up thousands of pages on Hörfest, but they wouldn’t be easy to comb through. “We realized that 800 bands, most obscure and not on Google, will need a larger group of researchers,” says Arne.

Soon, hundreds of people across multiple platforms were collaborating on extensive spreadsheets, listing band members, sounds, songs, and anything else they could find. One of these investigators, who posts using the handle marijn1412, found that a member of a band on the spreadsheets, Phret, had joined a different band called FEX. Getting in touch with the former members of FEX, they confirmed the song’s origin. They waited to announce the find publicly until the band was able to sign off and provide a clearer recording of the song.

“Subways of Your Mind” isn’t the only lost media mystery to be solved recently. In September, an image from a fabric pattern was traced back to its source. Back in June, another lostwave song known as “Everyone Knows That” was found after it had become a viral sound on TikTok. It may have been helped by a song from a popular YouTube video identified in November 2023.

These searches tend to be a lot less specific and focused than the Hörfest data, but no less organized or collaborative, since whether or not they can find the song, people are finding kindred spirits. “Lost media searches have shared community values,” says Chapdelaine, adding they’re “amplified by the dynamic of social media platforms. Platforms incentivize engagement. Lost media searches promote interactivity and participation.”

Which is why the story isn’t over, even if the so-called “final boss of lostwave” has fallen. Since other communities devoted to searches have since found what they were looking for, they’ve been folded into the larger lostwave and lost-media community. As Baskerville saw, it isn’t really about the song, it’s about the search, the sense of participating in a project that adds to cultural heritage—and, maybe, finding some songs so exclusive they haven’t been heard in decades.

Tech executives are rallying around nuclear energy to fuel the demands of the AI revolution.

From Amazon to Google, tech giants at the forefront of the AI boom are investing in companies building nuclear reactors and forming partnerships with energy providers to power their data centers.

Many of these companies are generating energy through nuclear fission, which involves splitting atoms from elements like uranium and plutonium to release energy. It's cleaner than fossil fuels and more reliable than solar. But fission can release harmful radioactive waste that needs to be disposed of safely and mining uranium can have deleterious effects on the environment.

The solution, in the view of a growing number of leaders in the tech industry, is nuclear fusion, which involves fusing the nuclei of two atoms to release energy. It's considered a safer method because it releases less radioactive waste and greenhouse gases.

Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates distilled the differences between fission and fusion on a recent episode of the Possible podcast. Fission, he said, is "where you take the big atoms like uranium, and as they split, you get energy." Fusion occurs when "you take the small atoms, primarily hydrogen, and as you put them together, you release energy."

Scientists have proven that nuclear fusion is feasible. Experiments at the National Ignition Facility in California over the last year, for instance, hit a milestone when they generated more energy than what was used. Fusion plants, in theory, could produce almost 4 million times as much energy as burning coal or oil — without carbon emissions. However, there are still obstacles to it becoming a widespread energy source.

Tritium, one of the hydrogen isotopes used in fusion reactions, is rare and expensive. It also has radioactive properties. Another challenge is that fusion requires extremely high temperatures, as high as the "center of the sun, millions of degrees," Gates said.

AI tools are now helping to make fusion a reality. Commonwealth Fusion Systems, in which Gates is an investor, is on track to have a system for fusion in 10 years, he said.

"But at some point, fusion energy will be extremely cheap, and it doesn't have the same waste problems that fission does," he said.

Gates, who is also an investor in another nuclear fusion company called Pacific Fusion — which launched in 2023 and announced a more than $900 million Series A funding round this month — believes supporting nuclear will help reduce clean energy costs.

"We, society as a whole, even though a lot more money is coming into it, we're still under-investing in fission and fusion, given that the value of cheap electricity specifically is so fundamental to society," he said.

Venture firm General Catalyst led the funding round for Pacific Fusion, which included participation from Gates's climate solutions investment fund, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, and individual investors like Citadel founder Ken Griffin, Stripe cofounder Patrick Collison, venture capitalist John Doerr, and Mustafa Suleyman, the head of Microsoft AI.

Other veterans in the industry are betting on an even shorter timeline for fusion technology to become a reality.

At TechCrunch Disrupt this week, venture capitalist Vinod Khosla said, "I'll take a bet with anybody, five years from now, we won't be talking about whether fusion is real or not."

He said he hopes that by then fusion will be proven as an economic possibility. "They're engineering all the systems to go directly into production without having to first prove the technology and then do the engineering," he said.

Crows in Vancouver: Unusual Attacks Spark Fear and Curiosity Amid Gathered Crowds

In recent months, residents in Vancouver have found themselves grappling with an unexpected problem: asymmetrical aggression from their local crow population. Lisa Joyce, a local woman, recounted a terrifying experience as crows dive-bombed her multiple times while she screamed for help during a crowded July fireworks celebration. “I’m not a fraidy-cat, I’m not generally nervous of wildlife,” Joyce explained, but the relentless attacks forced her to alter her daily commute to dodge the avian intruders.

Joyce’s plight is echoed in accounts from across North America, with more than 8,000 reports of crow attacks logged on the website CrowTrax, founded by local resident Jim O’Leary. While the aggression seems localized to Vancouver, similar incidents in Los Angeles and Brunswick, Maine, highlight a larger behavioral trend among these intelligent birds, known for their ability to mimic human speech, use tools, and recognize individual faces.

As the summer unfolds, experts note that most aggressive behavior is typically linked to parental instinct during nesting season. Yet, the extent of these attacks raises questions — could it be more than mere territory defense? For some, it’s a reminder of a truth echoed in scripture: “Consider the ravens: They do not sow or reap, they have no storeroom or barn; yet God feeds them. And how much more valuable are you than birds!” (Luke 12:24, NIV).

The understanding of crows as both intelligent and vindictive — capable of holding grudges for years — becomes apparent through anecdotal tales. Gene Carter’s year-long ordeal of being harassed after he defensively deterred a marauding crow from a robin’s nest illustrates the depth of their memory and retribution, ultimately leading to his relocation to escape the torment.

Notably, some reports indicate a potential for mistaken identity, as was the case for Lynne Peeples, who speculated that she may have been confused with a man exhibiting aggressive behavior toward birds. This connection highlights the importance of awareness and understanding in our interactions with wildlife, paralleling biblical principles of compassion and discernment, as Jesus taught in the parable of the Good Samaritan.

Meanwhile, in the face of these threatening avian encounters, residents have had mixed responses. While some victims, like Ruben Jimenez, sought to ward off attacks with reflective surfaces and decoys with little success, others like Jill Bennett have turned to a more relational approach. By feeding crows during her walks, Bennett found herself accompanied by a protective entourage of crows, suggesting a form of coexistence reminiscent of community and connection highlighted in many biblical stories.

The city’s environmental specialist echoed this notion of coexistence, asserting that community appreciation for crows is a reflection of a healthy ecosystem. This aligns with the biblical wisdom found in Romans 12:18, “If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.”

As urban dwellers navigate their encounters with these feathered foes, it presents a unique opportunity to reflect on our interactions with creation. The crows, with their persistence, remind us of the value of resilience, the necessity of understanding, and the importance of peaceful coexistence — not just with fellow humans but also with the intricate tapestry of life that surrounds us.

As we ponder this unusual phenomenon, we are invited to consider the broader lessons of patience, awareness, and community. How can we, much like Jill Bennett, turn potential conflict into a shared experience? Perhaps there’s a subtle invitation within these struggles, guiding us towards a deeper appreciation of living harmoniously, fostering relationships even with those who may not initially seem to share our values.

As we navigate our lives and respond to the challenges we encounter — whether from the skies or within our communities — let us be reminded of the wisdom in Proverbs 12:10: “A righteous man cares for the needs of his animal.” Embracing this principle may just transform our approach, paving the way for new understanding and deeper connections in a world that often feels divided.

What Sank the Tech Tycoon’s ‘Unsinkable’ Yacht?

By Jeffrey Gettleman, James Glanz, Emma Bubola, Elisabetta Povoledo, Pablo Robles, Josh Holder and Sarah Hurtes Oct. 30, 2024

It all happened so fast.

Karsten Borner was planted on the halfdeck of his sailboat in the slanting rain. A grizzled mariner who had survived many storms, he was anchored in the same cove as Mr. Lynch’s yacht, at the same time, as the squall blew in during the early hours of Aug. 19.

Luckily, he was already awake. As the wind picked up, he and his crew scurried around closing hatches, clearing the decks and firing up the engines to keep his boat steady.

He couldn’t see much, but in flashes of lightning, he kept catching glimpses of Mr. Lynch’s long, sleek sloop bobbing behind him. It was only a few hundred feet away and its super-tall aluminum mast — one of the tallest ever made — was lit up with bright white lights, swaying in the wind.

Then he lost sight of it. The rain fell like gravel, drawing a curtain around his boat. When he looked up again, he was stunned. The Bayesian was disappearing, at a very odd angle, into the sea.

In the weeks since, Mr. Borner, who has sailed for more than half a century, still can’t believe the yacht sank in front of him. There weren’t any big waves that night, he said. Both boats were close to shore. His own sailboat — a converted tugboat built in East Germany 66 years ago — weathered the same squall just fine. And that other craft was a superyacht of the superrich, gleaming blue, 184 feet long and drawing stares wherever it went.

“It’s a mystery,” Mr. Borner said.

The seven victims of the Bayesian sinking, clockwise from top left: Hannah Lynch, Mike Lynch, Judy Bloomer, Jonathan Bloomer, Christopher Morvillo, Neda Nassiri and Recaldo Thomas.

via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images; via Reuters; Patrick McMullan, via Getty Images

That mystery has rippled around the globe as several investigations into the tragedy unfold. It has vexed maritime experts and compounded the grief of family and friends of the seven people who perished, including Mr. Lynch and his teenage daughter, Hannah, whose bodies were found trapped below deck.

The investigations turn on three central questions: Why did the Bayesian, which now lies 160 feet at the bottom of the Mediterranean, sink so fast? Did the yacht have any design flaws? Did the captain or crew make any fatal mistakes?

The Bayesian was a one-of-a-kind sailboat, built by Perini Navi, a famous Italian yacht maker. The company says the group of 10 superyachts that the Bayesian belonged to was “the most successful series of large sailing yachts ever conceived.”

But the Bayesian was different. Its original buyer — a Dutch businessman, not the Lynches — insisted on a single, striking mast that would be taller than just about any other mast in the world, according to the Italian yacht maker and three people with detailed knowledge of how this boat was built.

That decision resulted in major engineering consequences that ultimately left the boat significantly more vulnerable than many comparable superyachts, The Times investigation has found.

— More than a dozen naval architects, engineers and other experts consulted by The Times found glaring weaknesses in the Bayesian’s design that they said could have contributed to the disaster.

— Basic design choices, like the two tall doors on the side of the deck, increased the Bayesian’s chances of taking on dangerous amounts of water if high winds pushed the boat over toward its side, several naval architects said.

— Witness and survivor accounts revealed how this deadly sequence unfolded in real time: The yacht fell completely on its side and sank within minutes.

The Bayesian’s vulnerabilities

How the Bayesian could have sunk

The large aluminum mast and rigging made the boat more likely to capsize in a strong gust of wind, a computer model shows.

The Bayesian was pushed onto its side in strong winds.

1

STRONG GUST

At this angle, experts say water would have gushed in through open vents, doors and hatches.

2

Two tall glass doors could have let water in if they were left open.

A sunken deck reduced the boat’s buoyancy, naval architects said.

It had many air vents that could let water in when the boat was pushed toward its side.

As flooding worsened, the yacht would have tilted further before sinking.

3

The retractable keel, which helped to keep the boat stable, was not fully extended when it sank.

The Bayesian’s vulnerabilities

The large aluminum mast and rigging made the boat more likely to capsize in a strong gust of wind, a computer model shows.

Two tall glass doors could have let water in if they were left open.

It had many air vents that could let water in when the boat was pushed toward its side.

A sunken deck reduced the boat’s buoyancy, naval architects said.

The retractable keel, which helped to keep the boat stable, was not fully extended when it sank.

How the Bayesian could have sunk

The Bayesian was pushed onto its side in strong winds.

1

STRONG GUST

At this angle, experts say water would have gushed in through open vents, doors and hatches.

2

As flooding worsened, the yacht would have tilted further before sinking.

3

The Bayesian’s vulnerabilities

The large aluminum mast and rigging made the boat more likely to capsize in a strong gust of wind, a computer model shows.

Two tall glass doors could have let water in if they were left open.

It had many air vents that could let water in when the boat was pushed toward its side.

A sunken deck reduced the boat’s buoyancy, naval architects said.

The retractable keel, which helped to keep the boat stable, was not fully extended when it sank.

How the Bayesian could have sunk

The Bayesian was pushed onto its side in strong winds.

1

STRONG GUST

At this angle, experts say water would have gushed in through open vents, doors and hatches.

2

As flooding worsened, the yacht would have tilted further before sinking.

3

Sources: Perini Navi (technical drawing of the yacht) and New York Times reporting.

Seemingly small details on any boat — like how close air vents are to the waterline, or where a ship’s ballast is placed in the hull — might not sound decisive on their own. But when taken together, experts said, they appear to have compromised this vessel.

Such built-in vulnerabilities may not have been solely responsible for the yacht’s sinking, of course. The storm’s unexpected ferocity definitely played a part in the calamitous stew of events. Italian investigators are also looking hard at the actions of the Bayesian’s captain and crew.

Giovanni Costantino, the chief executive of the Italian Sea Group, the company that owns Perini Navi, said that when operated properly, the Bayesian was “unsinkable.” He maintains that the yacht was carefully engineered to survive bad storms, and he has put the blame for the tragedy squarely on the crew, accusing them of making a chain of fatal errors.

“I know, all the crew knows, that they did not do what they should have done,” he said. (Crew members have not revealed much, saying they are under a “gag order.”)

Mr. Costantino said the design was not at fault and that the towering mast, which stood 237 feet tall, had not created “any kind of problem.”

“The ship was an unsinkable ship,” he said. “I say it, I repeat it.”

The world of superyachts is incredibly opaque, the exclusive realm of some of the richest people on the planet, and exactly how these multimillion dollar boats are designed, approved and owned remain closely guarded secrets.

Making sure a superyacht is fit for the seas is a job left to a network of private companies and public agencies, and the Bayesian’s design was approved by the American Bureau of Shipping and the British Maritime and Coastguard Agency.

All the attention this tragedy has received could result in a closer look at yachting regulations. Several naval engineers in different countries who have gained access to the Bayesian’s documents say that as yachts have become more elaborate and subject to owners’ whims, others may be in danger as well.

The Bayesian’s technical documents show just how vulnerable it was. Even without major errors by the crew, the ship could have sunk in a storm that other boats survived, engineers say.

“We can look at it in hindsight and say they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. No, that’s not true,” said Tad Roberts, a Canadian naval architect who has nearly 40 years of experience designing boats, including superyachts.

“This boat had definite shortcomings that kind of uniquely made it vulnerable to what happened.” The Victory Voyages

A cruise on the Bayesian was a voyage into luxury. The days were typically warm, sunny and calm, and finished off with plates of fresh langoustine and sumptuous chocolate. Hours would pass lounging on sun chairs, swimming in the sea or maybe taking out a kayak while the Bayesian crew, in branded polo shirts, watched vigilantly from the deck.

“It felt like a beautiful hotel that was floating on water,” remembers Abbie VanSickle, a New York Times reporter who was invited aboard in July because her husband, Jonathan Baum, was part of Mr. Lynch’s legal defense team.

Mr. Lynch had been acquitted in June in a criminal case in which he was accused of fraudulently inflating the value of his software company when he sold it to Hewlett-Packard for $11 billion. He could have been sent to prison for years. To celebrate his win — and his freedom — he asked friends and lawyers to cruise the Mediterranean with him.

Mr. Lynch seemed proud that his boat had one of the world’s tallest masts — a little booklet in her cabin even said as much, Ms. VanSickle remembered. Whenever they chugged into a harbor, she said, “people would take photos of it constantly because it was so crazy-looking in comparison to other boats.”

Most of the time, though, the Bayesian operated like a motorboat, powered by two enormous diesel engines. During her five-day voyage, Ms. VanSickle said they sailed only once, for just a few hours. But when they did, the boat moved through the water so smoothly, she said, it felt like they were “gliding.”

A promotional photo from Perini Navi of the Bayesian, which Mr. Lynch named after an 18th-century theory on probability.

EPA, via Shutterstock

A few weeks after Ms. VanSickle got off and returned to her life as a reporter in Washington, Mr. Lynch welcomed aboard his next batch of guests. This was the second celebratory voyage, beginning in mid-August, and Mr. Lynch had planned to get back to London, where he lived, around Aug. 20.

Among the 12 passengers were Mr. Lynch; his wife, Angela Bacares; their 18-year-old daughter, Hannah, who was soon off to Oxford; one of his lead lawyers, Chris Morvillo, and his wife, Neda Nassiri, who designed handcrafted jewelry; Jonathan Bloomer, an international banker and trusted adviser, and his wife, Judy, a psychotherapist celebrated for her charity work.

Mr. Lynch also invited some younger colleagues, including a couple who brought a baby on board. The crew was led by James Cutfield, an experienced New Zealand sailor, backed up by a first mate, a ship engineer, several deckhands and hostesses, totaling 10 in all.

Mr. Lynch was on the rebound, fired up about the possibility of starting a nonprofit to help exonerate people wrongly accused of crimes, said Sir David Davis, a friend and prominent conservative British politician.

Mr. Lynch sent Sir David a text message offering the choice of lunch or dinner in London on Aug. 22, when he was back. An Unanticipated Storm

The Mediterranean Sea was flat on Aug. 18. But bad weather was moving south, from Naples toward Sicily. The Italian Air Force’s Meteomar forecast warned of scattered thunderstorms, gusts of wind and a rough sea. Several yacht captains said the weather warning was far from specific or extraordinary.

Mr. Borner, the captain who for decades has been running cruises and diving excursions on his old sailboat, the Sir Robert Baden Powell, was finishing up his own trip, picking his way west along the Sicilian coast.

The wind was blowing from the northwest and Mr. Borner figured that the curvature of Sicily’s rugged coastline at Porticello, a small fishing village built around a cove, would shelter him. He arrived in the cove that afternoon, went ashore with his guests and grabbed some pizza.

“It was a nice evening,” he remembered.

While they were in town, the Bayesian chugged into the same cove. It dropped anchor at 9:35 p.m., about a third of a mile from land. As Mr. Borner went to sleep around 11, the night was clear. The lights of the Bayesian’s mast glowed behind him.

Lights illuminating the mast of the Bayseian on Aug. 18.

Baia Santa Nicolicchia/Fabio La Bianca, via Reuters

At midnight on Aug. 19, the Italian Coast Guard put out a warning for a northwesterly Gale Force 8, a serious storm in which winds could reach 46 miles per hour. But the gale was predicted to hit hundreds of miles from Sicily.

Around 3 a.m., Mr. Borner woke up to help some of his passengers catch an early flight from Palermo, Sicily’s biggest city. But as the winds picked up rapidly, whipping the cove into a frothy chop, he scratched his plan to go ashore.

He and his crew shut the portholes and skylights and started the engine, to keep the bow pointed into the wind and prevent the boat from being hit on its side.

On the Bayesian, a young deckhand, Matthew Griffiths, later told the authorities that when the wind hit 20 knots, he woke up the captain, according to a person close to the crew (who said that neither of them was allowed to speak publicly). The captain then gave the order to wake up others, the person said.

At 3:51 a.m., the Bayesian started to drift — first 80 meters one way, then 80 meters another, its data transmitter shows. Maritime experts said this meant it was being blown around and probably dragging its anchor. It’s unclear whether the engines had been started.

At 4:02 a.m., a camera mounted on a boat in Porticello’s cove shows bright blue flashes of lightning. Three minutes later, another at a Porticello cafe captures the wind tearing down deck umbrellas. So much rain hits one of the cameras, it looks as if it’s being blasted with a hose.

Mr. Borner estimated that the wind gusts reached 60 knots, or nearly 70 miles an hour — just below hurricane strength — and said they had pushed his boat onto its side about 15 degrees, a serious lean but nothing close to capsizing.

Reports immediately after the disaster raised the possibility that the Bayesian had been hit by a tornado-like disturbance called a waterspout, but the authorities don’t think that happened. Still, the wind was doing something dangerous: It was changing direction.

According to a nearby weather station, it was blowing west-southwest then southwest, then north-northwest. This increased the chances of getting ambushed by a random gust that could slam into the side of a boat, which can tilt even a big vessel.

A third video shows the Bayesian rocking back and forth and beginning to lean. Then the lights on its giant mast blink out — all but the top one, which was powered by a battery.

By 4:06 a.m., the rain has turned into a blinding cascade. That same minute, the Bayesian’s location signal cuts out. Mr. Borner’s crew squinted through the nearly impenetrable haze of sea spray and rain and spotted a large object in the water. They first thought it was a reef.

“But I knew there was no reef,” Mr. Borner said.

It was the Bayesian, they now believe, knocked onto its side. “Two Minutes” to Tragedy

At 4:34 a.m., a red emergency flare, bright as a meteor, shot into the sky. The storm had passed, and Mr. Borner and his first mate jumped into a small boat, zooming across the black water.

First they saw cushions floating. Then a flashing light. Then a life raft built for 12 packed with 15 people, bloodied and soaked to the skin, including a baby.

One person had a cut on the head, another on his chest. Some had already been bandaged. They were cold, wet and dazed. They were too shocked, Mr. Borner said, to say what happened.

As he loaded the survivors into his boat and began to head back to the Sir Robert, one woman pleaded with him not to leave.

“Please,” she told him. “Continue searching.”

Some people were still missing.

Mr. Borner decided to unload the survivors onto the Sir Robert, then send his small boat back. His crew gave them blankets and dry clothes. Some survivors were so shaken they needed to be led below deck by hand.

Nobody said much, Mr. Borner remembered.

One man told him: “I was the captain of this.”

Another said the boat had “sunk in two minutes.”

The woman who had begged him to keep searching sat huddled on the deck.

“Are you OK?” Mr. Borner asked her.

“No,” she replied. “I am not OK at all.’’

Capt. Karsten Borner, who rescued the survivors of the Bayesian.

Guglielmo Mangiapane/Reuters

Mr. Borner said he later realized it was Angela Bacares, wife of Mr. Lynch and mother of Hannah Lynch. Neither had made it onto the life raft. (Salamander Davoudi, a spokeswoman for Lynch family, told The Times that Ms. Bacares was not speaking to the media because she was grieving and wanted privacy.)

A few hours after, a string of ambulances arrived at Palermo’s main hospital. Dr. Domenico Cipolla, the head of pediatric emergency, evaluated the youngest survivor, a 1-year-old girl.

The baby was OK, Dr. Cipolla said, but she had experienced quite an ordeal. She and her mother had been sleeping on a sofa on deck because of the rough sea, Dr. Cipolla said, when the boat suddenly lurched and threw them to the deck.

A moment later the boat turned completely on its side, the baby’s father told the doctor, flipping his hand as he described it. The doctor said the mother told him that she and her baby were hurled into the water and that her baby nearly slipped away. But then she grabbed her and swam to a nearby life raft, which was designed to deploy automatically.

The parents were later identified as Charlotte Golunski, a colleague of Mr. Lynch, and James Emslie. Ms. Golunski did not respond to several messages left for her, and efforts to reach Mr. Emslie were unsuccessful.

Mistakes by the Crew?

The biggest question that investigators are focused on is how the Bayesian filled with water so fast. To many in the yachting world, it doesn’t make sense.

The boat had been built with several watertight compartments under the deck, to prevent water from spreading from one area to others. And it had been approved as safe by the Maritime and Coastguard Agency, part of Britain’s Department for Transport, and by the American Bureau of Shipping, a private company that reviews boat designs.

On top of that, one Italian official and underwater video footage broadcast on Italian television indicated that there were no holes or other structural damage visible in the hull.

Even so, the Bayesian, like many superyachts, had all kinds of openings in which water could theoretically get in: big air vents for the engines; smaller ones for the kitchen, crew quarters and guest cabins; large glass doors at the back and the sides so that people could walk onto the deck; and various hatches for crew and passenger access.

In interviews with Mr. Costantino, the chief executive of the Italian Sea Group, and his spokeswoman, the company accused the crew of leaving hatches open during the storm, including a doorway-size opening on the left rear of the hull, close to the water line. The spokeswoman claimed that hatch was the only place where so much water could have come gushing in.

The company speculated that the crew did not close a watertight door between this hatch and the engine room. A flooded engine room might explain the sudden blackout that killed the mast lights and then, a few minutes later, the location transmitter.

But witnesses, an Italian official familiar with the investigation and the underwater video challenged the company’s versions of events. The footage appeared to show the watertight door to the engine room closed, and the Italian official said the divers had not seen any open hatches on the hull.

Mr. Borner also said that after rescuing the captain, he asked him if he had shut the hatches. The captain said he had. Mr. Borner shared pictures taken by his guests a few moments before the Bayesian sank that appear to show that hull hatches were closed. A Compromised Design?

The Bayesian’s origins go back to 2000. That year, Perini hired Ron Holland Design, a premier naval architectural firm, to design a series of 56-meter sailboats, said a person with knowledge of the timeline. As the superrich have become even richer, yachts have grown steadily bigger, and Perini was emerging as one of the world’s best-known builders of superyachts, often defined as motor yachts or sailboats longer than 24 meters, or 79 feet.

The Ron Holland firm, based in Ireland at the time, drew up plans for the hull, keel, rudder and, crucially, the placement of the masts — two masts. All other features, like the cabins, decks and vent system, were designed by Perini, according to the person, who did not want to be identified because of the possibility of legal action connected to the sinking.

In 2003, the first yacht in the series hit the water, the Burrasca (which means storm in Italian). Over the next four years, Perini built three more 56-meter superyachts from these blueprints, all with two masts. On Perini’s website, they look nearly identical.

Then came the Bayesian.

Construction on its hull began in 2005 at a shipyard in Tuzla, Turkey, according to the boat’s documents. But the original buyer for this yacht didn’t want the standard two-mast design. Instead, the Italian Sea Group said, he wanted the boat to be built with one large mast for better sailing performance.

That led to a radically different design, said three people with knowledge of what followed, and a cascade of modifications — some to accommodate the gigantic mast, and some apparently for stylistic or other reasons.

A promotional photo from Perini Navi showing the Bayesian’s mast and sails.

EPA, via Shutterstock

The most obvious departure from the previous Perini ships was the mast itself. Beyond being exceptionally tall — more than 40 feet higher than the original foremast — it was also very heavy, at least 24 tons of aluminum, possibly more. This alone would have challenged the boat’s stability, because so much weight was high above deck.

Since then, many yacht makers have switched to lighter, carbon-fiber masts.

“Technology moved on,” Mr. Costantino said.

Naval engineers pointed out that the heavier a yacht is up high, the more ballast it often needs down low — weight at the bottom of the boat to lower its center of gravity and resist its tendency to lean over.

Small notes on hull diagrams in the Bayesian’s documents show that the Turkish shipyard revised the ballast in July 2006, nearly 10 months after the keel was laid, which is one of the first steps of production.

“Values updated as from information by Yildiz,” the notes say in all caps, naming the shipyard.

But where this ballast was placed was curious, maritime experts said. Rather than spreading the ballast evenly across the bottom of the boat — which would have guaranteed the best stability — the builders stacked it toward the rear of the ship’s hull.

“When I first saw this, I couldn’t believe it,” said Mr. Roberts, the naval architect. “It made no sense to me.”

The ballast seems to have been pushed toward the rear of the boat to offset the single, heavy mast closer toward the front, Mr. Roberts concluded. He said he had never seen the main ballast used in such a design tactic before.

That was not the only change, experts said. A single mast would have plunged almost directly through the wheelhouse, an interior station where the ship can be controlled, so that was moved, too. A deck lounge was added, along with two tall doors on the sides. None of the other Perini yachts in the 56-meter series have these design elements.

If the boat tipped over with these tall doors open, water could pour across the deck and down the main staircase.

Sources: Perini Navi (technical drawing of the yacht) and New York Times reporting.

The Bayesian sat lower in the water than other yachts in the same Perini series, said Stephen Edwards, the Bayesian’s captain from 2015 to 2020. Naval architects said this by itself would make it easier for water to pour through vents and other openings when the boat leans on its side.

Whenever a boat leans too far and water starts gushing in through open doors or vents, it can set off a dangerous downward spiral that is hard to stop and that can sink a boat in minutes.

Such risks are calculated and laid out in a lengthy, proprietary document — kind of a safety bible — for many vessels certified to ply the seas.

The Times has obtained that safety bible, called a stability book, for the Bayesian. Copies of the 88-page book are also sweeping through a global community of experts who are obsessively trying to solve the puzzle of how and why the boat sank. More than a dozen of those experts, including naval architects and engineers, found weaknesses in the Bayesian’s design that they said could have contributed to the disaster.

The stability book obtained by The Times was written before the Lynches bought the boat in 2014, when the yacht was called the Salute and owned by John Groenewoud, a Dutch businessman. In an email, he confirmed signing a contract for “the boat with 1 mast” in 2005, but declined to discuss any safety implications that may have had.

The Times obtained the stability book for another 56-meter Perini yacht, with two masts instead of one. A comparison of the boats showed that the Bayesian was significantly less stable.

Specifically, the data shows that the two-masted ship could lean at least 10 degrees farther onto its side before taking on dangerous amounts of water.

The documents also show that the Bayesian could begin taking on some water at angles that appeared to violate the safety threshold set by the British Maritime and Coastguard Agency.

The Italian Sea Group responded that the boat was in line with regulations and had been approved. When asked how that happened, an agency spokesman refused to clarify, citing the continuing investigations.

The other boat’s documents also showed that the sister yacht sat a little higher in the water than the Bayesian did, as Mr. Edwards emphasized. And under many circumstances, experts said, the sister ship had a better center of gravity and was more resistant to capsizing, two additional factors that would have made it safer.

“The other boat is, at least on paper, a better boat,” Mr. Roberts said.

To make boats safer, naval architects said they religiously ensured that vent openings are far from the water line. When showed a picture of a 56-meter Perini yacht that, like the Bayesian, had vents built into the hull, Philipp Luke, a Dutch naval architect, started violently shaking his head.

“No, no, no,” he said. “You don’t do that.”

In the end, several naval architects said, all these flaws may have come together at the worst time — in a sudden storm.

Two Spanish naval engineers, Guillermo Gefaell and Juan Manuel López, calculated that the sheer size of the Bayesian’s mast and rigging made the yacht a wind catcher, even with the sails down.

Writing for the Association of Naval and Ocean Engineers of Spain, they used a computer model to calculate what would have happened to the Bayesian if a strong gust of roughly 54 knots, around 62 mph, hit its side. Under those conditions, the Spanish engineers estimated, the Bayesian could lean dynamically and take on nearly a ton of water each second through an engine room vent.

In an interview, Mr. Gefaell noted that he, like almost everyone else, did not know everything that happened that night. But if the gusts were as strong as Mr. Borner estimated — 60 knots — the punch would have pushed the boat to an even more severe angle, his calculations showed, very quickly knocking the boat all the way over onto its side, as the witnesses recounted.

At that point, Mr. Gefaell said, “the boat was certainly lost.”

A Watery Maze

Within hours of the sinking, emergency divers plunged in. Their mission: Find survivors.

The Bayesian sat 160 feet below the surface, leaning on its right side on the seabed. The once-gleaming cabins were clogged with chairs, clothes, curtains and the enormous number of seat cushions that Ms. Bacares had brought onboard to make the boat more comfortable. The search was made even more difficult and dangerous, divers said, by the many mirrors installed below deck that now reflected back their lights in a disorienting, watery maze.

On the first day, divers found the body of the yacht’s chef, Recaldo Thomas, floating near the boat. Over the next three days, they found the bodies of Mr. Lynch and four other passengers in a small cabin near the foot of a narrow staircase leading down from the deck to the passenger’s quarters. Finally, divers discovered the body of the last missing person, Hannah Lynch, trapped behind furniture in a nearby cabin.

One Italian official said the six passengers might have been trying to climb the main guest staircase when a surge of water poured down the stairs and knocked them back into the cabins. With the boat flipped on its side, water gushing in, and total darkness, it would have been nearly impossible for anyone below deck to escape, experts said.

The Italian authorities plan to raise the wreck to inspect it more closely. That could take months. In the meantime, at least two major investigations are unfolding, one by Italian prosecutors and the other by the British Marine Accident Investigation Branch.

Rescue workers bringing the body of the final Bayesian victim to shore, in Porticello, Italy, on Aug. 23.

Igor Petyx/EPA, via Shutterstock

From the first weeks after the accident, Italian prosecutors said that Mr. Cutfield, the captain, and two of his crew were under investigation.

Mr. Cutfield hasn’t said a word publicly and did not respond to messages asking for comment. Several crew members, when approached at a hotel in Sicily in August, said they had all been put under a gag order. When asked who imposed it, they responded: “No comment.”

In the yachting world, Mr. Cutfield has some solid references. Turgay Ciner, a Turkish industrial magnate and sailing enthusiast, employed him to run his yacht for 12 years.

“He never made any mistakes,” Mr. Ciner said.

Mr. Ciner, speaking by phone from Istanbul, recounted a bad storm near Capri about 10 years ago that Mr. Cutfield handled. They were sailing on another 56-meter Perini yacht, the Melek, a two-masted boat in the same series as the Bayesian. He said that Mr. Cutfield performed very well and was “one out of a hundred.”

Why Mr. Cutfield left in a lifeboat with the other survivors when a half dozen passengers were still missing is a matter Italian prosecutors are looking into.

But several yacht captains have defended Mr. Cutfield, saying that whatever happened that night, it happened very quickly.

When a boat sinks fast, said Adam Hauck, an American yacht captain, there’s not much hope for anyone still onboard. The adage of the captain going down with the ship, he said, is antiquated and unrealistic.

“It’s not like a Titanic movie where you’re going through the water and you can just look in the rooms,” Mr. Hauck said. “At some point, you can’t go back for people.”