“Fair weather and foul”:

( A Mystery of a History of the Navy)

This story is about is how I tried to find the truth about the origins of the Navy, driven by the conviction that if I seek, I shall find. It led to the publication of one (one-and-a-half) book(s). But the writing is a story in itself, which needs to be told.

There was a good naval reason for writing a history of the Navy, which led to two of us (Lt.Cdr. – now Rear Adm. – J. Jayasuriya and I) being assigned the task. We discovered that others had had similar ideas in earlier days. One was the first Commanding Officer of the Ceylon Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve who, as the war was ending in 1946, wrote to his officers:

            “It is requested that you furnish…a resumé of operations undertaken…together with eye witness accounts…The latter will not be subject to editing…however,            excessive ebullitions should, within reason, be restricted.”

Another was a Captain of the Navy of the Royal Ceylon Navy, Rear Adm. Kadirgammar who advised his Chief of Staff, Capt. Hunter, in 1971:

                “…What you desire is a historical study and one has to be careful that it does not end as an aimless one. Systemized methodology at the outset is a must…The next is the study and availability and access to old records. No writing should be attempted unless research is completed…one must guard against producing an old boys’ section of a school magazine…”

Eventually, I managed (to my satisfaction, at least) to include both dry facts and warm human memories, (but not “an old boys’ section of a school magazine”).

  I relished the work. Apart from the reasons I give below, I (as many others new to the post-1950 Navy) felt deprived of any knowledge of the pre-Independence Navy – the “OKAPI Navy” – and so I began my researches into that Navy. At the end of that study, I described my reaction to what I had discovered as follows:

“The discovery-of the original CRNVR files was exhilarating. Leafing through those crumbling papers, I found myself engulfed by a mass of detail of day-to-day happenings. The CRNVR ceased to be a collection of somebody else's stories: it became a real-life Navy with all the problems, gripes, frustration, achieve­ments, complaints, criticisms, and appeals: all too familiar to me in my own Navy. The more I delved into the dry facts and the dusty files, the more human the CRNVR became to me. The total picture gradually revealed itself; made me humble, gave me an ungrudging admiration for the men of the CRNVR; pride in that we were their lineal descendents; and a deep sense of frustration that we had been deprived of all systematic knowledge of this period of the Navy's History.”

      I am more than certain that today’s naval personnel know even less about the pre-1983 Navy than we did of the pre-1950 Navy!

*****

I had been commissioned in February 1960 in the rank of Instructor Lieutenant; a “Schooley”, as the Navy elegantly called us. Graduates in Medicine, Economics, Physics, Mathematics, English and Sinhala were qualified for direct commissioning in the ranks of Surgeon Lieutenant, Lieutenant (s) or Instructor Lieutenant. In my seventeen years of service I had one promotion in rank, to that of Instructor Lieutenant Commander. I did hold senior staff appointments at Naval Headquarters, but I relished most my last posting, that of Commandant, Naval and Maritime Academy, Trincomalee, from which I retired in 1976, in search of bluer skies and greener pastures. (Eventually I found them both, and also the “rapture of the deeps” where lie our fathers’ “bones, of coral made”.)

I received no formal naval training, (three days does not count!) but, being of an inquiring turn of mind, I questioned every specifically naval activity and terminology. This did not make me exactly popular; but I was not entirely ignorant when I asked the questions. My maternal grandfather had served on minesweepers in World War I, and a cousin was already a serving officer in the Navy (the first of three First Cousins who served the Navy for half a century). My academic discipline in the English Language and English History were a good background to the many archaisms I delightfully recognized in naval terminology. However, unpopularity apart, my work was duly appreciated and, in time, I was appointed to responsible positions, and even recalled to the Colours twice after retirement. 

Very early on I set myself three goals.

One: was that I would do my best to remove the Cross of St. George from our Ensign, because there was no valid reason for it being there. (It was removed in 1972, though not by me!).

  Two: was that our Navy Band should play March music based on “classics” of popular music such as those by John de Silva. (Bandmaster, Cdr. Danwatte, actually incorporated John de Silva melodies in the Band’s repertoire.)

  Three: the last and most difficult was to write a history of the Navy: something I had to do myself. I had no entrée to the Naval Record Room but, coincidentally, Rear Adm. Royce de Mel, the first Ceylonese Captain of the Navy, (then in retirement) wrote to his successor in service, Rear Adm. Basil Goonesekera, that certain people were apt to talk “loosely” about the origins of the Navy; and volunteered to help put the record right – if only a packet of writing paper was made available to him! Rear Adm. Goonesekera not only accepted the offer but appointed us to write a History of the Navy in consultation with Rear Adm. De Mel. This gave me a chance to pull out the crumbling CRNVR files from the Record Room, to access Adm. de Mel’s copious notes and to interview such long-retired CRNVR officers as were yet around in the early 1970s. We began by calling on Adm.de Mel and I followed up with Neville Mendis, Neville Perera, Hildon Sansoni and others. They provided me with valuable photographs and invaluable gossip!

              By the time I retired in 1976, the work was completed up to 1950, but not yet published. I had handed over the MSS to a nominated officer, and I lost touch with it: absorbed, as I was, in my new career (where I got more gossip from Paymaster Lieut. S. Coomaraswamy, ex-CRNVR, now Chairman of Whittals’, and Lieut. Mark Bostock, last First Lieutenant of H.M.S. Flying Fish – later H.M.S Vijaya – and now Chairman of John Keels’). In 1980, the late Capt(s) V.T.D.Amaratunga began re-casting the original MSS to conform to the conventions of “Naval Writing”. His first draft was “mainly borrowed from the work done by Lt.Cdrs. Devendra and Jayasuriya”, and the Chief of Staff, Rear Adm. A.H.A. de Silva, confirmed that the “Style seems OK”. The work was, I believe, completed, and some chapters written covering the post-1950 period: yet it remained in limbo, unpublished. After his appointment as Navy Commander, Adm. de Silva tried, in 1984, to resuscitate the project, seeking the assistance of Mr. T.D.S.A. Dissanayake (of the Foreign Service) to write a history of the Navy. He also asked me to assist him. Unfortunately, Mr. Dissanayake could not find the time.

Adm. de Silva and Capt. Amaratunga retired, and the MSS was lost. Again.

When I was recalled to service in 1988 (to resuscitate the Directorates of Administration and Welfare and to re-write a new set of Sri Lanka Navy Orders), I successfully tracked down the missing MSS. The stack of files and papers was considerably larger, since it contained the work done by Capt. Amaratunga. This time, though, even after demobilization in 1989, I took the precaution of keeping the MSS, the papers and photographs I had collected, with me: the Navy never missed them! In 1992, the serving Navy Commander, the late Adm. Clancy Fernando requested me to prepare the book for publication by the Navy. I brought the original MSS up to date, casting it in the form of a book for the general reader and, one evening in 1992, just before I left for a conference in Australia, I met him at Headquarters and handed over to him the MSS, all the most precious documents I had extracted from the old files (such as the letter of Commendation by the C-in-C SEAC, Adm. Mountbatten), and rare photographs given to me by old CRNVR personnel. He was very pleased and asked me to help him with his next project by visiting and photographing naval museums in Australia. It was a long and amicable talk between friends, till “we tired the sun with talking / and sent him down the sky”.

In Sydney I spent a full day at Spectacle Island,Sydney Harbour, which housed the Naval Heritage Collection, making many notes and taking many photographs, and made a date for a drink on the morrow with the Curator, Lt. Cdr. Alan Henricus RAN, (a former R.Cy.N. officer), then serving his last appointment in the Royal Australian Navy prior to retirement.

Came the morrow and, with it, the news that Adm. Clancy Fernando had been assassinated by the LTTE. In my sadness it seemed to me that this was “the day when the Music died”. And, with it, the History.

*****

I was wrong. On my return, his successor Rear Adm. Samarasekera wanted me to complete the work. But where were the papers? Lost. Again. Every single document – and this time, lost for good. They have never been found.

 

I had, however, learnt from earlier experience to keep copies: so my personal duplicate copy it was, that went to the publisher and so my “A History of the Navy in Sri Lanka. 1. The Ceylon Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve (CRNVR) 1937-1950” finally saw the light of day in 1995. (see image above). It was envisaged that Vol. 2 (“The Royal Ceylon Navy”) and Volume 3 onwards(“The Sri Lanka Navy”) would be written in due course. Maybe the Navy will do it now.

 

 

Fair weather and foul	Old sailors and crumbling files	The Second Volume Shipwrecked!	A Return to Arms	Discipline and the Military
	Tall Tales #1	Tall Tales #2	Tall Tales #3