Adrienne Vaughan, 45, who was president of Bloomsbury Publishing’s US branch, was on a motorboat with her husband and two children headed towards Positano when it crashed into a sailboat on Thursday (local time). The motorboat was being driven by a hired skipper.
A wedding guest who was filming the dance floor at the time of the crash recorded the moment a woman is seen struggling in the water.
Ms. Vaughan was pulled from the water and brought to a dock but died by the time a helicopter ambulance arrived, state TV said.
The Italian coast guard office in Amalfi was investigating the crash. The office did not respond to a call or an emailed request for more information.
Ms. Vaughan’s husband, Mike White, was hospitalized with a shoulder injury while the couple’s two young children were uninjured, according to the reports. No one aboard the sailboat was injured.
A blood test for the skipper of the motorboat tested positive for substance use, according to Italian news agency ANSA, which didn’t indicate whether the result indicated alcohol or drug consumption. The skipper, an Italian about 30 years old, suffered a broken pelvis and ribs, ANSA said.
There was no answer at the courthouse in the southern of port city of Salerno, where prosecutors were overseeing the investigation into the accident.
Ms. Vaughan, who had a master’s degree in business from New York University, had worked at the Disney Book Group and Oxford University Press among other companies before joining Bloomsbury in 2020 as executive editor and COO. She was promoted to president a year later and also served on the board of the industry trade group the Association of American Publishers.
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