In a second CCTV video, said to have been taken from a villa some 200m away, the boat’s lights can be seen fading to black in the bay of Porticello.
“In just 60 seconds you can see the ship disappear,” the owner of the villa told the Ansa Agency, adding: “By chance, after the uproar of the news, I looked at the cameras.
“My children told me. Of about 20 cameras installed in the house, only one was not disturbed by the wind and the rain.
“You can see clearly what is happening. There was nothing that could be done for the boat. It disappeared in a very short time”.
Another video which has not been published, shows the boat sinking, Giornale di Sicilia reported.
Salvo Cocina, of Sicily’s civil protection agency, blamed damage to the boat on a tornado forming above water, also known as a waterspout.
He added that the boat was “in the wrong place at the wrong time”.