Old Sailors
and Crumbling Files OF naVY
In “Fair
weather and foul” I have not described the book I wrote on the CRNVR as it is
an SLN publication. Also, there were no photographs I book as none were
available to me, then, though they were, later. Please refer to www navy.lk for more
information.
But I would like to repeat my
personal reflections on writing the History, after I had finished writing it. I
said:
“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 be 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.”
The files were in the Navy’s Record Room in a most deplorable state of
preservation. I doubt they are better preserved now. But there were a good
many, 95% being very mundane though revealing. Some letters were gems, and I
collected them into a file to be conserved and preserved. Among them was the
letter of Adm. Mountbatten to Capt. Beauchamp commending him on his Force. All
these were given by me to Adm. Clancy Fernando on the eve of my trip to
Australia: with his assassination, all documents handed over him disappeared
forever. Anicca. Only the letter I mention remains as the frontispiece
of the History, made from a photocopy I had made for myself.
So let me talk to you of the Old
Sailors who gave me so much understanding. I can, even today, remember certain people and
incidents vividly such as:
- Capt. Beauchamp, the man who knew that a History would, one day,
be written. He set about it by asking all officers to write their memoirs and
these are printed in theHistory. Then he started assembling an album of
photographs – a most valuable collection – which I discovered in the office of
the Navy Commander’s personal assistant (and there was a visitor’s book harking
back to at least 1939, - to which I added my name!). He then assigned sailors
to visit the Archives of Lake House and
the Times of Ceylon to collect cuttings
newspaper reports of the Navy from as early as possible. This I did not know,
nor was it ever found. But I would like to memorialize him:
- The Officer who helped me mostMel. He was in retirement then, after an unfortunate send-off.
But, having about thirty years service behind him, his heart was in the Navy.
Hearing the then-Navy Commander speak about the early days of the Navy
incorrectly he volunteered to put the record right. The Navy Commander accepted
the offer and appointed the then Lt.
Cdr J. Jayasuriya and me to
work with him: Adm. de Mel only wanted a packet of paper to write on. He
commenced and, digging into his prodigious memory, began sending me 3-4 pages
of handwritten mss from time to time. This gave me the names, details etc. to
construct a skeleton history. The two of us first called on him, in his home in
Kalubowila and had a fruitful chat – if we could “chat” with such a imposing
personality. It was then that he told us that one day, Capt. Beauchamp had
called him up and handed it to him (a Lt.Cdr. then),asking him to take good
care of it. “Why me?” asked de Mel. “Because,” he said, “you are the
senior-most Ceylonese officer and you will command the Navy in time. One day,
someone will write the History of the Navy: till then, I place this document in
your trust”. Adm. De Mel told us that it was still somewhere in the house and
he would ferret it out and ask us to come for it. That day never dawned. Later,
he left us for another world. I have tried over several decades to find who in
his family would have had his papers, but I never succeeded. All of them are gone from
the country now. And so are the papers.
