This article is taken from the October 2024 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Right now we’re offering five issues for just £10.

The deaths of Mike Lynch and six others in the sinking of the Bayesian is, at one level, a simple human tragedy. Many City folk had dealings either with Lynch in one of his many incarnations; or with Jonathan Bloomer, the likeable chairman of the insurer Hiscox who was one of the other victims.

For a few days, members of my Square Mile WhatsApp groups paused their insistent sharing of off-colour memes, and there were only expressions of quiet shock and horror.

However, there is also a wider story to be told of a very singular entrepreneur and his relationship to an equally singular sailing vessel — and an important message about the British and their attitudes to wealth creation.

I heard about the Bayesian disaster as I was returning from a sailing trip of my own. Mrs Ned had reluctantly agreed to my skippering her in a tour of the Ionian isles. Luxury this was not — a 32-foot tub with a head like a miniature Hades. Nonetheless, during the long evenings sipping ouzo in the cockpit, there were good opportunities to observe Europe’s boating classes at play.

Brits over-index in the cruising grounds of the eastern Med. They range from gregarious flotilla crowds noisily comparing school fees in the harbourside tavernas, to the solitary Ted Heath types obsessively adjusting their mainsails to coax an extra knot from the afternoon Meltemi.

What unites us all is a distaste for any vessel with a scintilla of comfort. We sneer at the capacious catamarans because of their poor handling close-hauled, and we dismiss the stylish Sunseekers as “too Italian”. You almost never see a Red Ensign fluttering from a superyacht. These monsters of the sea are the preserve of Russians, spivs and footballers — or so we think.

You see, the real social division is not between the have-nots and the have-yachts. It is the divide between those who tie their own knots and those with flunkeys to pour out the shots.

Lynch, however, defied our stereotypes. He was a scholarship boy and Cambridge PhD who pioneered two multi-billion pound businesses and then acquired a vessel which was not just gigantic and luxurious but also — for real sailors like us — heart-stoppingly cool.

Questions will no doubt continue to be asked about the sale of Lynch’s Autonomy software business to HP. It led to a US fraud prosecution, for which he was cleared earlier this year.

There will be questions too about the seaworthiness of the Bayesian and whether its distinctive design — including that 72-metre mast — caused it to founder.

Most UK entrepreneurs would be delighted to be offered an eight-figure exit

But let’s put these issues to one side for others to worry about and consider instead this puzzler: why, in the British context, are Lynch’s extraordinary achievements rare to the point of uniqueness?

Both Autonomy and his later creation, the cyber security business Darktrace, belonged to an extremely unusual breed of British businesses — new economy start-ups which joined the FTSE100 club.

Whilst both these businesses are now owned by Americans, it is extremely uncommon to see home-grown companies get to this scale. The lack of tech finance expertise in the City and overly-burdensome UK corporate governance codes, which don’t cut enough slack to founders, are amongst the excuses.

But there is another important reason — and it relates to our inverted snobbery about men with big boats. We Brits are incapable of dreaming big.

Most UK entrepreneurs would be delighted to be offered an eight-figure exit. A payday on this scale finances all their worldly dreams — a second-hand Dufour moored in the Solent, a hobby farm with alpacas and maybe some new canvases from Frieze.

What’s the point in holding out a few years and then trying for a valuation with a couple more zeroes? There are few local role models to emulate, and, anyway, what would you do with all the money?

Americans, in my experience, can always think of plenty of things to do with their money. For them, boats are not about fiddling with bowlines or saluting yacht club commodores.

They are a passport to freedom — freedom from nosy neighbours, freedom from ex-wives and, in an emergency, freedom from the IRS. The endless horizon and big skies provide a place to think, unmolested by day-to-day management chores — and plot the next phase of global domination.

Buy a big enough vessel, and you rarely need to touch dry land. I remember working with one sea-dwelling US director, who insisted on board papers being delivered to marinas ranging from Cape Cod to St Lucia depending on the seasons.

It is hard right now to imagine anything positive to emerge from a tragedy as awful as the Bayesian. But perhaps, over time, Mike Lynch will emerge as a role model to inspire British wealth creators to dream of building bigger businesses — and buying bigger boats.