When I was on the USS JFK back in the Seventies (no, not the POMPEII Seventies!) we could see the red glow reflecting off the clouds at night when we transited the Straits of Messina.
I was up looking at it one dark night (just beautiful) and they called a man overboard...they never did find the guy, and some people thought he was going to jump and try to swim to shore.
Did that happen a lot?