PORTICELLO: The body of British tech magnate Mike Lynch was retrieved on Thursday from the wreck of a yacht that sank earlier this week off Sicily during a storm, Massimo Mariani, an interior ministry official, told Reuters.

Lynch's daughter, the last person unaccounted for after the shipwreck, is still missing, Mariani said, adding that she may be inside the wreck or could have been tossed into the sea as the boat sank.

The British-flagged Bayesian, a 56-metre-long (184ft) superyacht carrying 22 passengers and crew, was anchored off the port of Porticello, near Palermo, when it disappeared beneath the waves in a matter of minutes after the bad weather struck.

Lynch, 59, was one of the UK's best-known tech entrepreneurs and had invited friends to join him on the yacht to celebrate his recent acquittal in a major US fraud trial.

His body was brought ashore in a blue body bag and driven in an ambulance to a nearby hospital morgue.

Besides Lynch and his daughter, the other people who failed to make it to safety were Judy and Jonathan Bloomer, a non-executive chair of Morgan Stanley International; and Clifford Chance lawyer Chris Morvillo and his wife, Neda Morvillo.

Fifteen people, including Lynch's wife, survived, while the body of the onboard chef, Canadian-Antiguan national Recaldo Thomas, was found near the wreck hours after the disaster.

No formal identification of the bodies has been announced by the Italian authorities and the families have not yet commented.

Fire brigade spokesman Luca Cari warned it could take time, even days, before the last missing person was found, given the difficulty divers were having in accessing all areas of the boat, which is lying on its side at a depth of 50 metres.

A judicial investigation has been opened into the disaster, which has baffled naval marine experts, who say a boat like the Bayesian, built by Italian high-end yacht manufacturer Perini, should have been able to withstand the storm.

Giovanni Costantino, CEO of the Italian Sea Group, which owns Perini, told Italian media the Bayesian was "one of the safest boats in the world" and blamed the crew for failing to follow correct safety procedures.

The captain, James Cutfield, and his eight surviving crew members, have made no public comment on the disaster.