Ghosts of the Sea

“There are three kinds of people: the living, the dead, and those who go to sea.”

 — Aristotle

Virginia Tangvald was just five years old when her father, a famous Norwegian adventurer, died tragically in a shipwreck. Though born at sea on a sailboat that Peter Tangvald built himself, Virginia had little experience of the open ocean, where life is governed by a different set of rules. Disillusioned by this so-called liberty, her mother brought Virginia back to dry land, ultimately dropping anchor in Montréal. When her elder brother, Thomas, disappeared mysteriously in 2014, also swallowed up by the ocean, Virginia decided to investigate her origins, which became the documentary Ghosts of the Sea.

Virginia’s fascinating quest takes her to Canada, Bonaire, Puerto Rico, France, Andorra, Belgium, and French Guyana. She speaks to people who knew Peter Tangvald and whose insights shed new light on the father she only knew from newspapers and autobiographical accounts. She visits the reefs where he perished, along with his daughter, Virginia’s sister Carmen, in a shipwreck survived only by Thomas. She explores both public and private archives of those who encountered this atypical family. The details of what she discovers are staggering: two of Peter’s wives – the mothers of Thomas and of Carmen – died under suspicious and potentially criminal circumstances. More questions arise. Why did Thomas, marked by his tragic childhood, want to set sail like his father? Is Virginia also governed by a force she can’t control? Does she unknowingly bear the weight of a sinister legacy?

In seeking to understand where she comes from and uncover her family’s dark secrets, Virginia has made a compellingly beautiful film, one that challenges what she had believed to be true and calls into question the idyllic image of the sailor seeking absolute freedom. At the end of her courageous journey, both deeply personal and universal, she finds evidence of what she missed growing up without her father. And the hope that a toxic cycle has been broken.