Oct. 21/2024: The opening photo here says it all for me. Thomas Tangvald’s youngest half-sister Virginia sitting in the same spot I sat in some time prior to her, researching the tragic Tangvald legacy. This from her film Les enfants du large (translating as Ghosts of the Sea in English), which premiered at a film festival in Montreal last week.
The space where Virginia sits in this image is an attic-turned-bedroom in Andorra, in a house belonging to Clare and Edward Allcard, where Thomas Tangvald lived for a few years after losing his family in a terrible wreck on Bonaire in 1991.
Those who have read my biography of Thomas, The Boy Who Fell to Shore, should recall that Virginia’s mother Florence was Peter Tangvald’s seventh and last wife and had the good sense to leave him not too long after Virginia was born aboard Peter’s boat, L’Artemis de Pytheas, afloat in Boqueron, Puerto Rico, in October 1986. Virginia was born on the same settee where Thomas was born, at sea in the Indian Ocean, several years earlier. It was Thomas who clipped her umbilical cord.
Virginia thus had the good fortune to be able process the tragedy of the Tangvald saga at a safe distance, in Canada, where Florence raised her after leaving Peter. Unlike Thomas, who presumably disappeared at sea in 2014. Unlike her father and half-sister Carmen, who were killed in the wreck on Bonaire in 1991. Unlike Thomas’s mother Lydia, who was killed by pirates in the Sulu Sea in 1979. Unlike Thomas’s first stepmother Ann, who was lost overboard in 1985. Although Virginia’s experience wasn’t entirely safe. The one time she went to Puerto Rico to meet Thomas in person as an adult, she was badly injured in a car he crashed while driving drunk.
Les enfants du large is the profoundly beautiful film Virginia has made about her personal journey digesting this legacy. My wife Clare and I traveled to Montreal to see the English-language premiere and afterwards were invited to dinner with Virginia and her family. She and I had communicated a bit after I first stumbled on to Thomas, about a year before he disappeared. We kept our distance, however, as we each dove into our separate projects—mine a journalistic recounting of Thomas’s story, hers a much more personal and visually impressionistic interpretation of her family’s story. So it was great fun reconnecting and discussing our individual journeys in person.
Virginia as an infant with Peter, Florence, Carmen, and Thomas aboard L’Artemis in Puerto Rico
Virginia with her young son Orphée taking questions from the audience after her film’s screening in Montreal
Virginia and I at dinner
Virginia with the people’s choice award she received after the festival was over! The anarchic disheveled hairstyle is a humorous cut at me, who asked too many questions about her hair as it appeared in the film
I can’t tell you yet where and when you can view Virginia’s film for yourselves, but I promise you will know as soon as I do!!!
You can get a glimpse at a couple of scenes in this online press package here.
Enjoyed your book and looking forward to seeing the film. I hope to be able to watch it soon. I loved her quote about her brother and family in general:
“Our family has experienced many tragedies,” Virginia told VG. “But when you put yourself on the quest for freedom and finding one’s true nature, there is no other way of living that does not feel like a tragedy in itself. That is the legacy Per Tangvald.”